[herbstein]

> The point is that bicycling is not realistic outside of very, very dense cities

Bullshit. I grew up in a small village -- 300 people or so live there. It's a couple of kilometers from two other villages in the 2000-500 range. There's one school for the area shared between the villages. The daycare I went to was located in one of the other villages. I biked (alongside my parents) for 5 kilometers on non-separated roads to get to daycare at the age of 4. I biked first 2 kilometers to school every single day until 7th grade where I then had to bike 12 kilometers each way. It sounds tough if you don't bike. If you've done it your life whole it's just a mode of transport. Taking 30-40 minutes on the bike was faster than taking the bus too.