Well, there would be a lot more bicycles and they could go a lot more places a lot faster, no? I.E. They would enable a much faster rate of genetic mutation.
No. Bicycles were heavy, uncomfortable products for the first ~40 years of their existence. Rubber tires and pedals didn’t come to bicycles until the 1860s. By that point the US had >30k miles of extensively linking most of the northern states. The modern bicycle didn’t really come into being until the 1890s.
I’m having a hard time getting numbers for track in Europe, but the UK was the real pioneer and Germany followed quickly.
