Treehugger takes the time counter George Will of Newsweek’s disbelief that Americans are willing to switch to bikes for commuting:
In fact, stats from the Transportation Alternatives say that there are two million bike commuters nationally. There are currently around 130 million total commuters, so that means we’re still doing better at bike commuting than Will’s 0.01 percent (IAC Transportation, in a 2008 report, suggested .38% of us, or 468,000 are bike commuters. Time for George F. Will to go out for a bike ride.
Tags: Commuting
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A week and a half ago Dave Rutherford had a Toronto City Councillor (who’s name escapes me) on his show. They were discussing the issue of dedicated bicycle lanes in downtown Toronto and the purportedly negative impact they’ve had on the rate of flow of automobile traffic. Neither person produced any statistical or observational evidence that automobile flow efficiency had been affected by the presence of bicycle lanes. It was simply assumed, much like George Will’s assertion regarding the size of the American bicycle commuter body. Ideologically, many people feel alternative transportation is a minority interest and a symptom of ‘the nanny state’. I’ve been told alternative transportation is a violation of the capitalist ethic. In a particularly heated exchange with particularly opinionated parties I was even told that bicycle commuters are part of the gay liberal agenda. As with so many issues, plenty of people believe that alternative transportation threatens the capitalist ethic and their political freedom. These may be the abundant opinions for some time to come.
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