Why are road bikes more popular than mountain biking?

[genealogyxie]

I wanted a road bike as a high school kid for a while, but after I got one, it just seemed a bit more boring than going off-road on a nice mountain bike. And the speed difference seems to be only 10% or so at most if you take both on pavement. Is it because all those bikers I see on the road are professional racers in training or something?

[electrolux]

Probably because more people live near nice roads than mountains.

[genealogyxie]

But surely most people who can afford a $2000 bike also live near a park? So they can throw the bike in their SUV and drive to the trails?

[Dark17]

But surely most people who can afford a $2000 bike also live near a park? So they can throw the bike in their SUV and drive to the trails?

I live in a place where trails are just a bike away. I was a competitive XC MTB guy before switching fully to road bike. I also used my MTB to go to various places and train in paved hills or mountains. Then I bought a road bike and was planning to just use it for road work and do trails on MTB. But then, road biking is much more fun in paved roads and much faster that I gave up my MTB and sold it to buy a nice Chiner frame.

Well the thing is, I understand why road biking is more popular than MTB. Lot of people just want to go from point A to point B using bike and the fastest way to do it is on a road bike.

Maybe another thing is, road bike races are much more exciting to watch than XC MTB. On road bike race, you need to factor in a lot of things and there's a team work and there's a lot of strong riders on the field and is not just dominated by one person. Meanwhile, on XC MTB, I know only 2 people who is really strong they dominated XC MTB for a decade each and that was Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter. On XC MTB races, the one who goes first on single track is usually the winner and casual riders don't want to watch a single guy riding solo on a breakaway.

This is just my opinion :p

[genealogyxie]

Makes a lot of sense. I guess I never thought of it as a team sport. Kind of like football or baseball.

[Tijoe]

From my perspective the type of bicycle you ride is driven primarily from geographical and population density factors.  With about 85% of the USA population living in metropolitan areas (50K people or more) the majority of the cycling population doesn't have easy access to places to ride MTBs or other types of trails.   Therefore it is easiest to ride asphalt for the majority of riders in the USA.

When I lived in large metropolitan areas, I primarily rode on road bikes.  Now that I live less than 2 miles from dirt, I spend most my time riding trails.

[genealogyxie]

I wanted a road bike as a high school kid for a while, but after I got one, it just seemed a bit more boring than going off-road on a nice mountain bike. And the speed difference seems to be only 10% or so at most if you take both on pavement. Is it because all those bikers I see on the road are professional racers in training or something?

But surely there were things like public parks where you could have ridden a mountain bike?

[merider]

In Japan, most mountain roads are  paved  or extremely steep（not for MTB）. Most people ride road bikes or go Trekking. Even gravel bikes are  almost unnecessary.

[Eddy_Twerckx]

I can say at least for me, riding a MTB on roads is a miserable experience. I’d probably give up on cycling if I was forced to ride a MTB on tarmac. But apart from that, I just enjoy riding my road bike on road way more than riding my MTB. I have a few trails around me (within a 30 min drive), but 99% of the time I’ll choose to ride the road bike. I just get more enjoyment from roads.

[BalticSea]

It's actually other way around where I live - MTBs are far more popular than road bikes, even among people who ride in the city

[repoman]

It's actually other way around where I live - MTBs are far more popular than road bikes, even among people who ride in the city

Similar situation here. There is a MTB trail system on my road and the parking lot is always packed weather permitted. I rarely see other people out cycling on roads, and I live in a 'gravel mecca' (Vermont).

Something that keeps me from getting into MTB is that I'm afraid of injuring myself, it seems prerequisite to have a major crash for MTBers (at least more so than road cyclists) and the trails here are quite technical.