|
Your comment sent me on a bit of a rabbit hole, it turns out you can look up commute distance histograms in the census data here https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/ I looked at a few dozen cbsa metro areas, big cities, small cities, east, west, middle and the only 3 i could find with more people traveling 10-24 miles than <10 miles were Houston (34/36), Dallas (34/37), and Atlanta (34/38) so even in the worst case ~⅓ of commuters are doing less than 10 miles. I couldn't figure out how to query this data via an api, but I did find a paper that looked at the 96 largest metros, which showed that Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta had the highest median between 12.2 and 12.8 miles. So I think that a 20 mile average is likely not true anywhere, though double digit over 50 miles does occur in all three of the above cities. Most cities have plenty of people commuting across the spectrum, though some are significantly denser than others (up to ~45% for <10). Now looking at the per mode data, 10 miles is still on the long side for a bike commute. There is a steep drop off in people cycling/motorcycling to work (for some reason combined in the dataset) at the 30 minute mark. 20mph is fast even with a e-bike assist, probably somewhere around <2-6 miles would be the ideal probably. I do agree with you that most people aren't going to start using bike lanes if that means a worse commute. I used to, but I cycle for sport and would do those hours anyways (now my bike commute is faster than train or car). Most Dutch people don't bike commute for fitness or sport or fun, they do it because it's the most efficient way for them to make their daily trips. Part of this is because of the density of that country and part of that is the infrastructure. |
> There is a steep drop off in people cycling/motorcycling to work (for some reason combined in the dataset) at the 30 minute mark
I live in Dallas which is one of your samples. I think on the above point what you would find is above a certain threshold and commuters are using a highway/high speed road and probably see it as a necessary component to keep drive time down. I just mapped my commute and it's actually 12.2 miles of which 9.3 are on a highway. It takes me a consistent 20 minutes to get to/from work; or about 35 if I avoid the highway for some reason. Average speed is probably a small factor and stop lights/merging traffic being the dominant slow downs.
On a bike, intersections still slow you down and you don't see people bike across a highway's path very often at all here because all of those intersections tend to be high speed, several lanes, and quite dangerous too. Since biking isn't a normal activity for most people here, I'd venture to guess most people would impose an additional danger to themselves until they got familiar with things.
The shear number of roads and infrastructure to be upgraded to make it feasible is daunting.