The downside of commuting by bike is that cyclists are second class citizens on the roads of the US. Or at least, I am. Even with yellow cat litter tubs and blinking lights, people still can't seem to keep their cars in check.
Just yesterday I almost got creamed
twice in the slolum (the part of my ride where I cross a highway interchange).
I am beginning to think that I need to contribute to bicycle advocacy. A fundamental force that I think I am trying to reckon with is that using a bicycle as transportation is viewed as a recreational activity and not as a real mode of transportation. . As a result, cyclist are a nuisance novelty that don't get respect. You have to follow laws written for vehicles orders of magnitude heavier than you, that have fancy safety equipment like bumpers and air bags. But the traffic lights won't even trigger at an intersection. No provision is made to think about maintaining momentum, and no one seems to want to prune back the bushes that poke out onto the shoulder.
People don't really believe that you can be a real american without a car
But they're wrong. It can be done. And, the more people that do it, the easier it gets.
If more people use mass transit, there will be more mass transit that will go more places. If more people use bikes, there will be more bike lanes. The way communities are built will change. Things tend to affect each other.
To an extent, they already are. Sales of small, fuel efficient cars are through the roof (
source). This saves a lot on gas, allowing us to maintain the transportation status quo for a while longer, but I think this is a doomed experiment. The price of gas is not going to stabilize at $4 or $5 a gallon and rest there for years like $1 gas did. With 7 billion people on the planet, there is far more competition for energy. People simply want to go places. At $10/gallon, it will cost the same to fill the small car as it did to fill the suburban it replaced. What will happen to those small cars then?
