Originally Posted by
acorn54
i was talking to a neighbor and he raised some good points about the need always for automobiles
the elderly and infirm are not in shape to use bikes so they will always need cars to get around. also if you have to travel to work and the distance is more than 30 or so miles a bike is not practical assuming you average 15 mph on a bike.
a bike is a five fold increase in speed over walking assuming you travel at 2.5 mph walking and 12 mph riding a bike, so a bike is just a bit better than walking really.
just some food for thought.
There are a lot of stupid comments in this thread already so I'm just going to reply to the original post and ignore everything else.
First off "the elderly" are not all unfit. Just because you are a senior does not mean you are not fit to ride a bike, if more of the elderly actually took part in day to day fitness they wouldn't have many of the issues they have. Also if certain people just can't get on a bike then public transportation is the better answer and not more cars.
As far as mileage goes why exactly is biking 30 miles impractical? Because at 15 mph that would take two hours? Two hours on my bike is not a big loss to me. And how in the world do you come to the conclusion that at a minimal five fold increase biking is only slightly better than walking, did you actually do the math? At 2.5 mph covering 30 miles would take 12 hours and at 12.5 mph (which is a very slow average speed) it would only take 2.4 hours! That is cutting 10 hours out of the trip, how is that marginal?
There is no case for having a car unless you are just lazy or your area has no public transport. There is honestly no reason why you or anybody else (that is not disabled) CAN'T do a 30 mile commute by bike it always comes down to you the fact that you WON'T do it.
