That's a good point, I suppose the problem with many cities is they are designed for cars, not for more people centric solutions. I'd like to see a city designed for smaller vehicles bikes / scooters / small EV's, its difficult to get rid of cars once they're there though.

They are popular in Asia because relatively speaking Asia is poor.

Just like the flying pigeon bike was massively popular in china back in the 70's, I even saw one being ridden at Cranfield university by a Chinese masters/doctoral student in the late 70's early eighties.

No, Japan is one of the richer countries on the planet per-capita, and bicycles are very popular there. They're popular because they're cheap and simple and they have excellent public transit for longer distances and they don't have to worry much about thieves like in crappier countries. And as a result of people biking and walking more, almost no one there is fat, unlike America where the majority of the population is obese (not just overweight).

Um I think they meant asia ex Japan as did I

They are popular in the Netherlands also.

The overall point was that bikes can be made to work, Asia is a large scale example, although as you say, not necessarily by choice. The Netherlands, and increasingly other parts of north west Europe are another example.

I think you mean Bikes (ridden by middle class white people) not Scoters and Mopeds ;-)

In India you can see entire families, Dad, Mum and Baby on Mums back riding a moped.

Flying pigeons are bicycles.

I'm not a biologist but I believe non white, non middle class people are capable of riding bikes... Even women! :P

I've been to Japan, and I saw lots of people riding bicycles there. However, they were all relatively fit. Disabled people don't ride bicycles, nor do elderly people. And almost no one rides a bicycle in a downpour. Of course, in a city like Tokyo, if the weather is bad, people can just walk their bike, or take the subway, because things are relatively close together and the public transit infrastructure is excellent. It also helps that they can just leave their bike parked somewhere if they need to, and not worry about it being stolen, unlike America where you can't leave a decent bike in a city like DC for long without someone stealing it unless you have it U-locked to a post (no one locks bikes to solid objects in Japan; they just have simple locks on the back wheel so no one can easily ride away on it).

In many cities bikes are faster than cars. In central London for example average speeds are around eight miles per hour (and falling). During rushhour it's even worse. Rushhour traffic in Berlin averages around five miles per hour. Even untrained cyclists are faster than that.

But would you like to be in rush hour traffic on a bike?

I am every day. It's much nicer than being in lighter traffic, since the cars are slower than me and thus much less dangerous.

In many ways, it's actually better cycling in dense urban traffic moving at a snail's pace than say, a 5 lane road (2 in each direction, shared center turn) of the sort that are arterials in suburbs or might find near your local mall when traffic is moving at 35mph.

Source: I've put about 14,000 miles on a bicycle, half touring, half commuting in Cleveland and Boston. for context, that'll seem absurdly large to non-cyclists, and quite small to serious cyclists.

You end up going faster than the cars trapped in the gridlock because you can filter to the front of the intersection easily on a bike.