What will it take to get the US to be at least a 65% pedal nation (bike wise)?

A miracle. Or a tragedy.

There is no way that 65% of the US population is going to bikes. It will never happen. The very young and the older cohorts can’t manage riding. A large number of the 15–70 age group will never change their habits.

Roadways for bicycles are unsuitable, in general, and distances are far too extensive in most American suburbs for bicycling to be even remotely feasible.

You might get 10% in a tight urban environment, but never will you get even 5% outside of cities.

Unless there is no oil, in which case the world will go to hell anyway.

65% is a large number. The problem with people riding bikes in the US isn’t so much about riding the bikes… it’s the distance most folk travel on a daily basis. There are so many rural areas and in a lot of cases, people are driving 100+ miles a day and not only that, they are carrying children, pets and $300 worth of groceries. It’s just not feasible for most of the population.

@elbanditoroso The very young and the older cohorts can’t manage riding.
I am an old bugger, and I can manage a bike; and not just down the street and back either.

Increase federal gas taxes to fund the portion of the Pentagon budget dedicated to securing oil imports.

Problem solved.

I don’t see how it is possible for families to go shopping with two kids and six to eight bags of groceries even one mile away. It’s certainly not feasible to commute to work every day, rain or shine when most people commute 15+ miles.

@YARNLADY is correct, biking will not work for most people.

When I say “problem solved” I mean we could maximize the use of cycling and public transit, not reach 65%.

And I say this as a person who commutes 24 miles/day by bicycle.

I can’t drop the kid off until 7:30, have to be at work by 8. Get off at 5 and need to pick her up by 6. I’m trying to figure out how to make that work by bike when it takes me 20 minute by car. Once I get her, where do I put her? (And thank god I only have one kid!). If I let her ride the bus I need to be home even sooner.

Where the hell do I put the groceries? Or my dog on the way to the vet? I may have nightmares if I think about transporting school projects.

Biking isn’t safe unless you are a very good biker with quick reflexes and the ability to asses a situation in the blink of an eye. Also not safe until better plans are put into place by whoever handles traffic flow.

And, if you live in the country you’re just screwed. More bikers or more urbanization – which do you prefer?

And have I mentioned I once fell off my bike while standing still with both feet flat on the ground? I won’t be riding, swerving at best, on roads shared with cars.

Yeah, I’m solidly in the 35%.

@Hypocrisy_Central – one person who CAN ride a bike is ONE example. Congratulations to you. That doesn’t negate my argument.

Supernatural intervention, including a complete overhaul of the design of our suburbs.

I just figured out the bus route. I would leave home at 6:05am and return at 8:15pm.

That includes being late for work and my daughter walking to and from school at age 7 (in the dark one way or the other depending on the time of year and DST) She would be alone for over an hour in the mornings and 2 hours at night, fixing her own meals, taking her baths willingly and staying up past bedtime just long enough to say goodnight.

I live in a small to average city and this is as good as it gets. Most of the USA couldn’t get the basics done by biking or mass transit work within a 24 hour period.

Someone will come up with an solution for this, though. I really believe this though I can’t begin to imagine what it might be. I do know it will change everything, though.

Flying bicycles with jet packs out to do the trick.

I remember about two years ago on Fluther, a newbie asked this same question, argued with every person who responded, and was banned and the question closed, I guess because he seemed to be a troll.

For me, I have about a 40 mile ride to work. It’s about a 45 minute ride going about 80 for a large part of it. Most of my coworkers have a similar commute. It would be impossible to do daily. Maybe 50 years ago, when the average worker probably had a much shorter commute, it would have been do-able. I don’t see how a large food shopping could be done with a bike. Maybe if one lived near or in a town and could daily take the bike to the market to purchase a few groceries, yes, but to go shopping and have 5 or 6 bags of food, I don’t see how it would be possible.

My grandfather worked about 4 miles from his home, and took the bus, so for him, as long as he was healthy, it would be possible. Even so, with snow, rain, cold weather that we have in the Northeast, it would probably not have been likely he’d be willing to ride a bike to work.

http://www.fluther.com/27898/why-dont-you-ride-a-bicycle-instead-of-driving-a-car/

Here you go. I see the question is still open, but the OP is no longer. I also see it’s more than two years ago, so I was mistaken about that, when I wrote above that it was about two years ago.

I am not going to argue with anyone, people will not make any change that requires too much departure from their comfort zone. As said, it would take a major miracle to get people to make changes many say we should make. I guess that is one reason I pay little to recycling. Unless I am going to make a full time job of it, the money spent driving it to the cans and bottles to the recycle center would not be recouped from the bottle and cans taken there. Plus the time to take de-capping them, rinsing them to keep down on bugs, or finding a place to store them. Not to mention how to haul them if you don’t have a truck or van. What would fit in the trunk, providing you had an empty trunk, would not pay for the trip. However, if I really wanted to do it, I would find a way, like people who really want to go skiing will find time and money to go.

I know there are times you must use a vehicle, which is why I said use a bike as their main source of travel not their only source of travel. Not to argue but to show options to those who wonder how do you transport kids or groceries, if your kid can’t ride his or her own bike, there is this option (they do make double carriers too), or this option. For groceries and other cargo, there is this. I know someone will come up with it is too expensive, but people do find ways to do things they really want; go to consorts, the casino, fishing junkets, latest iPhones, etc.

There are other ways the US could go more peddle power and less petro power but it will take a major overhaul of US citizen thinking which I can see, we are nowhere near.

@Hypocrisy_Central My first answer was flippant, but I’d love to see things change so that we lived closer to work and necessities, and a large number of is could commute by bike. I think you are right, though. It won’t come to pass till changing environmental conditions force our hands.

For me, I’ll say what I said on the q I linked above, which is that my safety and my child’s safety are number one. I live down from a narrow, two lane, winding country road. I need to take that road to get to any highway. Speed limit is 40, cars go around 50 on this road, and motorcycles on weekends go up to 100 (I hear them coming and am always amazed they don’t crash – I can assure you that when I hear them coming it’s like a loud ZZZZZ, that’s how fast they go). I would not go near that road on a bike, and I would certainly never ever put my child on that road with a bike. If I didn’t have my own car, I would have to get a ride from someone. I would never take a bike around here.

Like @jca, my commute is a bit longer. there’s no way I’m biking 25 miles each way, especially not in the winter.

Wait, that’s right; many Americans don’t know what winter is. While Seattle have milder winters than where I used to live, it’s still no picnic when it’s below freezing.

@jaytkay Then electric vehicles will make a comeback. They outnumbers gassers around 1900, accelerate quicker, and have far more range than the average American needs to get through the day.

@Hypocrisy_Central Try hauling that up Dravus St. in the wintertime. $20 says you won’t have enough traction to even move. Then try it on my old road in NH where I lived a mile from pavement, 12 miles from work, and 16 miles the other way from a supermarket; a foot of snow 4 months of the year, and 6 inches of mud for 2 more months.
There are surprisingly few people that those things would be practical for. Most of them live in urban areas in the Southern latitudes where the land is flatter and the weather more moderate. By comparison, most of the population of the US lives where there is snow and/or nasty hills and/or unpaved roads.

Other nations do it. Why are they more apt to do it than the US?

The answer is pretty simple. The US is the third largest country in the world. Many of us have long distances to travel unlike the smaller countries where this is more common.

Bike Paths. I seriously hate the bikers on some of the roads I drive. It’s insanely dangerous. 55 mph roads with blind hills and rises, and douchebags in spandex thinking they’re winning some kind of race as people have to swerve to avoid them.

^This is why I don’t use a bike when I leave my house. We live in a rural farmhouse on a 55 mph two-lane highway. I might endanger the lives of everyone trying to get past me.

More people need to become catholic priests.

oh, you said pedal

You know, if I could find a bicycle that had a comfortable seat, similar to the ones on ride lawn mowers, and wasn’t too difficult to pedal up the hills we have here in Citrus Heights (Sierra foothills), I would actually enjoy biking.

@YARNLADY A nice Harley Softail with a custom leather Woodstock seat, and you get all of that. Besides, you’d look exquisite on a Harley.

I really want to know why the percentage is 65. Why not 50? Half seems a more natural fraction than 13/20.

I really want to know why the percentage is 65. Why not 50? Half seems a more natural fraction than 13/20.
Why, why not? It is a random number; being on the major side of 50% means most are doing it. When it comes to recycling would they rather have just 12% of the people doing it or 75% of the people doing it? Even if it were to increase a small number, I guess some is better then none. They say they want X% of Californians to be using florescent bulbs by year 20? Why don’t they say like 20% convert we can still hit our aim even if the rest of you use filament bulbs. This nation talks a good game about recycling, and conservation but in reality we as a nation do not have the stomach to do it; so we should stop complaining and trying to regulate what people don’t want to do, I would suppose.

I found it, the answer is here

Edit: the problem is speed. Our streets have a minimum speed limit, and this won’t work on most of them.

@YARNLADY I found another possibility for you.

I think you should get a recumbent trike.

@jaytkay I saw those, but I can’t imagine pedaling while lying down.

@YARNLADY Lying down on the job yet outrunning your competition who sit up all day long pedaling their asses off only to be left behind. What’s not to love about that?

@Hypocrisy_Central you asked what it would take, and it would take quite a bit of mind shift, which you know. But also consider the infrastructure shift that would be necessary. Roadways would have to be remarked for bike lanes, just to get us started. Stores would need to be smaller and more distributed so that goods and services would be closer to the population’s residences.

In these European countries that have high bike rates, what makes that possible? First was that fact that gasoline was in short supply, high priced and heavily taxed after the second world war. Second was the fact that steel was in short supply, high priced and heavily taxed such that manufacturing and owning a car was outrageous for the common person. Third was the size of the villages, the density of the population, the reliance on rail because, well, see 1 and 2, the lack of production capacity since many factories needed to be rebuilt, etc. The bike system was most cost effective for these people.

Contrast to the United States in the same time frame and here we had less dense population, cheaper gas and steel, our production capacity was looking for peacetime work, we had money and Mad-Ave knew it and wanted to lock it up in their coffers. Distance alone drove many to prefer the automobile version of travel as it allows for our belief in eliminating the middleman in our daily business.

So New York City might be able to convert to bike travel, if you get the fashions on board. What percentage of the population will that give you? LA was built to showcase automobiles, what percentage of the population there would be re-enfranchised with conversion to self-reliant bike travel? Chicago, another large city, split between the density of population like NYC, and the sprawl like LA.

These three cities illustrate the practical difficulties of converting the population to a pedal nation. Solve the problems of distribution, distance and distrust at the local level and you might make a dent in converting people to a pedal nation.

@DaphneT Roadways would have to be remarked for bike lanes, just to get us started.
In most cases the roads are already there, they just need to be designated or realigned for bikes; IE, if there was a two-lane road, one lane would be realigned for bikes.

First was that fact that gasoline was in short supply, high priced and heavily taxed after the second world war. Second was the fact that steel was in short supply, high priced and heavily taxed such that manufacturing and owning a car was outrageous for the common person.
We in the US just blew it, I guess. If gas was cheap and plentiful, and steel was cheap, take in the fact we had a workforce highly charged in making industrial goods, light rails, subways and other mass transit could have been built. In the same way the railroad barons sought to open up the west by train, we in the US could have used that same zeal to bridge metropolitan areas by rail instead of concrete roadways.

Solve the problems of distribution, distance and distrust at the local level and you might make a dent in converting people to a pedal nation..
The 1st two can be solved if enough moxie is present. The 3rd is more nebulous to tackle and a lot of that is the government’s own doing.

@Hypocrisy_Central The mom of one of my daughter’s friends posted something on facebook the other night. She was complaining about people on bicycles being on the street. She was bitching about them and saying they should use the sidewalks. I couldn’t believe it. She received several likes for that post and many others were complaining along with her. These people don’t realize that bicyclists have the same rights as drivers on our roadways. People are clueless. We’ll never see the 65% you are hoping for.

the [1940s-1950s] US could have used that same zeal to bridge metropolitan areas by rail instead of concrete roadways

There already was a web of inter-urban railroads. After WWII exactly the opposite happened – they were dismantled.

Here’s what the LA area had before the war.

Check out Michigan, Ohio and Indiana

@Hypocrisy_Central as you put it, it needs moxie. That has to come at the local level, or it won’t happen at all. A big push on the local level is the rising gas costs. The loss of employment which gives people time to bike for lack of something better to do will also make an impact, but such would have to continue for maybe a decade and be widespread throughout the community for biking to take over as a preferred method of transport.

@DaphneT A big push on the local level is the rising gas costs.
The deep pocket people would gas up the Hummer if the price soared to $12 bucks a gallon; maybe even $18. If they can afford a private jet, or a mega yacht, they are not going to give up the Hummer, Ferrari, or Maserati. When that time comes that the air is so bad globally you have to wear a mask outdoors on 70% of the planet, maybe they will think about it. Who am I fooling? Should that happened they will say the air is too polluted to breath it in on a bike.

Ah, @Hypocrisy_Central, those deep pocket people are only 1%. Aren’t they?

@DaphneT And Big Oil will woo those people not to go biking and they (the idle rich) will influence everyone else to stay off their bikes as well.