Bikenomics Quotes

“No matter how good the car, or how well you care for it and how much utility and enjoyment you get from using it, you end up losing money in the long run.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“No matter how good the car, or how well you care for it and how much utility and enjoyment you get from using it, you end up losing money in the long run.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“The best scenario of all when it comes to air pollution has nothing to do with tailpipe filters or hybrid, electric, or zero emissions car technology. The way to reduce pollution is to reduce driving, plain and simple.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“We have a very large cultural blind spot when it comes to cars. Using the roads by any means is one of the most dangerous things you will do on a daily basis; in a car, you are not very much less at risk, but you become a tremendous danger to others.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“Everyone who wants to and has either the determination, social support, or infrastructure support can ride a bicycle, as recent times are proving.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“When it comes to bicycling, short trips, close to home, are the lowest-hanging fruit. A quarter of all our daily travel is done within a mile of our homes. We do most of these short hops by car; less car-centric standards for neighborhood roads could easily make bicycling or walking a more attractive option. This need becomes especially clear when you know that these short local trips result in 60% of the pollution caused by our cars.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“The worst effects of breathing polluted air are experienced where it is densest: in traffic. Spending time on and near highways, freeways, and other busy roads is terrible for your health. How near is a question that is still being studied, but researchers believe that the effects are worst within either a fifth or a third of a mile. People in cars or buses are exposed to considerably more air pollution, perhaps because of, rather than despite, being in a closed space. People walking and bicycling on or next to roads breathe more air, but inhale somewhat less pollution; and cyclists have been found to have even less risk if they are on paths that are separated from the road.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“Converting car parking to bike parking is one of the cheapest, easiest, and most effective ways for any city to make a sizeable dent in the bad economics of our current transportation system.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“Teen drivers are more dangerous even than drivers in their eighties. And safety education, including showing teens gory movies of car crashes, has little effect.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“When bicycling, you’re simply less likely to make unplanned purchases, especially large ones. Shopping, especially for bulky items, must be more carefully planned and premeditated—you’ll want to do it all at once, and either bringing your trailer or renting or borrowing a car for an afternoon.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“In larger scale disasters, bicycles are also proving to be valuable resources. After a hurricane, a tornado, or a flood, the streets tend to be clogged with debris, fuel is unavailable, cars are out of commission, and resources are strained. A bicycle with tough, knobby tires is often the only way to get around the city. These are times when the latent demand for bicycling makes itself known.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“When we talk about reducing transportation emissions, the conversation tends to solely be about cars and fuel. Efforts to invent and promote electric and hybrid cars have enjoyed some success, and have proven the latent market demand for lower-emissions personal transportation. These vehicles pollute less, but they still require roads and parking spaces, are susceptible to crashes, and contribute to a dispersed and unhealthy landscape. And they are far from energy-neutral.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“The cost to maintain local roads is, on average, more than 6 cents per mile for each car each year. How much of this do drivers actually pay? Less than a penny. What does this mean for bicycling? While people do not pay to ride bicycles on the road, bicycling also costs almost nothing—less than 1% of money spent on transportation infrastructure in the U.S. goes to anything bike-related, and bicycles do not contribute significantly to other road-related expenses like potholes, crashes, or congestion.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy

“Open streets events, first called ciclovías, originated in Bogotá, Colombia in the 1970s, and have been spreading like wildfire through North American cities for the past five years.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy

“We're caught up in a vicious cycle of debt. We borrow money to build a giant road project. That project attracts new development, which brings more traffic. Eventually the road needs to be expanded; the initial debt has not been paid off, so a new, larger loan is taken out to fund the new project and pay off the old one. The money is borrowed against the promise of further development to bring in new tax revenue. And so it continues.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“We are, most of us, paying far more for transportation than we can truly afford. And more and more of us are starting to realize it.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“Over the years, I bought a trailer -- and then a cargo bike -- and then a trailer for the cargo bike -- and that's when things got really out of hand. I've moved a full size bed and frame (with a friend riding on top of the bed), a drafting table, a sleeper sofa, my dog, another bicycle and its rider, a load of twelve foot long 2x4s, and half a garden's worth of plants.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy