This is our future. (Photo: The Rotarian)

The idea of biking to work has begun to seem natural in Washington, D.C., especially given the very public emergence of the Capital Bikeshare in the past year. The District is hardly enormous, and I imagine most offices have at least some workers who forgo car, Metro, bus, and foot to ride through city blocks before beginning their professional day. The culture has grown receptive. No surer sign exists than today's announcement about where we should expect 32 new Capital Bikeshare stations in the District, planned to be built this coming fall.

But even 15 years ago, at least in the United States, the concept of bike commuting had yet to take off in such a big, powerful way. The November 1994 issue of The Rotarian magazine observes the slow but growing rise of the biking movement in the U.S. and strongly contrasts the American notion of biking with that of many other countries around the world, such as China, "home to one-third of the 900 million bicycles in use worldwide" circa the mid-'90s. "Can bicycle commuters secure a place on the world's roads and highways," the subhead of the Rotarian cover story asks. Bikes made sense in many parts of the world for economic reasons — biking to work is cheaper. But Americans and U.S. infrastructure liked and relied on the automobile, and cycling often fell into the sphere of recreation. This was true of my own childhood in Missouri, where my family would load up bikes on a car and drive to a nearby trail to ride there.

The story cites a few statistics about U.S. bike commuting — in 1994, 3.4% of Americans rode to their jobs "occasionally," compared to 1.5% in 1983. The country's bike-friendliness had cool after the automobile emerged and dominated, the journalist recounts, but the modern bicycling movement can be traced to 1973 when the price of gas began to spike and Americans bought 14 million bikes. What the article dives into is relatively familiar now, talking of initiatives like "Bike to Work" week, bike racks, and the addition of cycle tracks, but all this comes then at a time when bike commuting was called "relatively modern" for Americans. The bike commuting option is still not feasible for many, but it's certainly in the air, especially in a city like Washington, D.C.

Read the 1994 cover feature from The Rotarian for a taste of what bike commuting seemed like 17 years ago:

Read more pieces of Metro history here.