Bikenomics

This is the first column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Imagine getting a $3,000 to $12,000 tax rebate this year. Now imagine it coming again and again. Every year it grows by around a thousand dollars. Imagine how this would change your daily life. Sounds like a teabagger’s wet dream, but it’s actually a conservative estimate of how much you’d save by ditching your car, or even just one of your cars — and getting on a bicycle instead. Car-centric conditions don’t always make it easy to choose the bicycle. Communities designed exclusively for motor vehicles …

This is the second column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Here’s one way to fund bicycle infrastructure: Stop building freeways in cities. Better yet, tear down the ones we already have. Cities are starting to catch on that becoming bicycle friendly is one of the best investments they can make. Cities are also starting to realize that removing freeways makes more economic sense than maintaining or expanding them. In the last year, with the help of federal and state funding, cities like Baltimore and New Haven have been demolishing the “highways to nowhere” that have divided …

This is the third column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. In the United States, we have the most expensive health care system in the world. We collectively invest more than 15 percent of our GDP — that’s around $2 trillion, or $5,700 per person — into health care every year. The tragedy of these enormous numbers is that they fail to stem the tide of our increasing ill health. “Most of the money we’re spending on health care is going to treat preventable chronic diseases,” Michael Pollan told Grist in 2009. Our poor diet, he added, …

This is the fourth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling.  Bicycling and driving have one thing in common that is almost universally frustrating, time consuming, friction causing, and potentially expensive. Parking. No matter how seamless your ride across town, no matter how well-timed the traffic lights or low-conflict the bike lanes, it’s all pointless if when you arrive at work, or the store, or the music venue or party, and have nowhere to put your ride. Worse is when you go back outside find your lock still securely attached and that sweet bike you invested in …

This is the fifth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Libya. Bahrain. Iraq. Afghanistan. Canada. Fukushima. North Dakota. The Gulf Coast. Pennsylvania. Each of these stories stands alone as an urgent parable about our increasingly fragile reliance on affordable, plentiful energy. Take them together, and the myth of abundant fuel that our economy relies on falls to pieces all at once. What if there were some source of energy that could replace a substantial part of our current consumption? One that didn’t rely on coal, or on corn, or on fast-track investment in renewables? One with negligible …

This is the sixth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Miles Craig of Portland, Oregon applied for an hourly call center job at movie rental by mail empire Netflix last January. “My phone interview went incredibly well,” he said. “And the lady said, ‘Well, let’s get you in for a face-to-face interview. What time can you come in?’” Craig mentioned casually that he’d be using a combination of bicycle and transit to get to the interview and, if he got the job, to work. That was when things started to go downhill. “She got very subdued …

This is the seventh column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. More and more of us have less and less money these days. Fortunately, there are a lot of things you don’t need money to do, and bicycling is one of them. When you’re broke, a bicycle can help a lot. Financially, for starters. Cars are expensive beasts. If you make less than $70,000 a year, you probably spend almost 20 percent of your household income on transportation. That’s more than you spend on food.    But bicycling also has lots of other benefits — the kind …

This is the eighth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Bike-friendly cities, off-road paths, and scenic country roads where cyclists can spin along in comfort aren’t just good for the people who live in those places. They also attract tourists. And tourists mean money for the local economy. Tourism is one of the U.S.’s largest industries and biggest employers, creating millions of jobs and bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars each year (not to mention the tax benefits). Bicycle touring has long had an honored place in the tourism economy and culture. This doesn’t go …

Why don’t more women in the U.S. ride bikes? Hint: it’s not just about fear and fashion.

Bicycling creates a little wealth. But more importantly, it creates a lot of well-being. That’s what the bicycle economy is all about.