· On a bicycle you take up little space, burn no gasoline and produce no waste, and A bike can travel 1,600 kilometres (960 miles) on the equivalent energy of a gallon of gas.
· Between 70 and 100 bicycles can be built with the resources required to build one car.
· In a North American urban environment, people living up to 12 kilometers (7.2 miles) from their workplace can commute by bike in less than one hour (some, a lot less!) Also, a roadway can carry about three times as many cyclists as people in cars.
· Per mile, a 12-foot wide bike path costs about 5% as much as a 12-foot wide road to construct. A bike weighs just one one-hundredth what a typical car weighs--27 in comparison to 2700 pounds, and when moving takes up just 3.3% to 5% as much space as a moving car and five percent of the parking space. As a result, the construction and maintenance of bicycle paths and parking places is--commuter mile for commuter mile--vastly less expensive.
· In urban areas, according to the EPA about 40% of the hazardous air pollutants come from mobile sources (Environmental Protection Agency, 1999). Elsewhere, 80% has been cited.
· Less than one trip in 100 is by bicycle. If that ratio were raised to one and one half trips per 100, which is less than one bike trip every two weeks for the average person, the US would save more than 462 million gallons of gasoline per year.
· Bicycles use 2% as much energy as cars per passenger-kilometer, and cost less than 3% as much to purchase.
· “In 1969, about half of all students walked or bicycled to school. Today, however, the story is very different. Fewer than 15 percent of all school trips are made by walking or bicycling, one-quarter are made on a school bus, and over half of all children arrive at school in private automobiles.”
·4.3 billion is the estimated annual cost of traffic jams to commuters in 29 major U.S. cities.
· 100 bicycles can be produced for the same energy and resources it takes to build one medium-sized automobile.
· Industrial world cities typically use at least one third of their land for roads and parking lots for vehicles.
I was discussing the relative insanity of people using cars so much in Taiwan on a ride the other morning. Here the cities are flat (West coast at least), distances short and yet there are still so many cars and SUVs about.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that the vast majority of people will not make the decision to use bikes on their own, people just do what they do, and cars are it. But smart choices can make choosing to ride a bike as a commuting machine turn out pretty well, and you just have to compensate for the relative inconvenience.
Rant, rant, [insert generic Dunhua bike lane rant here too]