04-18-2015, 02:00 AM
(04-18-2015, 01:33 AM)Henrik_imp Wrote: That is what I thought, which is why I was a bit confused when JustPassinThru refered to "when motorcycles moved from being transportation to recreation...". My impression when visiting the US on a number of occasions has been that it has always been a car culture and bikes are just "for fun". Certainly here in Europe they are much more a transportation device, something that can be seen in pretty much any major city in Europe south of Scandinavia.
Henrik:
I don't know if you've ever been to the States. The thing Europeans notice first about it is how spread out it is - a trip from Geneva to Gdansk, Poland is 1646 kilometers. That's about the distance I am, in Montana, from Chicago.
A trip from the East Coast to the West Coast can be over twice that - and that's with the shortest distance.
Also, our population density is much less. Much of the land east of the Mississippi is farmland. Much of the West is either mining or government-owned forest preserves. A lot more is desert and of little value.
In Europe, there is a lot of mass-transit options, partly, because there are many PATRONS for mass transit. In America there is not. The number of persons traveling cross-country is much fewer, per route-mile, than you have on European railways.
And much of that cross-country transit is discretionary - if somehow cars were outlawed or made inconvenient, large numbers would just opt to stay home. The American tourism industry never really took off until after WWII- with the universality of the personal auto. Few people took a train trip for a holiday - while there were parlor sleeping cars for well-heeled travelers, most folks couldn't afford it (then as well as now; Amtrak sleeper-parlor rooms are very expensive).
Our culture and habits and transportation layout came from this; from these wide-open spaces and lighter population density.