one thing they don’t mention in this article, is that bikes also cause essentially no wear and tear on road surfaces compared to cars and trucks, and re-paving is a pretty oil intensive and expensive process. the long term oil savings of reducing car usage in favor of bikes should therefore be even greater than their numbers suggest.

Yeah, the way forward here is not simply more efficient cars, people actually have to try out different modes of transportation and incorporate them into the mix.

We’ll never get rid of cars, they solve important problems obviously (how tf are you gonna bike in the country), but if you’re living in a city and you can bike to all your usual destinations, consider just getting a bike (electric or otherwise) and using it, and so on.

Or, better, don’t get in your car every time you need to hit up the corner store across the street for a gallon of milk thinks angrily about several people I know

If you like, we became a car culture for reasons that had as much to do with property values, the real estate industry, and oh yeah, racism, that developed after WWII, as with any kind of actual economic development. White flight from city centers, funded with various federal programs and the GI bill, required building out large amounts of suburban real estate, which mandated the expansion of transportation infra and forced more people (especially white people) to buy cars to do exactly the same things they used to do before without cars in the city centers they used to live in. This led to the development of an entire way of life that revolved around individuals having to own cars, and then the real estate industry liked the suburban development model, and now here we are.

And, of course, the whole time the auto industry was laughing all the way to the bank and helping sculpt American norms around the idea that you weren’t really independent or free if you didn’t pay out the nose for a car + insurance + maintenance + gas