| You might be surprised. The cost of a bike lane averages $130,000 per mile. The cost of an urban road averages $4,000,000 per mile, per lane. Not to mention better bike infrastructure reduces car traffic: more bikes means fewer cars, the bike infrastructure is not simply additive. Plus secondary economic benefits: civil density, reduced parking costs, reduced healthcare costs, reduced environmental costs, reduced oil & gas imports, ... Did you know a parked car takes up 10 times as much space as a parked bicycle? Did you know there are approximately 10 parking spaces per car in America? Take away the driving subsidies and everyone would be riding bikes demanding better infrastructure. |
I don't think this follows. I don't know anyone who says "Bicycling everywhere is attractive to me and totally fits in with my lifestyle, but there just aren't any bike lanes." I'm sure such people exist, but I don't believe there are a lot of them. For most people, it seems like the problem is that bicycles are just too slow to get where they want to go in the time they want to take to get there. This is largely a result of community planning, not bike infrastructure. Do you have data to the contrary?
> The cost of a bike lane averages $130,000 per mile.
> The cost of an urban road averages $4,000,000 per mile, per lane.
But we aren't just talking about bike lanes, which are insufficient to guarantee that cars never get within three feet of a bike — we're talking about whole separate bike roads separate from the main road. Additionally, urban roads benefit so many more people in most places in the US that they're a bargain even at 30 times the price. I strongly suspect that less than 3% of commuters at any given time are riding bikes.