How fast is a car, after you pay for it?
maxmautner.com
maxmautner.com
Indeed, what about inclement weather ?
Also, the pure physics (danger) of a tiny bike with human and 5,000 Lb steel vehicles all around it, way too risky IMHO
From a practical perspective, it fails utterly.
A bike can get you from point A to point B easily enough, but what about the details?
Where are you going to put the pizza you splurge-ordered five minutes before leaving work?
Where are you going to put the large watermelon you unexpectedly found on sale at the grocery store, while just picking up a few things for lunch?
And for unattached/unmarried men, how the deuce are they supposed to peacock their socioeconomic status to the majority of women whose primary partner “preferences” are the very Machiavellian 666 attributes?
Our entire western civilization - including bicycle design - is centred around the personal (ICE/electric) vehicle. From neighbourhood density & layout to walkable cities to wide and ubiquitous non-vehicle paths, it’s all grossly lacking.
At least Europe is fixing things, and only because the culture of bike-riding has existed since WWII, and became well reinforced over the last 30 by additional cultural considerations and political policy decisions including road designs and bicycle prioritization.
So yeah, even I am looking at the stats and going, “I wish”, without any irony. It’s a nice dream, but while our Protestant ethic for hyper-individualization continues to exist, any focus on anything other than vehicle prioritization will be seen as downright communistic.
Just look at how the province of Ontario - and its lardy-arse hyper-conservative premier Doug Ford - has begun ripping bike lanes out of the cities which installed them, because “those bike lanes cause traffic congestion”, despite all of the evidence showing that this is just not true. It’s all a political stunt designed to make Cletus-IQ conservatives forget that they vote against their own best interests, by giving them a “liberal windmill” to tilt against and be distracted by as Ford and his buddies bleed them dry.
Or you use the savings from not having a car to have the pizza delivered.
Or, in less car-oriented places, you walk to the pizza place to pick up the order, just like Laverne and Shirley would walk over to the Pizza Bowl in a fictional portrayal of 1960 Milwaukee.
A large watermelon? Really? How many times has that happened to you? Do you leave the watermelon in your hot car while you work the rest of the day? You also can't easily carry a windsurfer on a bicycle, so might mention that too.
But in answer to your question, if you are going to be carrying things on your bicycle, put some baskets on, like https://waldbicyclebaskets.com/products/582-rear-basket-blac... or https://www.femmecyclist.com/how-to-carry-groceries-on-a-bik.... Then you can carry a pizza and a watermelon at the same time.
As an unattached male, are you going to eat that entire watermelon on your own?
As to becoming attached, you'll find there are women who don't want a car-centered life.
So does the "entire western civilization" include Europe? Or just the US? And are Asia or Africa somehow less centered around the personal (ICE/electric) vehicle than Europe? (Especially if you include mopeds and motorcycles.)
The culture of bike-riding has existed since the 1890s and the invention of the safety bike. It faded after WWII, especially in the US due to government subsidized white flight, but elsewhere as well. It started re-emerging in some places, like the Netherlands after the 1970s Stop de Kindermoord movement.
"Protestant ethic for hyper-individualization"? You'll find that Catholic countries are also car-centered, the Protestant Nordic countries didn't have the American sense of hyper-individualism, and Weber's ides of the protestant ethic was that dedication to hard work and sacrifice is noble in its own right. Perhaps you're thinking of the frigidity of rugged individualism, as Mamdani described it?
Been to the Netherlands? It works spectacularly well there.
In Utrecht recently solved car congestion on a 4 lane major road by converting the centre two lands to parkland, reducing it to 2 lanes. It worked a treat. The road is no longer congested as it became faster to ride a bike.
Over a long time period like that it's never that you can't do it. The USA and Canada managed the conversion from European style cities before trains, to public transport based cities when trains and trams arrived, to car centric easily enough. They could go back.
If they don't, it will be because the won't, not because they can't. I wouldn't say never, because once the car manufacturing falls away a major source of lobbying pressure will fall away. Car centric lifestyle needs a champion, because it's more expensive, less efficient time wise, and less healthy than the alternatives.
There is no car manufacturing done in the Netherlands now. I doubt this is a coincidence.