no motor?

Cycling Is Creating More Jobs in Europe Than Automakers Are in the U.S. | TakePart

Dave Horne

From that article ... U.S. citizens, by comparison, aren’t as bike-centric. In 2009, a National Household Travel Survey found that 1 percent of trips taken nationwide were by bicycle. Still, that’s a 25 percent increase in the amount of trips since 2001.

Considering that the price of of gasoline here in Holland is the equivalent of about $8.00 per gallon and the price in the US is $3.00 ( Gasoline prices around the world, 08-Dec-2014 | GlobalPetrolPrices.com ), it's no wonder people in the US use cars and folks here in Holland tend to use the bike. If the price of gasoline were so cheap here, many more folks would use their cars.

The infrastructure regarding bikes here is mature; if there are new homes being built, the planners take bike paths into consideration.

I know there are many factors involved, but you guys in the US pay next to nothing for energy when compared to Europe.

achoo

This press release brought to you by the European Cyclist Federation.

Igualmente

Don't take what I'm about to say wrong: I think bicycle use is important in many ways and want to see more offsetting of car use.

That said, I think it is unfair to compare jobs in the entire EU cycling industry to jobs at the big three US car companies. I'm sure that once all auto industry suppliers and other economic activities associated with autos are factored in, the US auto industry creates a few more jobs than the EU cycling industry. The numbers I have seen put US auto industry jobs well into the millions.

skidder

That article is severly lacking in details. For instance, did they include all the employees at car dealerships (salespeople and repair shop people)? What about the foreign car manufacturers (Japanese, Korean, and European); they design a lot of the USA-specific models and manufacture cars here in the USA, so shouldn't those count, too (Japanese also mftr them in Europe). The article really needs to clarify the categorize the jobs of people in both the bicycle industry and auto industry before making their claim.

I-Like-To-Bike

The shortcomings of this "study" and shaky methodology were previously discussed on the LCF list. Specifically the lack of detail on how the fantastic number of 650,000 jobs created by bicycling activity in the EU was established by this so-called study.

https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...bs-europe.html

fietsbob

EU.. A 4 week holiday required by law , paid .. vs maybe 2 weeks (school teacher exemption). the services for tourists expand to meet demands.

business wants workers on the job. not on holiday limits much of that in US

I-Like-To-Bike

Whatever. Does that explain the 650,000 jobs allegedly created by bicycling activity in the EU?

fietsbob

does if they ride somewhere and eat something from a shop when they get there.. B&B stay, etc.

I-Like-To-Bike

Why not claim 6,500,000 or even 65,000,000 jobs created by bicycling activity since the numbers are being pulled from thin air?

Booger1

The big 3 have created more jobs in China than bicycling has in the rest of the world......MILLIONS of jobs that used to be here.

Caliper

I agree that our energy costs are lower here (although I believe EU has higher gasoline taxes in general than the US) but energy cost is not the biggest factor in the prevalence of car usage here. The biggest is size and population density. Per Wikipedia, the US covers 3.8 million sq mi and has a population density of 89 people per sq mi. By comparison, the entire EU only covers 1.7 million sq mi and has 301 people per sq mi... So, your trips can be much shorter than ours. Sure, we have crowded cities like NY and LA where cycling is practical, but for the rest of America a 15 or 30 minute drive by car (so, 7-30 miles) is a typical trip for things like groceries, shopping, etc. On a bike, you're talking about 2x-4x more time to get places and when we get there we often buy more quantity so would probably need a bike trailer to haul everything home. Even at $8/gal gas, I think you'd see a shift in car buying habits more than bike usage like in the EU.

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As far as the original topic... Glad to see that many aren't falling for the wild figures there. The auto industry is big on outsourcing... At a minimum, a jobs count would have to include tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers (ie: people who supply parts to automakers and then people who supply parts to those people). Out of fairness, auto dealers, parts stores, repair shops, road construction, etc should also be included...

Of course, is number of jobs created the best indicator of what should be done? The auto industry has been moving heavily to automation since the 80's thus reducing the number of jobs. I'm sure we could employ more people in the auto industry if everything was hand-made, but is that the way forward?