| > It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather. That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed. So, I think that claim can/should be falsified: If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience. > It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good According to Wikipedia [1] > There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed]
> the good in question must be an inferior good,
> there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and
> the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal
> goods are consumed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good. This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim). Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour. As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic. |
As to Giffen: people are shifting public transport -> car & bike. The "budget" (road capacity) is fixed and close to full utilisation. Increased demand with inelastic supply results "inflation", which is the somewhat convoluted way the income effect comes about. Aaaand... yeah, I can't quite remember how I made the next part fit. so you may be right.