What bikes can do for you

[jtr1962]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

I don't currently bike for errands because of inadequate safe, off-street bike parking (this is NYC after all-the capital of bike theft), but it is definitely viable in an urban environment. With a decent bike trailer I could easily carry 150+ pounds. I've found over years of riding that bicycle travel times in the city are often comparable or better than car travel times, even in the outer boroughs where traffic flows more smoothly. I can usually average 15+ mph overall on most trips. You're often hard-pressed to do much better than this by car unless you can do a significant portion of the trip on an expressway (and the expressway isn't jammed).

I think human-powered transportation is on the cusp of a revolution. The next step in the evolution of bicycles are faired HPVs (human powered vehicles). Some of these have been shown to be capable of bursts past 80 mph, and 1 hour average speeds in excess of 50 mph. With suitable roads (i.e. bicycle highways with no lights or stop signs), even the longer trips some say aren't practical by bicycle could one day be viable for HPVs. The vast majority of car trips are under 40 miles. That's well into HPV territory, basically the distance a rider in fairly good shape could cover in one hour with a decent HPV. Sure, human-powered transportation can't replace every type of motorized transport, but it can replace quite a bit. For those not in good shape, or who can't arrive at their destination sweaty, electric assist is available.

For me the beauty of biking is once you purchase the bike, it's essentially free. No insurance, no gas. Yes, you wear out tires and the drivetrain, but I figured out that those costs are well under 5 cents a mile. Even walking costs more once you count wear and tear on your footware.

 

[trevordurden]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

7) No mature, sophisticated, woman in the world is going to date a guy who only rides a bike. No immature, teenaged, girl is going to date a guy who only rides a bike.

If a woman is that shallow, she's not worth dating. I rent a car when I need one, but all of my dates with girls involve a bike ride through the city exploring the sites and all of them have asked me to do it again with them even in rain or winter. We all have an idea of what we want in a partner, but sometimes someone comes along and makes use realize that everything we wanted was wrong, and they're exactly what we need.

I drive a cargo truck at the airport for work, but I take the transit system get there because it saves me $8 a day in gas alone. Factor in insurance, parking fees and maintenance fees and I'm saving anywhere between $400 and $500 a month on top of the initial cost of the car.

Transportation is a necessity, but there are alternatives to owning a car.

 

[TranquillityBase]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Thanks Bill. I found the topic title a bit too confusing.

To deal with that issue . . . No. A bike running on pedal-power cannot work well, just like my car. Here's a few reasons why:

1) I've used my car for picking up and transporting a week's worth of groceries to my home. Can't do that with a bike.

2) My last full-time job could only be reached from my home by going on the expressway. No way am I going on an expressway on a bike. I'm not suicidal.

3) When I pick up my friends to have fun on the weekend, I need extra seats. Even if I'm only picking up one friend, I can't ask another grown man to ride on my handlebars.

4) The places I go to for fun are about 15 miles away from where I live. (That's one way.) I'd rather do more than just spend my life working and being bored to death.

5) I'm not pedaling to work in the rain. Even if it's just a short distance away.

6) During Summer, without air-conditioning, I'm not going to risk collapsing from heat-stroke and ending up with a huge hospital bill after being admitted into the ER. Or, even worse, leaving my elderly mother without someone to look after her because I dropped dead of heat-stroke. (Same situation in Winter with the issue of frost bite or freezing to death with no heat.)

7) No mature, sophisticated, woman in the world is going to date a guy who only rides a bike. No immature, teenaged, girl is going to date a guy who only rides a bike.

There you have it. Seven good reasons why gasoline is a necessary expense. You pay rent to have a place to live. You pay for food so as not to starve. And you pay for gasoline because in many parts of the world, a car has become a necessity.

Don't be a Debbie Downer!

Shave your legs, and get out and ride your BICYCLE!!!

 

[Sub_Umbra]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

The biggest thing holding most folks back on saving energy is their minds.

I can carry 50 lbs of cargo on my bike in a pretty civilized fashon. I can tow 150 lbs behind it. This is not a hypothetical statement. I do this (though not both at the same time). I don't have superhuman strength or reflexes, though I'm very studied when it comes to moving things. I'm 61 years old and have highly advanced heart disease. If I can figure out how to get the load to my bike I can load it and move it with less effort than I may walk with no load. That's how well bikes really work.

Of course, in order to make this work we had to think about it. I took responsibility for my own life and thought about it. Moving to a city with no snow wasn't hard at all. Finding a place I wanted to be that has no hills was more of a challenge, but still very doable. I've lived in the same city for 31 years. The closest thing we have to a hill is a bridge.

For simple day to day running around, check out The Velomobile:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2u763yx

I don't have a Velomobile. I post the link only to show that you may peddle your own way, go much faster with less peddling, stay out of the rain, and even look sexy while you do it. OK, the last part was a stretch.

Velomobiles make today's conflicted, pathetic designs for unworkable electric luxury cars look amazingly wasteful, wrongheaded and inappropriate.

That takes us back to the mind part. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

If a woman is that shallow, she's not worth dating. I rent a car when I need one, but all of my dates with girls involve a bike ride through the city exploring the sites and all of them have asked me to do it again with them even in rain or winter. We all have an idea of what we want in a partner, but sometimes someone comes along and makes use realize that everything we wanted was wrong, and they're exactly what we need.

I drive a cargo truck at the airport for work, but I take the transit system get there because it saves me $8 a day in gas alone. Factor in insurance, parking fees and maintenance fees and I'm saving anywhere between $400 and $500 a month on top of the initial cost of the car.

Transportation is a necessity, but there are alternatives to owning a car.

Honestly, then the vast majority of women and girls are ridiculously shallow. Another example would be going out on a blind date, and then referring to her as a Prude or "fridget" because she slaps your hand away when you reach for her chest five minutes after meeting her. A tandem bike ride sure is fun. It's a good activity on a date. But you tell the average woman or girl that you don't own a car, you can't really be surprised if she gets turned off. That's not being shallow. The average woman expects the average guy to have his own car. That's just a realistic expectation. If I invite a young woman to join me at a formal restaurant, I have a realistic expectation that she will get dressed up. If she shows up in sandals, pajama bottoms, and an old T-shirt . . . Date is over. Some might consider that shallow. I consider it a case of a realistic expectation not being met.

If I go to the public library, and a homeless man sits down next to me stinking up the place with that distinctive smell that drunken, filthy, homeless men give off . . . I'm getting up and leaving. I'm not going to continue sit next to him because someone at the other end of the library might think I'm shallow for wanting to get away from the stench.

I pointed out several reasons in my previous post why a bike is not a realistic alternative to owning a car. As far as public transportation goes, New York City is one place where that would be a realistic alternative. But even then, there are going to be times when you'll need to use a taxi for certain errands. Yes, there are going to be morons who'll try to climb aboard a bus with a week's worth of groceries. But their stupidity, rude, and thoughtless actions doesn't change the fact that access to a car or taxi is the best way to go about that particular errand. Also, many places have poor transportation networks in place. NYC has a great system. Travel just outside the city into neighboring Long Island, and all you can rely on for public transportation is **** poor bus service that frequently runs so unpredictably that only the poorest residents of L.I. use it. And that's because they have to.

You want to live in L.I. or many other parts of the world, then you need a car. It becomes a necessity with no other realistic alternatives available. If your job, home, loved ones, favorite places to hang out, and your friends are all contained in the same neighborhood; then biking becomes a realistic option. But in that case, walking becomes a realistic option too. Why buy a bike when a cheap pair of sneakers is even more cost effective.

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Should have thought of this sooner . . .

#8

Handicapped and elderly individuals.

Just not realistic for them to bike. Arthritis, limited mobility in the legs, damaged limbs for a variety of reasons. For them, a car is the only way they can enjoy the freedom of going to places they need or want to travel to, when they decide to go out.

 

[jtr1962]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

For simple day to day running around, check out The Velomobile:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2u763yx

I don't have a Velomobile. I post the link only to show that you may peddle your own way, go much faster with less peddling, stay out of the rain, and even look sexy while you do it. OK, the last part was a stretch.

Velomobiles make today's conflicted, pathetic designs for unworkable electric luxury cars look amazingly wasteful, wrongheaded and inappropriate.

And it gets even better than that. Today's velomobiles, even the Quest, aren't as close to aerodynamically optimized as they could be. I suspect down the road we'll be able to design velomobiles which an average cyclist can pedal at 35 mph, and a strong one at 50+ mph. That's sustained speed, not peak speed. If we ever get a handle on how to reliably develop laminar flow, which increases with velocity instead of velocity squared like turbulent flow, then we're talking sustained speeds well above the speeds most people drive on highways. Like I said in my last post, I think we're on the cusp of a revolution in human powered transport.

 

[Abbot]

Re: What bike flashlights can do for you?

I just cannot commute 80 miles round-trip to work daily. Just not enough time or energy in one day.:shakehead

You can consider go by bike when you take short trips

 

[nbp]

Interestingly, the automobile has only been around for about 100 years. I wonder how people got anything done for the first 5900 yrs of human existence without them. :thinking:

Probably there were were no elderly or handicapped people, no storms or inclement weather conditions, heavy loads to carry, or lengthy trips until the early 1900s.

My point, while a bit facetious, is that non-motorized transport is a viable solution in many (though maybe not all) situations, and that as an obese, heart-disease-afflicted, diabetic nation we'd all do well to consider a few bike rides a week.

Monocrom: I know you love your Mazda6, but ease up on these folks. It's not a bad thing that some people have cut out cars from their lives. In the long run, they are almost assuredly better off.

 

[jtr1962]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

It's not a bad thing that some people have cut out cars from their lives. In the long run, they are almost assuredly better off.

I've had neither a car nor a driver's license in my entire life. I can assure you I was always able to do whatever I wanted with little trouble. Granted, I live in NYC, but there are quite a few people even in my neighborhood who insist they would be lost without their cars. It may not always be as easy or convenient to do things without a car, but if the willpower is there, you will find a way.

For those who are trying the carfree lifestyle, this is an excellent site covering the ongoing movement to make our streets more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

 

[Sub_Umbra]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

I'm very glad that I don't have a car. Really. We may have reached Peak Oil in 2004 -- no one knows -- it's still too soon. With all the hype about new petroleum extraction technologies we have still not surpassed production numbers from 2004. World wide demand continues to rise each year and the price can top a hundred dollars a barrel, yet production remains essentially flat.

If someone wants to add an hour or two to each workday to live in the x-burbs that's their business. But we are at summertime gas prices in the SPRING, this year. This summer will be interesting for gas prices. If this goes on real estate prices will tend to fall even faster in the bedroom communities where commuters sleep.

I firmly believe we are far closer to the beginning of our energy/economy problems than we are to the end of them.

I also think that those who curtail their energy use voluntarily will fare far better psychologically (and perhaps physically as well) than those who fail to see the changes going on in the world around them and act accordingly to make more realistic plans before being overwhelmed by inflation and scarcity.

YMMV

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Interestingly, the automobile has only been around for about 100 years. I wonder how people got anything done for the first 5900 yrs of human existence without them. :thinking: . . .

. . . Monocrom: I know you love your Mazda6, but ease up on these folks. It's not a bad thing that some people have cut out cars from their lives. In the long run, they are almost assuredly better off.

People compensated. Until the Ford Model T came along, the average person never traveled more than 30 miles from where they were born. Your town or village had a local market that was either within walking distance of your home, or close enough to reach by horse & buggy. If you lived in the city, you made sure your job was within walking distance of your apartment. Your co-workers were generally your neighbors too. And if a few weren't, then that just meant that they lived within walking distance of the factory or office but in the opposite direction from your commute to work.

Sticking to small towns, if you were elderly or became handicapped; you relied on family or close friends to help you. If you had neither, hopefully you could rely on your neighbors to help you out. Back when the town market wasn't too far away, and the elderly were treated with respect, the lack of a car wasn't a big issue as it is today. If you were on the farm when a bad storm came up, no one expected you to tend the fields. You waited out the storm, either inside the house or in the root cellar. Once again, if you lived in the city back then it meant you were walking distance from your job. You grabbed an umbrella, put on some extra clothes, braved the weather; and soon enough you were at your job. The average person nowadays doesn't limit their job search to places located on streets and avenues within walking distance from their home. Back then they did.

There were other ways to compensate, which no longer exist today. No malls back then. They didn't have a bunch of stores or shops located in one place and waited for customers to show up. If you wanted to sell your product throughout the nation, you hired a small army of traveling salesmen. Each went to different parts of the nation. Each one went from town to town in his district, and sold as much as he could before moving on to the next town. Cars pretty much put an end to that. Door-to-door doctors is another example. Nowadays unless you are rich as Hell, you don't expect doctors to come to you. If the town you lived in had a doctor, well; that's who you called when you got sick. He came over, and treated you. No cars, no ambulances back then. Hopefully there was a doctor living close to you. If the doctor was too far away to reach you by horse & buggy in a timely manner . . . You died. That's it. Just an unfortunate thing that the nearest doctor couldn't reach you in time. Motorized transportation changed all that.

Non-motorized transportation isn't a viable solution for many. Once again, it's perfectly fine for those who rarely travel outside of their neighborhood. In my original post in this topic, I listed several pragmatic reasons why a bike is not a good replacement for a car. If it honestly was, would so many working-class folks put up with high gas prices, monthly payments, insurance payments, registration fees, time and money spent on maintenance? Absolutely not! If you plan on keeping a car for an average of 8 years, the total cost (with everything above factored in) will be about double the sticker price at the end of those 8 years. That's what a person can realistically expect. And, that's not factoring in traffic tickets or huge repair costs if someone hits your car and damages it.

Considering ALL of that, if a bike was indeed a pragmatic substitute for a car; I guarantee you that the highways would be clogged with bicycles during the morning commute. Every car brand would go out of business, except the ones making Uber high-end luxury cars. There would be special lanes just for the very rich who want to drive around in their Aston Martins, their Bently, or their Lambo. They would also be the only ones able to afford car insurance because rates would sky-rocket. Insurance companies would no longer be able to make a profit based on a volume of customers. (Most folks would be pedaling around on bikes.) Emergency service vehicles would be the only other ones allowed to use those special lanes.

However, none of that has happened. Why do many folks put up with the sometimes ridiculously huge expenses involved in owning a car? . . . It has become a genuine necessity for many.

 

[jtr1962]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Monocrom,

Most of us here aren't denying the need for motorized transport, but rather personal motorized transport the size of a car. The vast majority of car trips are under 40 miles with the driver only (i.e. no heavy cargo). The fact that we're not doing these trips in velomobiles, either with or without small motors, or on other modes like light rail, subway, commuter rail, is largely a decision which was made for us back in the 1950s. The US actually had a great network of local and interurban rail which connected many small and large towns. It didn't go to every corner of the country, but it went to the majority of places anyone might wish to go to. The wholesale purchase and dismantling of this network by automobile and oil interests is what left us with the automobile as the only option in many parts of the country. The automobile also encouraged sprawl, which in turn has made going back to public transit much harder than it would have been if people remained in either large cities or small towns. Instead of having work, school, shopping, and residential fairly close, these are often now spread apart, with nothing but empty space in between, thanks to zoning rules which had to have been made solely to foster car dependency, because they don't make sense on any other level. In the long run, such sprawling places are dying because they're not economically viable due to high per capita infrastructure costs. We'll eventually go back to tighter communities because this is an arrangement which is healthier for people than living spread apart with no support system.

This doesn't mean we can't change things now. The same roads which are used by autos can also be used for smaller motorized transport like electric motorcycles, motorized or pedal bicycles, velomobiles, any one of a number of other contrivances which offer essentially the same mobility as an automobile, but at a fraction of the cost. The highways aren't clogged with bicycles now because bicycles aren't allowed on them. Who knows, down the road as we see what a wonderful machine the velomobile is, you might have part of the highways reserved for velomobiles, complete with separate entrance/exit ramps so they don't mix with heavier traffic. And you'll certainly see more public transit, plus the gradual decline of sprawl. Even sooner than that, I suspect many more people will choose to rent automobiles only when they need them, as opposed to owning them outright. Automobiles are fading from prominence not only because they're too expensive, but also because fewer and fewer people going forward will be able to afford them. Even those who can are sometimes actively shunning them. The same way it took decades for the automobile to dominate, it will take decades for it to fade away. However, that movement is already starting. Ten years ago anyone who started a thread like this might have been seen as a laughingstock. Nowadays, such a thread will easily generate a lot of "me, too" responses.

 

[jch79]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Of relevance, and interestingly enough, posted in Business Insider:

If One-Third Of The US Biked A Mile Every Day, We Could Save $17 Billion

"The most important socio-economic impact of cycling lies in the area of health care. When we cycle we save ourselves and society as a whole significant health care costs, including saved treatment expenses and increased tax revenues as result of fewer illnesses."

:thumbsup: john

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Of relevance, and interestingly enough, posted in Business Insider:

If One-Third Of The US Biked A Mile Every Day, We Could Save $17 Billion

"The most important socio-economic impact of cycling lies in the area of health care. When we cycle we save ourselves and society as a whole significant health care costs, including saved treatment expenses and increased tax revenues as result of fewer illnesses."

:thumbsup: john

And yet, nothing contained in that article that addresses the pragmatic reasons as to why bicycles themselves will never be a substitute for a car, for the vast majority of Americans.

If it's an issue of exercise to improve one's heath, that's a different topic of discussion.

 

[Sub_Umbra]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

And yet, nothing contained in that article that addresses the pragmatic reasons as to why bicycles themselves will never be a substitute for a car, for the vast majority of Americans.

If it's an issue of exercise to improve one's heath, that's a different topic of discussion.

Bicycles ARE NOT substitutes for cars -- bikes are as different from cars as they could be. While you are correct that "...bicycles themselves will never be a substitute for a car, for the vast majority of Americans," that's actually a pretty alarming statement when you think about it. I think you've inadvertently lurched into the truth...

If bikes will never be substitutes for cars for the vast majority of Americans, what will happen to them when they may no longer afford them? How many will reality eventually drag kicking and screaming from their beloved cars -- and even their homes in the x-burbs? Arguably, it would appear to this observer that it's been going on at least to some extent for years already.

It's not like mankind has formed his opinions about cars over millions of years. What we would identify as the first production oil well only came online in 1859. Since then our population has increased ninefold.

So if bikes will never be a substitute for cars for the vast majority of Americans, what will they do? Sadly, most are so tightly bound to the last 150 years that they cannot see outside of it. They are in denial. Tonight they will set their alarms and go to bed convinced that everything that went on today will just carry on into tomorrow. Though the fall of Rome lasted well over 500 years, even 200 years into it few, if any involved saw the great changes that were coming.

There are many Cornicopians in our society today who are sure some new technology will save their industrial way of life, but history has other important reminders for us even though we may not see them through our denial.

 

[orbital]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

+

The point here is to bike relatively short distances>>> healthier people, less gas burned.

Get kids into bicycling more & even racing,, like in Europe (kids could cycle to their races..)
How many millions of miles are driven by soccer moms in their big suv's?:shakehead

Also, if roads had much more dedicated cycling lanes, people would cycle more///although there is little economic incentive.

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

Bicycles ARE NOT substitutes for cars -- bikes are as different from cars as they could be. While you are correct that "...bicycles themselves will never be a substitute for a car, for the vast majority of Americans," that's actually a pretty alarming statement when you think about it. I think you've inadvertently lurched into the truth...

Not inadvertently. I've been saying that from the start. Unfortunately, there are those who believe that a bicycle is a good substitute for a car. And, they try to promote that idea. It just doesn't stand up. (At least in the vast majority of lives.)

There are folks right now who can't afford their cars. No one is dragging them out kicking and screaming from them. I've known folks who were horribly in debt. Had to constantly juggle their bills. Both current ones, and those that were past due. But, their cars were too important and useful to them. So, the car note got paid every month. I had a very good friend who right until the week he filed for bankruptcy, he kept sending in his car payment. Even for those who get their cars repossessed, they can often get them back by calling the finance company and working out a new payment plan. Banks and finance companies don't want to sell the vehicles at auction. They'll get a fraction of what they're worth. Sure, the debtor is still responsible for the balance. Good luck getting him to pay every month for a vehicle now owned by someone else. The debtor wants his car back. Finance company wants him to have it back. But forget financing. You can get a decent used car for very little money. I know one young guy who bought a Ford Ranger truck for only $1,000. Far from perfect. But it reliably got him from work and back, and allowed him to run other errands that a bicycle simply cannot do.

Forget millions of year, or even a little over 100. I had younger classmates at the medical school I attended skip lunch several times due to having paid off their cellphone bill recently, and not having enough money for food; a basic necessity of Life. I've had individuals tell me that their entire Life is on their phone, and if they lost it; they'd be completely lost. Want to make a modern-day horror movie? Have it feature some young hipster who losses their cellphone, then spends the next 90 minutes desperately trying to find it. You think Jason in a hockey mask holding a machete is scary? He's nothing compared to a snotty, red-shirted, Verizon guy telling the hipster that his beloved phone is water-logged and likely won't work properly ever again. Oh, the horror . . .

Cars have nothing on cellphones as far as addiction goes. And in a much shorter time-span since they came to exist.

Americans will do what they've always done since Henry Ford made cars affordable . . . They'll keep using their cars for heading to work and back, for running errands, for transporting themselves and their friends to clubs or lounges. No denial. They'll keep driving. Even as insurance rates go up, as gas prices go up . . . Not as though anyone has come up with a real alternative for replacing the car. Not even electric cars are an alternative. Americans are used to driving, filling up, and then driving some more. They're not used to plugging in their cars. They're not used to having to do addition and subtraction and planning before heading out. With an electric, better take the time to do that because you don't have the option of just fueling up and continuing. Make sure that charge is good enough to get you home before it runs out. Hell, I stopped using rechargeable flashlights at my last job because they couldn't hold a charge long enough. Patrolling a pitch black tank-farm after the Sun goes down becomes dangerous when your light dies on you. I started using primaries. Not very enviornmentally friendly, but the only way I could get that task accomplished without putting myself in harm's way.

You use the best option to get the job done. And, for many, that option is a car.

No one knows what the future holds. As long as there are individuals putting forth real effort to change things, to find a real substitute for cars (instead of pretending that one based on outdated technology already exists, and that it can be applied to the lives of most people) then the future looks hopeful.

 

[Monocrom]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

+

The point here is to bike relatively short distances>>> healthier people, less gas burned.

Get kids into bicycling more & even racing,, like in Europe (kids could cycle to their races..)
How many millions of miles are driven by soccer moms in their big suv's?:shakehead

You expect a mom, any mom, to let her most precious of things bike ride to soccer and other sporting events??

A handful of children going through an intersection, each on a bicycle, as a car's brakes lock up and is headed towards them . . .

For a mom, losing just one of her off-spring isn't acceptable. Ironically, you just brought up another point why cars are better than bikes. A safe way for parents to transport their children.

 

[jtr1962]

Re: What bike's can do for you?

For a mom, losing just one of her off-spring isn't acceptable. Ironically, you just brought up another point why cars are better than bikes. A safe way for parents to transport their children.

Yep, cars are really a safe way to transport children.

Each year in the United States, an estimated 16,375 children between the ages of 12 and 19 die. Nearly 50 percent die in accidents, with car crashes accounting for more than one-third of all deaths.

The only reason it's not safe for people of all ages to bike is because we have too many cars on the road, and also allow cars to go at unsafe speeds (i.e. > 20 mph) on roads where bicycles and pedestrians are.

I've read things which suggest in a decade or so the US will have trouble securing enough oil for the military and basic necessities like fertilizers and plastics. Where will that leave the average person who now drives? I'd say stranded. You mention not even electric cars are an alternative. Well, they're the best alternative I'm seeing on the horizon if cars as we know them are to continue to exist but even EVs won't save the day. You're neglecting the single biggest thing which has enabled Americans to drive-namely massive road subsidies. We're broke and getting broker. The only money we'll have for roads might be roads which go through areas with a fairly large tax base (i.e. densely populated areas). Ironically, those are the places it's easiest to find viable substitutes for the car. In the future I'm seeing now, the only motor vehicles on the roads will be emergency and delivery vehicles, perhaps also buses (although maybe not because public transit uses money we just won't have), with a handful of cars owned by the few who can still afford them. I'll bet good money nearly 100% of these vehicles will be electric for simple lack of any other viable way to power them. The need for cars will fade as we lose the ability to pay for roads to sparsely populated places. Truth is these places were never self-sustaining to start with. These bedroom communities largely fed off the commerce of the big cities where many of their inhabitants worked. We can no longer afford this largess, nor can we afford to have large areas of cities rendered nearly unliveable because of the hordes taking cars to work from these bedroom communities. I feel we're in for a difficult time in the next 10-20 years but if we get through it, we'll all be much better off. The average person will spend far less on transportation than today simply because they will need to get around less. With far fewer motor vehicles on the roads, it will be much safer to walk or bike than it is now. And with air pollution more or less eliminated, far less will be spent on health care at the same time longevity will greatly increase.

You yourself admitted cars are taking a large and increasing chunk of what people make. Every forecast shows them only getting more expensive as salaries continue to stagnate. What happens when the average person just can't afford a car at all, regardless of how many other things they cut? What happens when you can't readily get fuel for cars, no matter how much you make? What happens when we run out of money to keep public transit going? These are all likely scenarios within the next decade or two. The only answer is self-powered transportation. This in turn basically means most people will rarely venture further than they can pedal in an hour or so. In the end, it's not going to be the desire to be environmentally friendly which gets a majority of the population into velomobiles or bicycles. It's going to be because there just aren't any alternatives.