Talk about a totally skewed statistic. I take it you work in politics…
Of course most people have less then a 15 mile commute…they LIVE IN CITIES…GEEZ…We’re not talking about people who live in cities are we…The whole discussion is about people in the burbs…
First off, oops, I only linked to the graph, not the whole study. Here it is: http://www.bts.gov/publications/omnistats/volume_03_issue_04/html/entire.html
For one 81% of commuters are private cars only, and that missing 19% doesn’t include urban dwellers who do much longer commutes on trains, etc.
Secondly, I suggest you study up on changing commuter patterns over the last few decades. The number of people who both live and work in urban centers is pretty small because many of the high-paying jobs have migrated to the suburbs-- in cities with vital urban cores like San Francisco, Seattle, LA and many others there’s just as many people who live in the cities and commute to the suburbs and nowadays a more typical commute is going from one suburb to another. This is also true in rust-belt cities with deteriorating urban cores where poor people by and large commute to service jobs in the suburbs (also usually long trips on public transit). Intra-suburb commuting is also far more common than intra-urban commuting. Here’s a boring article all about it in southern California, but these trends are spreading all over the country: http://www.newgeography.com/content/0065-commuting-patterns-multi-centered-urban-settings-the-case-southern-california
The general trend across the country is that people who still do a usual live-in the ‘burbs, work in the city commutes’ commutes are getting longer, but most people don’t do that any more and average commutes have been going down a lot. And that is why most peoples’ commutes are less than 10 miles-- I’ll bet by the 2010 census they’ll be even shorter. I would contend that a minimal investment in improving bike infrastructure in these smaller cities (such as building the pedestrian bridge in your town),which is where most commutes are between or within these days, has a much greater potential to economically reduce car miles than investment in expensive mass transit systems. Especially in suburbs that have existing turn-of-the-last century interurban train right-of-ways which make superb high-speed bike paths.
The trouble is that in urban areas with congestion, people are more likely to use mass transit when it’s available, but in the suburbs its more of a cultural challenge convincing people that cycling is a viable alternative. I think our conversation here is a bit of a microcosm of those issues, I think its a very American attitude to want a one-size-fits-all ready-for-everything solution as opposed to willing to be adaptive to conditions. I think it’s the same attitude that leads people to own big SUV’s as their only cars because it MIGHT snow 10 feet or they MIGHT need to tow a boat, nevermind that neither of these two things happens with great frequency and alternatives exist when they do. So it MIGHT rain or you might need to carry some groceries or, not to harp on it, but your kid MIGHT be sick some day. Does the fact that these contingencies may happen exclude cycling entirely?
In order for it to be viable…it must be viable to the majority…not just a very very small minority.
I disagree. The way I figure it with my “fuzzy” numbers is that you could probably get maybe 30-40% or so of people to occasionally supplement their commutes with cycling or other readily available, but less “convenient” alternatives (carpooling?), with maybe 10-15% doing it more often then not-- that would not be an insignificant reduction in car use and it could be achieved with minimal government spending-- I think a much greater reduction that is possible by sending more dollars towards urban centers. If nothing else, wouldn’t it be nice if people’s commuting fuel use went down in the summer so gas prices didn’t spike during the travel season?
Also, I think most people have never actually ridden a decent bike-- a good bike makes all the difference. Fwew-- sorry for the novel of a post.