Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
My guess, which is also not a fact, but is like your mishmash of stats and identification of "average" cyclists and commuters is that one Danish cyclist riding 20 miles daily probably accounts for about the same daily person-miles as 10 to 20 "average" LA cyclists.
Rather than guess, and wind up looking clueless, you can easily look up Denmark's official statistics on
their average distance cycled. It's 1.4 km daily -- which is about 7 city blocks. That said, the official Danish numbers are internally inconsistent, so they've made a large mistake somewhere -- which is not uncommon among countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, where cycling is both a major part of their travel industry and a point of national pride. Both countries "accidentally" misstate their cycling statistics to project a happier situation than reality. In the Netherlands case, they
undercount cycling injuries by a factor of 3, in order to avoid answering difficult questions about cycling safety, after having spent many millions on ineffectual construction.
The inaccuracy in the Danish statistics is revealed by the fact that they claim 1.4 km daily per citizen, and 8.6 km per Danish cyclist, while also claiming that 70% of citizens cycle. Which is clearly impossible. If 70% of Danes ride, and average 8.6 km daily, that's 36M km daily, which would be 6 km per citizen -- not 1.4.
So something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Got any stats on how many LA cyclists commute by bicycle 20 miles/day?
As already explained, that would be a completely meaningless number, even if it existed -- and it doesn't, because no one has ever tracked miles-cycled in the US with any useful degree of precision.