Beyond infrastructure: The multiple barriers to cycling in middle and older age

Active mobility is at the core of cities' efforts to promote inclusion, health and liveability. However, the role of cycling remains marginal in many cities and its promotion is usually approached from separate health or transport angles. In addition, its sustainability and suitability for people of all ages is questionable, following the persistently low cycling use among older age groups. While urban populations are ageing and cycling offers important benefits for positive ageing, cycling's promotion strategies typically centre on the modal shift of younger age groups and rarely engage with the long-term experiences that define mobility behaviour. In response, this article offers insight into later life urban cycling by illuminating how diverse cycling lifecourses shape ageing, wellbeing, and mobility itself. By using a mix of qualitative methods, it explores the cycling trajectories and experiences of middle-to-older aged adults in a distinctly low-cycling city in the United Kingdom, where it identifies heterogeneous trajectories and sets of barriers and negotiations that shape present and future cycling practices. Furthermore, this piece reveals how cycling's mobility and wellbeing benefits entangle over the lifecourse, as positive healthy ageing resources. Finally, it identifies what it takes, beyond infrastructural transformations, to support low-cycling cities to make cyc a feasible and normalised part of the mobile practices of people of all ages.