At least. If not more.
The reason is several fold.
First, the bike costs money; it's not as if you can go out and buy a Chinese made bike and expect it to hold up for more than two months of commuting. It won't. You'll need to spend a fair amount to get something that will survive daily use, i.e., something built in Europe or the U.S. This idea is totally absurd, of course, made only more absurd by realizing that the Chinese probably ride bikes more often than any other nation but manufacture bikes for export that are completely worthless. I like to believe that they build good quality bikes for their own use but turn around and manufacture complete garbage for export to the U.S. because they know we don't give a damn about anything other than price; we'll drive several million vehicle-miles to our WalMarts to buy junk bikes for our kids thinking we're "saving the world" by getting our children to ride imported bikes while we continue to exclusively commute by car.
Second, 65% of us live in suburbia and, by definition, cannot function without multiple motorcars. Even if we feign environmental support by bicycling to work every other day, we get rat-fucked by our elected leaders who can't raise the gas tax so much as a nickel without fear of losing the next election. So they raise vehicle license fees instead. As a consequence, you, the noble bicyclist, get to pay more for a car that sits more often in the driveway because you're out "saving the world" bicycling a few days a month.
Third, your motorcar insurance company doesn't give you a 50% reduction in your premium if you commute by bicycle 50% of the time. It's not linear. No, you may perhaps get a paltry 3% reduction if you drive 94% less. The only way to gain any real reduction is to off the car, which is an impossible proposition as 65% of us live in car-dependent suburbia. It's not as if we can jettison the car for a bike; no, we have to buy and maintain a bike in addition to the car. We think we're out "saving the world" by bicycling, yet we have no choice but to encourage even more coal-fired electric aluminum smelters to build both cars and bikes.
Fourth, if you bicycle, you're gonna eventually rack up a few hundred thousand dollars worth of reconstructive surgeries, blood transfusions, ambulatory services, pain pharmaceuticals, lost work productivity and months of painful physical therapy sessions because of the bike/car accident that you will invariably find yourself in. You have never been properly instructed how to operate a bicycle -- society has only ever shouldered and subsidized the cost of trying to teach you how to drive a car, but not how to ride a bike or how to share the road with bicyclists while behind the wheel. You cannot "save the world" by bicycling when you're gonna need to be transported in a diesel powered ambulance to a coal-fired illuminated emergency room manned by seven-figure-salaried doctors who mainly drive inefficient, imported fossil fuel powered luxury sedans, all because that driver plowed you down while texting his mistress as he was driving on a major surface road that was designed not for all users but only for the timely, efficient movement of several hundred thousand vehicular units. If it's not the car that plows you down, it's the "new" 38-year-old who thinks that bicycling the wrong way is safest,
even though the big white arrow painted in the lane says otherwise.We complain about gasoline rising seven pennies per gallon, but at the same time we realize that to make alternatives to solo-occupant gasoline-powered commuting attractive we'd need gasoline to nearly triple in price...which ain't gonna happen.
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