It’s May, which is of course Bike Month:
This might seem like a good thing, but when you consider they generally only dedicate entire months to terminal diseases and the gravest of social issues you begin to realize that as a cyclist you’re just something else most people would prefer not to think about.
So is Bike Month even still relevant in 2025? Probably not–and yet somehow it’s still a thing. To try to understand why, I undertook a quick survey of how we’re observing it around the country and beyond:
Ohio
So how do you get more people on bikes? Do you build more protected bicycle infrastructure? Do you implement policies such as congestion pricing to reduce automobile traffic? Do you provide easy access to bike share? Do you build secure bike parking? Ultimately, encouraging meaningful numbers of people to embrace using the bicycle as transportation probably requires a concerted effort to implement all of these things.
Then there’s the the opposite approach, which is to throw up your hands and say, “Fuck it, let’s just dump a bunch of helmets:”
I’m not saying this is all Ohio is doing to promote safe bicycling. I’m also not saying people shouldn’t wear helmets (even if I may secretly be thinking it). I’m just saying giving out 13,000 of them smacks of desperation, like airdropping a bunch of supplies into a disaster area. They’re even calling it “Put A Lid On It,” which is only slightly more polite than “Stop complaining and wear this:”
I’d love to know how much money it costs cities to do large-scale helmet giveaways like this, and how many bikes they could be buying for kids instead.
New York City
Here in New York, the Department of Transportation has published a list of family-friendly bike routes where you’ll find brief respite from all the weed-addled drivers in cars with paper license plates:
Oddly, the longest route is in Manhattan, even though it’s the smallest borough by geography, which just seems unfair:
Not only that, but most of the Bronx route [PDF] is in Manhattan too:
See?
The Bronx has the most parkland of any borough and at least two giant parks with enough bike path to make a family-friendly bike route of a mile or two a no-brainer–one with a beach and one with a pool–and yet the route the DOT comes up with is designed to simply get you and your family out of the Bronx altogether, go figure.
San Diego
Bike To Work Day is a staple of Bike Month, but now that so many people stay home and work in their underpants San Diego is changing its approach:
Of course this is unlikely to help because if you work from home you probably also exercise at home and have all your purchases delivered and do pretty much everything else from home, too:
I’d have gone with “Go For A Ride And Then Go To Work Day,” since a morning ride followed by a day of working in your underpants is as close as many of us will ever get to living the dream.
But hey, 30+ years of Bike To Work Day was a good run. Sadly, I give Bike Anywhere Day no more than 10 years before it becomes We Know You’re Gonna Drive, Just Try Not To Run Anybody Over Day.
Raleigh
San Diego may be giving up on Bike To Work Day during Bike Month, but Raleigh is giving up on bikes altogether:
This one really hurts:
The promo code should be BETRAYAL. The scooter is the natural enemy of the bicycle; the invasive species that has destroyed our habitat. It’s like giving away free free Popeye’s chicken during American Heart Month.
United Kingdom
I don’t know if they have Bike Month over there, but they do have a bicycling viola da gambist:
Sarah Small is touring by bicycle in order to spare the world the environmental impact of flying:
This should serve as a shining example to all those other viola da gambists out there traveling from arena to arena by private jet.
Just call her Taylor Slow.
