Bring on the bicycles

The WorldWatch has some interesting points on the merits of cycling!

A bicycle commuter who rides four miles to work, five days a week, avoids [...] about 2,000 pounds of CO2 emissions, each year."

... countries with the highest levels of cycling have the lowest levels of cycling fatalities.

..some 700,000 car trips in Lyon, and 2,160,000 in Paris, are foregone each year because of bike-sharing.

In the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany in particular, a number of cities boast cycling rates of greater than 20 percent, and even 30 percent, of urban trips (compared with about 1 percent of trips in most U.S. and Australian cities).

Bicycling uses 35 calories (of energy intensity) per passenger mile, compared to 1,860 calories for a single person driving a car. That's 53 time less energy required to cover the same distance.

... a bicycle can increase a person's travel capacity (a combination of speed and payload) by at least five time over that of walking.

Finally, 100 bicycles can be manufactured for the energy and materials it takes to build a medium-sized car!

Now, is that a good reason why more of us should start demanding bicycle lanes in our cities instead of ever-widening roads catering to ever-increasing numbers of automobiles?