Pedaleur

Agreed. Think about it: if the bike replaces short trips of three kilometers, at roughly a crown a kilometer, it costs pretty much nothing to drive. The availability of convenient parking will have a far greater effect than the cost of gas.

Malmö's campaign is kind of cool, though. I suspect the reception to something similar in the US would be somewhat less than 80% positive, though. ;-)

enigmaT120

I better not be on one of the 10 bicycles.... If you are talking about parking, yeah, but not driving.

beckieanne

I do not know if i would be happy with 40%, but any increase would be a plus. I live in salt lake city, and just from what i have observed, the city is not laid out with cyclist in mind ( i am sure that this can be said for many citys in the usa, but here in slc, its a pain.) Having said that i can say that i am seeing more and more people on their bikes, But there are still the common hazards( cell phones, trucks, and the omnipresent "cagers"). i total agree with what others have said, That taking a lane from cars and more racks and such would be a way to go, how ever some people want Mups to ride on. here in salt lake we have a light rail system and it seem to me( call me a loon if you like)putting a path next to this system( where feasible, any one who has ridden trax will know what i am talking about) would perhaps be a way to go???

idc

I agree with the posts that mention that lot of Americans would just not be interested in riding in. Most feel like buses are beneath them and would pay $20 in gas and drive their oversized SUV and park. The lifestyle here also seems more accelerated than I'm used to (people usually try to do too many things in too short a time, or something - and it's all car dependent). And finally the weather, at least, here is too extreme - you can't expect people to ride in 90+ or 50- temperatures.

PaulH

Road congestion would go way down, and one could park a car without having to circle the block for fifteen minutes or more. The only downside is that if driving were quicker and more convenient than riding, I'd be tempted to drive more.

Paul

idc

I park in downtown DC everyday I don't ride. It's easy to find a place, but just expensive...

Rhodabike

I used to work in an office in which there was a chainlink bike lockup down in an underground parking garage. It took up exactly one parking spot, and held about 24 bikes, if memory serves me correctly. There were hooks mounted on the concrete wall on one side to hang your bike from.
As for unpredictability, yes that's a problem every spring. Perhaps if 40% of the population rode (unlikely, given the winters here) cyclists would have to get a driving test/licence of sorts.

Rhodabike

Is the overall cycling speed really that much less in countries like Holland? One of my brothers did the European tour thing after graduation and rented a bike in a town near Amsterdam to do some sightseeing. He was young and fit but got passed easily by two Dutch housewives on their utility bikes, chatting away happily with full loads of groceries in the racks. A bit humiliating at the time, but he laughs about it now. I would think that if people rode every single day, they'd eventually get a lot fitter and their speeds would start to increase over time. (Well, maybe not the electric bike users.)

BarracksSi

My niece needed to get a license while in Germany that allows her to ride on her own. She's not even ten years old yet.

tjspiel

Fitness <> speed but they're related. If you're used to pedaling 10 to 15 miles a day (in 2 to 3 mile chunks) with a couple of bags of groceries on your bike at 12 mph, your body will become pretty well adapted to doing that. Take away those grocery bags and you'll add a couple of mph maybe but that doesn't mean that would be easy for you to maintain 20 mph or better for any distance. Your fitness plateaus unless you constantly take it up a notch (and even then there's limits).

My wife can run and ride long distances. She keeps asking me though how she can run and ride faster. My answer is that she needs to train at a faster pace - get her body used to going faster, even if that means going shorter distances now and then or doing intervals.

jputnam

You can't safely fit ten bicycles in the footprint of a car, but, at reasonable bicycle commuting speeds, you can fit ten bicycles in the safe operating envelope of a car at typical driving speeds -- safe operation of a car requires a safety zone several times the actual size of the car.

(Of course, as our 9/11-per-month driving fatalities show, many motorists don't actually provide the minimum safe operating envelope for themselves or others....)

The Chemist

There are a lot of bikes in Shanghai already, but would I want to deal with 8 million of them? Thanks, no - Shanghai cyclists are incredibly SLOW! I pass them like they're standing still when the lanes are free, but if there were 8 million of them I think I'd go crazy. One of the reasons I stopped using the subway so much was because I wanted to get away from the crowds - I wouldn't want to see those same crowds filling up all the bike lanes.