For the price of a mile of highway, you too can have a bike-friendly city
By Elly Blue, The GuardianCars. They're noisy and ugly. They smell terrible and cause disease on an epidemic proportion. They move way too fast, take up an extraordinary amount of space, are a leech on the economy, and have a propensity to run people over, especially kids. What's to love?
...
For one thing, there's money. Cars are a major source of household debt – and unlike other investments like houses, they depreciate, costing more the longer you own them and the more you use them. For most US families, car ownership is one of those damned-either-way propositions. According to the federal Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2012, the average US family of four spends about $10,000 a year on transportation – more than they spend on food. This isn't reasonable or affordable. But the alternative can be far worse, depending on where you live, work, send your kids to school, school, shop, get healthcare, go to church, and all the other things we do in our daily lives.
Then there's the cost of roads – building and maintaining them. Our gas taxes cover this, is the myth. Unfortunately, this hasn't been true since 1956, ...
...
As I've written elsewhere, emissions from cars are implicated in nearly all the chronic diseases that are currently hurting our population, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and even autism. That's to say nothing of the other health impacts of a car-oriented society, such as the lack of opportunities to exercise, zoning that encourages big box businesses and fast food consumption, stress, and social isolation and depression (pdf).
...
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/28/price-mile-highway-bike-friendly-city">http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/28/price-mile-highway-bike-friendly-city</a>;
[B' Spokes: I really wanted to copy the whole thing, it's that good.]
What's Related