If you had the opportunity to visit a German city over the past decade and a half, I bet you’d have noticed it, too: The thickets of bicycles leaning, standing, interweaving in front of schools and places of business.

You’d have to look hard for a bright racing bike, or the Hummer-like overkill of the mountain bikes my boys like to ride. Most are “Holland bikes”… boring, black, unadorned tubular donkeys with wire baskets to carry a half gallon of milk, three yoghurts and some frou-frou vegetables from the supermarket to an immaculate 2-bedroom apartment with balkony overlooking the pedestrian zone and a purgatory of multi-colored garbage cans to sort wheat from chaff, paper from plastic, glass from household waste… and environmental heretics from observant greens.

To me, the sight isn’t necessarily an expression of environmentalism and thrift. But of chronic stagnation and tightly limited horizons, economic and provincial.

In America, thanks to longer distances and patchy bus service, biking to work remains the dominion of urban graduate students and gone-to-pot hippies with pony tails, white moustaches, and loose t-shirts flapping over muffin tops. Which means that, especially during the winter months, even a recession will have no measurable effect on your morning commute.

In the U.K., however, the switch from cars to public transportation has been a boon to bus and rail operators like First Group. Profits for the last two quarters grew by 44 percent. Bus passenger volumes were up 2 percent for a 7.7 percent revenues increase. Rail operations income rose by 11.2 percent.

Back at home, Greyhound’s bus business rose 5 percent over last year. And our June Hot Stock Pick of the Week Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (NYSE: GWR) — which we closed out in August for 31% gains at $44 — just reported net income in the third quarter of 2008 of $21.2 million, compared with net income of $16.2 million in the third quarter of 2007.

Does that mean it’s a good time to buy again, now that the stock is back in the low $30’s?

I don’t think so. Rail traffic in the United States, after the harvests are in, is likely to remain suppressed: Falling commodities prices will knock mines out of the supply line. Plummeting building activity will keep lumber piling up in Canada. And transporting imports from U.S. ports inland will be dealt a body blow by stalling consumer demand.

Source: With earnings like this, is Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (GWR) a good buy again?