Thank goodness this is the commuting section, not the living car free section where things get to get acrimonious.

Living car free isn't important for most of us. It's not a measure of virtue, at least not to me. There is a very good blog called Mr Money Mustache, and he writes a lot about the virtue of driving less rather than ceasing to drive. He also points out how useful bicycles are. One of his salient points is that we underestimate the marginal cost of driving a mile. He says we should consider it to be 50 cents or so, even though fuel costs are much lower than that.