Originally Posted by WalksOn2Wheels

Just saw this mentioned in the other thread, but thought it warranted it's own space.

How high of a price do you think gas needs to rise before people consider riding a bicycle? The other person mentioned 5 dollars. I'm not sure that would do it, really. It's hovering around 2.80 here and we have some of the lower gas prices in the nation as I understand it. If gas was suddenly 2 dollars more, people would howl at the moon for a few months and then it would be business as usual. It could almost certainly be 5 dollars or more by 2020 I would imagine. Maybe by 2030 or 2035, it could rise to ten bucks, but at that point, I still don't think it would make a huge dent in the driving population.

I think of it as the frog in the boiling water effect. It rises just slowly enough for people to adjust their budget without changing their lifestyle. It would have to more than double overnight for people to re evaluate their situation, but at that point, the people most affected would be the ones with longer commutes, and therefore more likely to not see cycling as an option. And the ones with shorter commutes would just find other ways to cut their spending.

I don't know, what do you think it would take for people to decide to make the jump?