On Monday, we discussed how a community’s bike -friendliness and level of transportation cycling is tied to how well they address the needs and concerns of women. Essentially if you aren’t closing in on gender equity in cycling use, you are never going to make the strides toward real growth in biking as a viable part of the transportation mix. The initial discussion was about infrastructure, but I also proposed that this was still incomplete as the vast majority of the bikes on the U.S. market don’t provide the practical tool for making biking part of your every day life.

Well, not a day had passed when I came across the trailer for this new film “Beauty and the Bike.” The documentary interviews several young British women about why they don’t cycle and exposes them to the cycling infrastructure and great bikes of Continental Europe. Britain embraced car culture more than any other Western European country after WW II, so this film serves as an interesting reference for our country’s struggles to make space for people over cars. The fight to just get bike lanes painted in this movies sounds oh too familiar. The film appears to anecdotally support the ideas behind the research: women want to feel safe, find biking convenient, and ride a bike that is stylish and allows them to wear whatever they want.

Their discoveries of the ease and simplicity of travel by bike appears to reawaken the joy of cycling. More on the film here which is scheduled to premier in England on December 9. We are being sent a copy and hope to have a review in the coming weeks.