1 world, 2 wheels

The 1 World, 2 Wheels video below summarizes reasons to go by bike in America, even with the whole fam. The reasons are similar to mine in the first post, though I have added 5 more.

He points out that bikes are a solution for travelling within 2 miles (I would add that going on foot is the better solution if going less than 1/2 mile). This is realistic. Some people are extreme bike commuters, dressed in bike gear and commuting 10 miles to work. That's fine, but convincing others to do the same is ridiculous (I wouldn't do it), and even the infamous commericial State Farm makes fun of such hard core riders. One good thing about Japan is that all age groups ride (like my wife's 90 grandparents), and few are hard core with special gear. (This is quite in contrast to everything else in Japan where most people feel the have to have the specialty gear for everything.) I don't have any special gear exept my helmut, which I only wear when commuting, and I used to have a "mama-chari" (a single speed bike with a basket) that got heavy use everyday.

To get people to ride more within 2 miles though, you have to go further and encourage people to choose to live near work, schools, services (or to support mixed-use devepment). It is easy to be carfee in many neighborhoods like this in Japan. We chose to rent our home (a condo, called a "mansion" in Japan) in Totsuka in Yokohama because it is close to my work, shopping, schools, hospitals, the library, city hall, even a community pool. Of course, there is this trend in the States now to build mixed-use, but sadly Japan is going the other direction (slowly).