I guess I'm a cheap bastard then, because $3.25 a gallon got me to bike commute.

I have only seen one other commuter with loaded down racks and panniers, full >=20w light and perfectly obeying traffic laws. ironnically i was driving my car at the time and wasn't able to catch up with him in heavy traffic! i see a lot of students typicaly riding their rusted magnas and free spirits to the dorm the wrong way in the dark on the sidewalk with one hand on the bars and the other of their cell phones. i think nature will thin them out naturally, hopefully. then there are the working class who i see regularly but still on the sidewalk and on the same old schwinn or huffy. somehow i respect them more than the kids who ride their dad's passed down peugot racer, run stops, ride a cadence of 30rpm in the only gear that still works, and lock their bikes with $2 sprawlmart locks sideways so no one else can use the racks. i also see about 2 roadies whipping the cream in the better part of town. oh and every once in a while you get the roving gang of 15 year old bmxers tooling around the stairs. not a soul other than the pannier guy commutes but me, and i probably just imagined him.

In this entire week, I've only encountered 3 different people on a bicycle besides me.
One was some dork with no lights riding across the portion of Bear Valley Rd that bridges across the dry Mojave, ridin due East.
The second was also riding against traffic, loaded down with bottles and cans. This was also on Bear Valley going West this time. The fella at least nodded my appearance.
The third was just a roadie going west up the hill on Bear Valley towards the railroad overpass.
It's lonely times like these that I'll daydream I'm the captain of the NCC-1701-E.
Piloting the massive, Sovereign class vessel through the Badlands of the Gamma Quadrant.
Corny, yet fulfilling in the "supremacy over four-wheeled vehicle" factor.

I see a lot of roadies and only one or two commuters a week. In Tampa Bay there should be a lot more with the nice all year round weather and all.

Actually, $3 fuel caused me to think about getting a moped. Then for some reason I started thinking that I could get [what I thought was] a cool bicycle for a fraction of the cost of a moped.

Gas prices dropped almost immediately after I bought my bike, but I was having so much fun that there was no way that I was going back to my old ways.

I think the problem with most people is that they see riding a bike as something that is an incredible amount of work. Most of the people I work with wouldn't even think twice about paying $6 for gas since "there aren't any other options," even though they see me ride everyday.

I work 13hrs a day, from 5pm to 6am, 4on 4off. So if I work M-T-W-Th I get off F-Sa-Su-M and work again T-W-Th-F and so on, it's a good deal.
I used to see no one on the 5 miles of street riding I do and only two or three people per week on the 5 miles of bike path (10 miles total) and they didn't seem to be commuters, all decked out in road riding gear etc, though I'm not trying to judge them, I just didn't see them every day.
In the last 3 weeks I have seen one person though every so often and he is definately commuting. Bright clothing, messenger bag, trunk rack, lights. I'll be heading east on the metro parkway bike path and he'll be heading north on Garfield road and we'll cross paths every so often at 6:30am. One day I'll have to stop and have a cup of joe with him.

I simply stopped using my vehicle for the fact that the bike was more practical.
Insurance was the thing that pretty much stopped me from driving.
Here in SoCal, I was getting charged $130/month for my '87 Bronco II when it was working.
And I was only spending $40-$50 month in fuel costs!!
Now that the Bronco II is pretty much a corpse due to unauthorized work, I long ago had it scrapped.
Although, I still have plenty of friends and family members that are still heavily reliant on cars.
As I said earlier, I'm in the minority when it comes to this method around these parts.

Truman, some of that is relative speed. In my 20 mile ride to or from work I may get passed by one cyclist, a racer, or catch up with 2 or 3 kids. On the other side of the road it is 5 to 12 other bikers or all sorts. When driving that route I see fewer riders becuse I am not watching the side roads. Is your route mostly residential at one end and jobs at the other?