Originally Posted by
GlassWolf
That's just plain sad. In what sort of environment do you live? Rural, Suburbia, or Inner City?
The greater Ruidoso NM area has about 12,000 people... so a smallish town.
This is a familiar argument, as I have a similar one often with Europeans about US cars and transit habits vs. Euro ones. What you need to keep in mind is land mass, population density, and population center distances. The Netherlands, and the vast majority of their population could be stuffed into one of our US states.
Of course many US residents pretty much need a car of some sort. But there are also plenty of cities and small towns where getting around by bicycle would be very viable, if it were not made so inconvenient, and it were not perceived as being dangerous. There is a bit of a chicken-egg critical mass issue to get it started, though.
Also, on the subject of cars, I also like the idea of electric powered velomobile style cars for city travel. These could weigh ~200 lbs and have a range of at least 30 miles using cheap batteries... or double that with Li-ion. Very simple and inexpensive if mass-produced. Something like this could co-exist quite well with cyclists.