(CNN) While new innovations in automobile technology may grab the headlines, it's easy to forget that the bicycle, which predates the motor car by decades and assumed its basic design by the 1880s, is one form of transport that just refuses to go away.

At one stage, it was even thought to be the transport of the future. An elevated cycleway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena was mooted as early as 1896 by Pasadena's far-sighted mayor Horace Dobbins, but only one mile of the white-elephant structure was ever built.

By the time its truncated route was completed, the motor car and the street car had begun to eclipse the bicycle.

By 1900, even its chief investor had lost faith in its future.

"I have concluded that we are a little ahead of time on this cycleway. Wheelmen have not evidenced enough interest in it..." Dobbins opined in 1900 in the Los Angeles Times.

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