cooker

Chris L, I think you're wrong. Thinking ahead to the societal changes that will occur as oil becomes scarcer, I think things may unfold like this:

First of all, no infrastructure needs to be built to accomodate large-scale switching from cars to bikes...it is already overbuilt. Roads can handle far more bicycles than cars. If the roads get as congested as the Don Valley Parkway on "Ride for Heart Day" then cyclists can demand that whole streets be reserved for bikes and barred from car use, and, besides what car driver would dare to drive on streets like that anyway? So the remaining car drivers may well want to allow some streets to be converted to bike-only ways, in the hope that they will have their own space to drive.

Secondly, saving the environment and solving other car-related problems by producing cleaner fuel is highly unlikely. All fuel has environmental costs, and car users to date have simply seen cleaner-burning cars as giving them permission to drive more miles, and in bigger vehicles. Besides, cars wreak much more havoc than just tailpipe admissions. They're manufactured using highly toxic processes, they demand freeways and parking lots, they generate junkyards and tire dumps, and they kill people by the tens or hundreds of thousands. But fuel generated in any manner is going to get more expensive, so driving is inevitably going to become less popular.

Thirdly, bicycles are not the only answer to the car problem, and of course they aren't for everyone...they have to be paired with public transit. (Or, if you prefer, private mass transit). Again, the existing roads have far more capacity than is needed to accomodate this switch, but as fuel becomes expensive, municipal bylaws will have to be passed permitting infill construction and mixed use zoning in current single-family residential suburban areas, to acheive densities that make public transit feasible. Again, the public will likely support that, because it will be too expensive to drive everywhere, and too inconvenient to live in low density suburbia. Property values may very well rise in areas that are quickest to make it permissable to sell your ranch bungalow to someone opening a small galleria, or building a low rise apartment block, since people will welcome the services being brought into their communities as a result.