18 A reduced risk for heart disease

17 Bridges and tunnels which are less intrusive

16 Nice views (no not that view)

15 Roads with fewer potholes

14 Trees along the road rather than steel barriers

13 Walkable communities offer reduced travel distances

11 Less pollution means reductions of asthma & cancer

11  Less time in traffic means more time for leisure and family

10  No more road kill

9   More space for playgrounds

8   More friendly communities

7   The $90 billion currently spent on freeways can go to our public schools and libraries

6   The end of tow trucks

5   The elimination of ‘road rage’

4   Greatly reduced noise levels

3   Pizza tastes better than oil

2   The opportunity to breathe clean air, not car exhaust

1   Watching an eagle take flight on your morning commute

     (true story told to me by a Portland bicyclist)

Moving approximately 2400 lbs. of household items by bicycle.

I ride through New York City with a sign which says ‘One Less Car’ and I enjoy the attention that I draw from passing pedestrians, cyclists, and rollerbladers.  However what truly surprises me are the number of automobile drivers who compliment me. 

Despite assumptions to the contrary, Americans prefer the idea of traveling by bicycle on traffic free streets.  However we find ourselves caught in a catch 22.  The streets are considered too dangerous for bicycling – because of traffic.  And because the streets are perceived as dangerous, we feel the need to drive cars. 

Roadways are only dangerous when drivers do not expect to see a bicyclist.  As verified by Transportation Alternatives - a New York advocacy group - the more bicyclists inhabit a roadway,  the more drivers expect them and treat them as legitimate users.  By doubling the number of bicyclists on a roadway, the chance of being struck by a vehicle drops by 1/3.

So let’s put it into perspective.  Everything has risks.  Failure Analysis Associates Inc. found per 1,000,000 exposure hours, the fatalities are 128.71 for skydiving, 1.07 for swimming, 0.47 for motoring and 0.26 for bicycling.  Which proves that driving is twice as dangerous as bicycling which, additionally, reduces roadway stress.

The following commentary from Mr. H. William Batt offers an open ended discussion describing positive impacts a bicycling infrastructure could provide.  Mr. Batt is a political scientist and an advisor for the New York Bicycling Coalition.

Can the bicycle Save America?                  

May 17 1993

H. William Batt, New York Bicycling Coalition

It can if anything can.  Because otherwise the automobile transportation system is going to make us completely unable to compete economically with Europe and Japan.

It’s not just that motor vehicle transportation destroys much of our environment.  It has caused the country to pave over in asphalt the equivalent of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey in surface area.  In some cities, like Los Angeles, one half of all the land area is devoted to cars.  (and all of this investment now requires maintenance) It has made us dependent upon fossil fuels to the point that our international balance of payments and national security is threatened.  It is responsible for almost 50 thousand deaths each year and 2 million injuries serious enough for hospitalization.  These liabilities, considerable as they are, still don’t address the fundamental point.

One must look at how we Americans expend our resources to really understand what our motor vehicle transportation system is doing to us.

We are all familiar with the fact that we now spend over 13 percent of our gross domestic product on health care, shortly to grow  to 15 percent by common agreement. (This is twice what Holland spends, for example, and they have better health too by all accounts.) We are also all familiar with the fact that we have been spending about 6 percent of our GDP on defense, although this may decline somewhat in the next decade.  And we spend about 18-19 percent on food.

We don’t know for certain how U.S. stacks up in other economic sectors; economists haven’t done the input-output analysis of other industrialized countries that this requires.  But there is some indication that we spend almost twice the proportion on transportation as our competitors do internationally.  We also spend an inordinate amount, more than any other nation, on our housing, particularly in consequence of the incentives offered by our tax system.

What this all means is that we have substantially less of our GDP left available to use on education, research and industrial development, recreation, and other sectors.  It is particularly obvious to those of us who have traveled overseas to see how dependent we are on our cars. 

But what is worse is that we are pretty much locked in to these patterns.  Our infrastructure is in place; we can’t quickly alter it to increase our transportation efficiencies.  We’re stuck with it.  Even if we doubled, or tripled, the price of gasoline through heavy taxes and fees (as European nations have and Al Gore suggested we do), we’d still be stuck dependent on our cars at this point. 

But since most auto trips are short, bicycles could play a part if only we made it possible.  We’d have to make bike travel safe i.e. less threatened by cars.  And we’d have to make bike lanes available and useful.  Will we? That’s a good question.

Can we persuade the urban public not to use the sides of most streets for their private parking places, and give them over for bicycle lanes? (in Japan, you can’t buy a car unless you can show you have a place to park it off the street.)  Will we be willing to insulate bike trails from the threats of motorized traffic?  Would we be willing to change our land use policies such that bike trails through the back yards of suburban landowners could be built? (Is there any alternative?)

The problems and challenges of adapting our society to compete with other nations will require looking at the amount we spend on transportation and to look at what modes.  ISTEA (The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991) calls for a transportation system that is “economically efficient, environmentally sound, provides the foundation for the Nation to compete in the global economy and will move people and goods in an energy efficient manner.”  If we take it seriously, it will require us to radically alter our lifestyles.  And if we can’t even talk about an increased gas tax, how will we ever address the challenges of a bicycle-friendly society, before it is already too late? 

Mr. Batt is a political scientist who advises the New York Bicycling Coalition on transportation policy issues.  He first came to realize the importance of bicycles as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand in 1963.  For more information contact the New York Bicycle Coalition, PO BOX 7335, Albany, NY 12224  

Motor Vehicle Transportation and Proper Pricing
H. William Batt, New York Bicycling Coalition