Last month, we explored what various elements in the cycling ecosystem — industry groups, bike brands, dealers and consumer advocacy organizations — are doing to bring more entry-level and returning riders to the activity of riding bikes.
The answers were “more than you might think” and “not nearly enough,” respectively.
If we really want to bring bicycles back into average American households, it’s going to take more than an uncoordinated series of one-off efforts to make it happen. And it’s not going to be easy. A successful campaign of this type will have to be carefully thought-out, well-funded, and thoroughly orchestrated.
Fortunately, a carefully thought-out, well-funded, and thoroughly orchestrated campaign very much like this already exists in the outdoor space. And it’s been going on for more than twenty years.
The rise and fall of Take Me Fishing
According to its website, the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation is “a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase participation in recreational angling and boating, thereby protecting and restoring the nation’s aquatic natural resources.”
In 1998, the RBFF started its nationwide program, Take Me Fishing. In 2022, 54.5 million Americans ages six and over went fishing, an increase of 4% over 2021 and just under 2020’s (COVID pandemic) high of 54.7 million, according to the Foundation’s website. In addition, participation among children ages 6-12 grew by 3% to 7.8 million in 2022, over one million higher than a decade ago. So in the post-COVID market, it delivered double the response of Got Milk.
Since its inception, the program has been financed through federal grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which in turn, were funded by excise taxes on fishing tackle and motorboat fuel. No funds from other taxes were used for the program.
These taxes generated over $1 billion annually, which was allocated to state fish and wildlife agencies for habitat restoration, management, and public access projects, including its F&WS’ National Outreach and Communications Program, which financed Take Me Fishing for $13.8 million in 2023 and $14.3 million in 2024.
But Take Me Fishing has certainly had its struggles. Like cycling, the boating and fishing industries went through a boom during the COVID years, followed by a bust thereafter. And RBFF and Take Me Fishing had their budgets slashed in 2005 by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, abetted by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who told Fox News Digital that "Washington fell hook, line, and sinker into padding the pockets of overpriced recreational consultants."
How much of this is true is certainly a matter of opinion. Certainly the six-figure salaries allocated to Take Me Fishing’s board members were no higher than those of other comparably funded groups. And, as the website OutdoorLife puts it, “The grant dollars — all generated by sportfishermen and boaters — are already allocated to conservation, and cannot be used to offset the national debt.”
In any case. “RBFF hopes to reapply for the same grant with a refined proposal that the organization tailored to meet DOGE’s concerns, but they have not yet had an opportunity to do so,” OutdoorLife said in its June 2025 article.
If the RBFF has in fact re-applied and the grants have rematerialized, that fact has not been noted on the RBFF website, which has not been updated since March of 2025.
But none of that is really the point here. The RBBF’s fortunes may well swing back with a new administration in 2028. And in the meantime, Take Me Fishing is precisely the kind of “carefully thought-out, well-funded, and thoroughly orchestrated campaign” that can serve as a model for a similar effort by those of us in the bike industry.
The bare bones are simple enough: create a federal excise tax on new bike sales at retail that funds a national marketing campaign to make the health, fun, and fitness benefits of bicycles clear to a new generation of American families.
Now, let’s be clear that that proposal is not going to fly under the current administration, any more than Take Me Fishing did. But the 2028 elections are just 30 months away, which gives us two and a half years to get our plan in place.
Bicycles are covered by the Department of Transportation, so the excise tax would have to go through them. And new, more bicycle-friendly faces at a future DOT may be more receptive to efforts from PeopleForBikes and other industry organizations like the League of American Bicyclists.
I put the notion of a Federal excise tax-funded biking campaign to both PeopleForBikes and the League of American Bicyclists for comment.
PeopleForBikes politely declined comment, a nice way of saying they were busy looking for a ten-foot pole not to touch the idea with. No response at press time from the LAB.
As I like to say, the U.S. industry is very good at doing what it’s always done. Which is to say, “doing what we’ve always done.” Which is exactly what got us to where we are today.
But let’s forge ahead. What will it all cost? Let’s, as they say, do the numbers.
Adding up the costs
I reached out to Peter Wooloery, owner (and self-described “data nerd”) at Bicycle Market Research LLC, and asked him for some estimates. He came back with hard numbers:
In 2025, Woolery says, the U.S. imported some 10,512,462 bicycle units with an estimated retail value of $4.6 billion in retail revenue on ten and a half million units.
Assuming a Take Me Fishing budget of $14 million, it would take a 3.04% tax of that revenue to realize the budget. Call it 3%.
That’s very affordable. On a $100 kid’s bike at a discount score, that’s an extra three bucks. On a $600 entry-level IBD bike, it’s $18. On a $1,000 bike, it’s $30. And on a $10,000 bike, it’s $300.
Like I said, very affordable.
So the excise tax is entirely doable. Bottom line is, we can organize a Take Me Fishing-style biking campaign, hire a hotshot agency to do the high-level concepting and rollout, and put the whole thing in place in exchange for a 3% excise tax on every bike sold in America.
But as I said in the previous section, the big obstacle here is the willingness to undertake the effort from the cycling industry itself. And the heavy lifting in this case will fall on the shoulders of P4B, with assistance from the LAB and related groups. They’re the ones with friends at DOT and in Congress who can make this all work. And they’re the ones who will need to get started now in anticipation of the new administration in January of 2029, in order to have the program in place by 2030 or 2031, just five years from now.
It’s a big ask, I know. But it’s also the only way available for us to get more Americans off their couches and onto bicycles. And that’s something worth fighting for. For local bike shops, for bike brands, for the rest of the industry, and for the health, fun, and fitness of America itself.
