The next time you go out to eat, take a peek behind the kitchen. Whether you're at Uchi or Chili's, you're likely to see a similar sight: an old bike chained up to a makeshift rack. That's how someone got to work.

Once you're far from the serene paths of Buffalo Bayou Park and downtown's B-Cycle stations, the true picture of cycling in Houston begins to emerge. Cyclists in Houston are more working class than urban hipster, and they pedal more out of necessity than choice.

That's how Andrew Keatts, content editor for the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, framed it for the Houston Chronicle last year, and census numbers reflect this trend across the nation.

Nearly half of people who cycle to work earn less than $25,000 per year, and in Houston that figure is about 42 percent.

These are the people whom City Hall needs to keep in mind as it moves forward with the newly completed Houston Bike Plan.

Explore Houston's Bikeways Map

The interactive Bikeways Map shows the city's existing bikeway network and long term vision for bikeways in Houston.Click here for the full version.

These Houstonians don't bike for exercise or fun. They bike for the same reason that hundreds of thousands of Houstonians sit in rush-hour traffic every day.

We've built an entire regional infrastructure system to accommodate that car commuter. Most recently, we're on the hook for a $9 billion plan to expand Interstate 45. The infrastructure for working-class Houstonians who can't afford cars, however, is dangerously underfunded. With no alternative route, the people who cook our meals and stock our shelves take their lives in their hands as part of a routine commute made all the more dangerous by late-night hours.

In 2011, Cruz Riojas was killed while riding to work along Sawyer St. near the Heights. In 2013, Miguel Marcial was killed by a BMW after biking home from his late-shift job washing dishes. And in December of that year, Chelsea Norman was killed as she rode home at night from her job at a Montrose-area Whole Foods.

Chronicle reporter Dane Schiller documented these sad stories in the 2014 piece, "Dying to Ride."

It isn't just about the money we spend or roads, or the lack of funding for bike lanes. There are reams of city regulations that make it more difficult and dangerous for people to get around Houston on bikes, including mandatory parking requirements that stand in the way of cycling infrastructure and wide lanes that encourage speeding drivers.

These rules will need to change as the city follows through with its bike plan.

There's already been some movement in the right direction near downtown, where the speed limit along Allen Parkway was lowered along the Buffalo Bayou Hike and Bike trail. As the saying goes, and studies show, being hit by a car going 25 miles per hour will send a cyclist to the hospital. A car going 40 mph will send you to the morgue.

However, farther up Buffalo Bayou, the Uptown Management District has failed to consider cyclists in its plan to build dedicated bus lanes on Post Oak Boulevard. That project is supposed to help alleviate traffic, and the dense, mixed-use development around the Galleria area seems like the perfect opportunity to encourage people to get out of the cars and onto bikes for short, neighborhood trips. But apparently there wasn't any room in the $192.5 million budget for bike lanes.

Houston is supposed to be a city of business. That point becomes perfectly clear in the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the daily commute.

But when the sun goes down, bus service slows and the bike commuters head to work, City Hall needs to guarantee that hoping for a better life isn't synonymous with a death wish.