Toban Black

In London, Ontario, Canada

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Blaine Harden (in this article — late last year) -

“In the United States, with the exception of a handful of cities … car-centric transportation policies and suburban sprawl continue to make bicycle commuting rare, arduous and relatively dangerous. Although millions of Americans recreate on bikes, they ride them for just 0.4 percent of their trips to work, according to the U.S. Census.”

“In recent months, bike shops across much of the United States have been flooded with new customers fed up with high gasoline prices.”

“Yet without major changes in U.S. transportation policy and infrastructure, an earnest desire to save money on gas is not enough to turn American bike owners into everyday cyclists who ride to work, according to [some] urban planners, transportation experts and bicycle company executives.”

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Some relevant statistics -
- According to a 2009 survey, 88% of Americans consider cars necessities (source)
- “Canadians and Americans use bikes for fewer than one in a hundred trips - although in Vancouver … it’s a bit higher, at about 2.3 per cent. Compare that to the 20 to 35 per cent of trips taken by bike in the European Union and 50 per cent in China. (Unfortunately, the trend is reversing in China as the country embraces car culture.)” (from a 2008 source)
- “Germans are 10 times more likely than Americans to ride a bike and three times less likely to get hurt while doing so.” (from the same 2008 article quoted above)

Of course, cycling is just one transportation alternative. Although I’m focusing on cycling in this post (as I have in other blog entries here, in the past), I also think that rail and bus systems are two more important alternatives to cars, trucks, and vans. I’m not going to try to summarize all of the constructive alternative transportation possibilities (right now, anyway); basically I’m just questioning the entrenchment of automobiles — while looking at cycling, as one positive alternative.

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(Photo by “Zakkalicious”)

On a street in Brussels

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“Pneumatic Cyclist” writes about how car driving can “help create dependent children” -

“I don’t know when it started, perhaps when my daughter was two-years old and I started driving her to swimming lessons just a few miles away from our house. It started a parenting cycle that finally stopped the day my daughter got her driver’s licence.”

“Shuttling my kids from one event to another became a lifestyle for me and my children.”  ”I didn’t know any different!”

“The whole constant craziness not only eliminated free time for my children to play, but it created a lifestyle that required ‘fast’ or processed foods. It became a sick feedback loop that also required more work hours to pay for all of their” activities.”   “I had to hire a counselor when my child was in second grade–in order to help her process her stress. Sick! And I still didn’t catch on!”

“The best gift you could possibly give a new family would be to save them and their family from a car-centric lifestyle. The children pay the greatest price; they become accustomed to dependence. Trust me, it is a miserable cycle!”

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A related article -

Ben Lane in The Guardian -
“Is the car scrappage scheme helping the environment?”

(The CO2 stats are generalized estimates, and the message about attempts to protect jobs is too oversimplistic, given other economic factors — including additional efforts to protect company executive bonuses, for instance.)

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Here are some more relevant posts on this blog -
http://tobanblack.net/blog/?tag=automobiles
Posts that show up in there delve into other important sides of our automobile dependencies.