places where bicycling works

What is the overall energy expenditure of your transportation system ... what is the best way to increase that efficiency?

for some people the bicycle is part of the answer...

Copenhagen ... check out the movie. (I assume Corinne, Jeff and Bjarne will comment).

Our own township has a few core shopping areas that are within a two mile commute of about half the population. Some nice bike and walking paths have been created - almost all of our grocery shopping is down via walking these days (only 1.7 miles for us). The number of people who take advantage of these features is very low ... perhaps $4 gas will change that a bit.

One has to wonder what a penny a gallon on gas devoted to human transportation would do (we currently use nearly 150 billion gallons of gas a year, so this would be $1.5 billion a year. In our township bike paths cost between $10,000 and $25,000 a mile). I'm sure some political groups would complain that this would destroy budgets, but the benefits of having some people use human powered vehicles for short trips could be very high - from improved health, to CO₂ reduction, to less money being shipped out of the country and more money being made available for uses other than transport. Perhaps the value of your town would be enhanced if it was bicycle friendly ...

Another interesting question -- are there designers capable of creating extremely desirable devices - is there an "ipod" of HPVs? Is there a Ferrari?

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note. when you do calculations for short trips, you can't assume your gas or diesel car is working at reasonable efficiency. A cold engine gets terrible economy - a friend measured 11 mpg on a cold three mile commute to and from work on a car that had a 26 mpg EPA rating.

Comments

[Ian]

I think VeloKraft's NoCom probably qualifies for the Ferrari of MPVs - eyecatching, impractical, fast and frighteningly expensive. Not sure of the iPod of the HPV world, though certainly in Europe, Challenge might be the Apple - they seem to be combining funtionality with great aesthetics (at a price) at the moment.

[Jeff]

Denmark does have an excellent system of bike paths and support (I noticed that when it snowed, the bike paths were cleared first).

They have done something quite stupid, however, and allowed the cost of public transportation to skyrocket, to the point where buying and driving a car to work makes more sense for some people than taking the train, despite gas at $1.50/litre. When we went back to Denmark last August, the price for a one-month bus and train pass (good for the greater Copenhagen area) had risen to almost $200.

That said, alternate transportation is encouraged by the design of the retail system. In the community where we lived, the local grocery store was located across from the train station, had several convenient bus stops nearby, lots of bicycle racks, and parking space for maybe 10 cars. It was much easier to take the train into the city and walk to our destination than to battle traffic and hunt for a parking space.

Incidentally, we never saw anything but conventional bicycles there- no recumbents or 3-wheelers.