Bike/Car Balance

This morning I received an email from Steve Follett. He lives in Proctor, Vermont and commutes 5.5 miles to Rutland. Over the last 35 years, he's been making the commute by bike for about 9 months each year. He and his wife own a car; he just doesn't use it everyday for driving short distances.

I was impressed by Steve's story. As I learn more about car-free living and transportation in general this semester, I am starting to think that Steve, and others like him, have hit upon an ideal balance. They use cars when it makes sense to, but use bikes when the distances are short and the weather is good. It's a solution that can bring large benefits without the hardships or inconvenience of never using a car.

Last night I read about a 1980 study from Great Britain concluding that if 10% of car trips of 10 miles or less were made by bicycle instead, 14 million barrels of oil would be saved each year. That is equal to 2% of the country's total oil consumption. That's not huge, but it is an appreciable amount. In addition, engines don't burn gasoline efficiently when they are cold, so reducing the amount of short distance car trips can have a disproportionate impact on reducing air pollution.

Bicycles require less space than cars, both while moving and when parked. A switch to using bikes for shorter trips would mean that less space would need to be devoted to parking, opening more area for green space or allowing denser development. That in turn would increase the walkability of developed areas. The extra exercise from biking and walking would reduce medical issues like coronary heart disease, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, to name a few.

With all those benefits, I wonder why there aren't more of us living like Steve with a healthy balance between bikes and cars. I guess there are a number of reasons why: we get into the habit of driving; we think of bikes as a form of exercise or recreation, not transportation; government policy, land use, and highways are all created and maintained with automobiles--not bikes--in mind; and there is little cultural and societal support for using bikes as transportation. When you ride your bike to get somewhere, you often are seen as slightly strange, as the odd person out.

Despite all that, it is encouraging to think that with small changes in our transportation we could change the world for the better. We don't all need to park our cars permanently. But we should park them more. What if you rode a bike to get groceries? Or to visit friends this weekend? What if instead of driving your car to work then latter going to the gym, you just rode your bike to work--getting the commute and the exercise at the same time? If most people replaced the car with the bike even once a week, overall it would make significant changes for the better.