Firing a shot in the dark here I'd say one of the reasons is the fact bikes aren't (and probably can't be) used in warfare (besides the occasional sentinel here and there). Motorcycles, cars, trucks, horses (and other forms of mount), carriages, boats, planets, e.t.c can and have been used to do battle (motorcycles in particular famous for its use in urban and gang warfare), giving them a sort of dangerous, lethal edge.
Bikes, however, due the traditionally non-martial aspect, are seen as "civilian" and harmless.
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They were unbelievably important to the English campaign in Burma back in WW 2
Oh really when?
Also, pedaling isn't nearly as cool as anything to do with engines.
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Well it isn't exactly a common known historical fact, so I stand corrected.
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"Why aren't there more Bicycle-related tropes?" has a very simple answer: Because they haven't been identified and YKTTW'd yet.
Offhand, I can't think of very many ways that bicycles are used in fiction that aren't "People ride bicycles". I suppose we could work on the Bike Messenger and the Overloaded Bicycle but those are the only two that I can think of with troping possibilities.
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The only other way I see them used is just Extreme Sport Excuse Plot.
edited 15th Oct '14 11:53:33 AM by Larkmarn
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I have seen a few flying bicycles. Like in Kiki's Delivery Service, the The Simpsons episode "The Joy of Sect"(hover bikes and the fake UFO), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Looking for more examples I also found The Magic Bicycle by John Bibee, The Flying Bike by Donald Smee.
Might be a trope.
edited 15th Oct '14 1:00:39 PM by m8e
Some germinal thoughts for potential bicycle tropes —
Someone carefree riding on the handlebars of a bicycle.
How "fixies" (fixed-gear bicycles) denote hipster status. Also, how recumbent bicycles imply hyper-environmentalism or over-the-top mechanical inclinations.
Putting playing cards in bicycle-wheel spokes
Tandem bicycles ("A bicycle built for two...") and, in cartoons, extrapolations into bicycles built for four, or fix, or twenty.
Penny-farthing bicycles — the turn of the 19th century variety with a very large front wheel and tiny rear wheels — which helped create the perception that bicycles were deathtraps, because they were.
Tricycles for very little kids.
"Taking the training wheels off," its literal meaning.
Newspaper boy delivering papers by bike.
The innocence implied in a bicycle bell.
No, the other one.
Makes me wonder how common learning how to use a bike is as a plot.
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Look at the Cool Bike trope, and you will find it's emphatically about motorcycles, not the pedal-powered variety.
Look at the entire index of vehicle-related trope, and all you get is... Hero Stole My Bike. A trope born out of pure necessity, not coolness.
So why is it that bicycles have so failed to capture the public imagination, compared to other forms of transport?