Originally Posted by
myrridin
The short answer is you are wrong. Neither vehicle has zero impact; however, both passenger cars and bicycles have such a small impact on a per capita basis that they are for all intents and purposes zero impact. What isn't negligible is environmental wear (freeze/thaw, rain, etc) and large commercial vehicles.
Small impact with lots of numbers = big impact. There are 254 million registered passenger vehicles (car and light trucks) in the United States...that's a whole lot of capita!
Originally Posted by
myrridin
Yes, but without the ability to support commercial deliveries such bikeways will never be built to the same degree as a more traditional road system, since there isn't enough economic justification. Cars bear the cost for construction because the facilities were designed for them. That is why the gas tax used to be called a "user fee"
Since cars and trucks bear the cost of construction because of their greater need, you can't lay those costs at the feet of bicyclists. Nor can you add them to the cost of operating a bicycle unless you prorate it for the level of damage that bicycles (as a class) do to the roads. We don't pay the user
tax because there are too few of us bicyclists to make much of an impact (there's that capita again) and our impact is too small to measure even if we did have the numbers.
Originally Posted by
myrridin
The source of the chemical has no bearing on whether the chemical is considered a pollutant and how the regulations currently work. If CO2 from a car exhaust is a pollutant, then so is exhaled air. That is the state of our current regs for environmental protection. You simply seem to want to apply your value system to how a term should be applied. The world doesn't work that way.
The source of a chemical has every bearing on whether the chemical is considered a pollutant or not. Sulfur dioxide from a smoke stack is a pollutant while sulfur dioxide from a volcano isn't. CO2 from combustion of fossil fuels is a pollutant while CO2 from combustion of forests due to natural fires...i.e. not man caused...is not. CO2 from respiration isn't a pollutant either since it's a natural biological process. If it were a pollutant, then oxygen produced by plants could be considered a pollutant. You can mitigate against some of these...the manmade causes...and not others...the natural caused ones. CO2 from respiration is a short rotation source of carbon.
Originally Posted by
myrridin
I simply don't agree. The bottom line is that your still spouting an opinion, that's okay so am I. The difference is that you don't seem to understand that while I do.
Okay. Here are facts. I own a 1999 Chevy Tahoe. If I'm not riding I'm driving it. It gets roughly 12 mpg city. I purchased it in 2001. Since then I've put on 25000 commuting miles. I've done repairs to it and put a set of new tires on it due to commuting. I've used 2100 gallons of gas in those commuting miles. I've paid approximately $10000 in insurance and $1600 in taxes and registration fees. Total cost: $48000. Per mile cost: $1.9/mile
In the same time frame, I have commuted to work by bicycle approximately 50% of the time. I currently have 7 bikes but I only use 3 for commuting, so I'll only consider their costs. I've done almost 20,000 miles of bicycle commuting (my route by bike is a few miles shorter). Purchase price of the three bikes and various upgrades is around $7000. I own 15 sets of bike shorts and jerseys + misc winter gear + bags and other stuff that cost around $2000. I've expended the caloric equivalent...my fuel...of 2368 jelly donuts during that time. At $0.60 each, that's $1420 of 'fuel'. Total cost: $10000. Per mile cost: $0.50
I could take a credit of $4700 for the fuel I
didn't purchase because I wasn't driving my vehicle. I could take a credit of $49,000 for the mileage I didn't put on my vehicle. I could even take a credit for a new vehicle since I've saved 25,000 miles by not driving. That 25,000 miles would put me over 175,000 miles on the truck and I'd probably want to get rid of it with that mileage. If I take a credit for the gas and mileage savings (at $1.9/mile) I end up with a per mile cost for the bicycles of -$2.0/mile. Crediting in the purchase price (w/o financing to make it easier) of a new vehicle, I'd end up with a cost per mile for bicycles of -$3.2/mile
In other words, it pays me to ride my bike! Honey. I need 10 new bikes...you owe me
