Otherwise?

Well, this.

What’s your health and well-being worth to you?

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, cycling

• Motorists works 2 hours each day to pay for a car.
• Bicyclists work 3.8 minutes each day to pay for their bicycles.

(Obviously the costs are different depending upon one’s circumstances. The well-to-do work fewer hours for their cars. The poor work more.)

Yep, getting rid of my car gave me a huge pay raise. And it got me out from behind the wheel sitting in traffic — one of the top things Americans have cited as making them unhappy. It’s also a heath issue — all that sitting and all that stress. Win-win-win for me!

I have said this before: Using a bicycle for basic transportation in Springfield is easy. So easy. OMG it is easy. If it weren’t easy, I might not have stuck with it (because I just assumed it would be hard and that I’d end up driving a lot).

One thing, however: It helps to live close to your major destinations. That’s not a requirement. But if you live in a far-flung suburb surrounded by nothing but large traffic sewers, well, it’s going to be less easy. You can still practice the 1-mile Solution.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, cycling, green transportation, utility cycling

It’s cool to do it for a week. It’s truly epic to keep it up — maybe not everyday, but maybe one or two days per week. Ease your way in. Pretty soon you’ll be selling a car and giving yourself a big $$$ raise. And losing weight. And enjoying your community. And saving the environment.

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle commuting, bicycle culture, cycling

And, so far, I’m scratching my head.

The report was sponsored by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration of the U. S. Department of Transportation. That’s fine. We eggheads are always happy to study stuff for the government. What’s bugging me is a whole pile of adjectives and other loaded language forms in the executive summary that lead me to question the initial intention of the report.

For example, here’s the second paragraph (a .jpg file because the report does not allow copy-and-paste):

Sez who?

This is questionable language for an academic study. This is entirely appropriate language if the following is your rhetorical intention:

The US Department of Transportation (1994, 2004) has set a goal of increasing the percentage of trips by bicycle while improving safety. The rationale for promoting cycling is that it would shift some trips from the car, thus reducing roadway congestion, parking problems, air pollution, noise and energy use. Moreover, both the US Department of Transportation and the Center for Disease Prevention and Control advocate active transport such as bicycling for physical activity that would help combat the worsening obesity epidemic.

That’s the first paragraph of the introduction to the report.

And, BTW, yes, we’re all for all of that.

OK, so it’s a big report, and there’s much of interest here (more anon). But my problem with it so far is that the researchers appear to be promoting (re: all those red highlights above) particular approaches and types of  infrastructure — e.g. bicycle lanes and tracks — because these increase participation (something that I think has been adequately proven re: lanes and tracks) without examining the safety of these systems in the U.S. The researchers do quote themselves on such a safety study of European infrastructure, but I would argue that European systems, founded in very different (car) cultures, make it difficult to compare.

Would I like to see more bicyclists on the road? You bet! — on the road. I question the morality of poorly designed bicycle lanes that fool novices into thinking they are safe (re: here and here). I’ll be happy to consider, say, Dutch-like infrastructure (often bicycle superior) when we have a Dutch-like car culture and Dutch-like fines for traffic violations.

I’m suspicious of this report because, all too often it seems, cities build poor bicycle infrastructure while certain bicycle advocates cheer anything as progress. I’m not anxious to see reports such as this promote more nonsense on the streets.

What we need is a comparison of accident and fatality rates of traffic-integrated bicyclists versus those who use lanes and tracks and versus those who are non-traffic-integrated (i.e. sidewalk riders, road salmon, etc.). Does such a study exist? I don’t know. If any Carbon Trace reader has information about this, please comment.

I’m going to pull some interesting bits out of this report over the next few days — including a stat that makes an excellent argument for the 1-Mile Solution

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle infrastructure, bicycle politics, bicycle safety, cycling

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, cycling