Hold on to your cycling shorts and prepare yourself to fight traffic in the bike lane—well that might be an exaggeration. Today, thousands will forego cars and even buses to take advantage of the most efficient vehicle on the planet: the bicycle. So grab your helmet and reflector pads and get some fresh air—and sunshine, it’s Seattle’s Bike to Work Day!
To celebrate this human-powered day, we thought it would be great to share some facts about cycling from Sightline’s new book, Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet.
- Bicycles outnumber automobiles almost two to one worldwide, and their production outpaces cars by three to one.
- If Americans replaced just one in five of their average length car trips by bicycling, each driver would spare the atmosphere more than one ton of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Collectively, the effect would be comparable to taking 48 million vehicles off the road.
- Among major U.S. cities, those with extensive bicycle lanes have three times the rate of bike commuting compared to other cities.
- It costs as much as twenty times more to support infrastructure for a passenger mile of automobile traffic compared to one of bicycle traffic.
Want to learn a little more about cycling issues and other forms of transportation? Check out our Bicycle Neglect and Car-less series.
