Why ride BIKES in Portland. 10 good reasons
Bike riding in Portland Oregon
Why go by bicycle? 10 good reasons…..
1. The bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation ever invented.More then half of all transit in the United States is six miles or less roundtrip, a distance easily made on a bicycle.
2. If you see someone you know while riding, it’s easy to stop and say hello. Bicycles create public space, enhance street life and build a sense
of community.
3. There are no parking problems for bicyclists, nor are there parking fees or tickets. Lock your bike to parking meters rather than putting quarters in them. In the space one car takes up, twelve or more bicycles
can be parked, which solves parking problems in densely-populated areas.
4. Americans spend 15 to 20 percent of their income on cars. If you ride a
bike, not only can you skip car payments, but you can also skip insurance
payments, maintenance, DMV annoyance and stopping to pay for gas.
Car-sharing for occasional driving is becoming a more reasonable
alternative. (A good new bicycle can cost as low as $250. No DMV, no
insurance, no gas, very little maintenance.)
5. Millions of Americans want to lose weight, and yet they step into cars
everyday, passing up the opportunity to exercise. In addition to weight
loss, bicycling reduces the risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and
high blood pressure. Given the abysmal state of health care in the United
States (which is partially due to the cost of treating well over 2 million
car accident victims each year), self-prescribed preventative activity is
a wise decision. If people start biking to their local destination,
health care and insurance costs dramatically drop.
6. If you stand in a closed garage with a running car, you will die in a
matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of cars in our local cities
create dirty, unhealthy air that we breath in. What do you think that’s doing to your heart
and lungs?
7. In 2001, more than 3,000 Americans died of terrorism on our own home
soil. Also in 2001, more than 43,000 Americans died in car crashes on our
own home soil, and about 2,200,000 suffered disabling injuries. Think
about it.
8. States, counties and cities spend billions of dollars fixing roads
that cars damage. A Honda Civic, a compact car, weighs about 2,500 pounds.
That’s about 100 times more than the average bicycle. Wear and tear on
roads from bicycles is almost nonexistent.
9. Experts estimate that easily accessible oil (in other words, cheap
oil) will run out around the year 2010. Then drilling in our National
Parks and Wildlife will be a necessity. After cheap oil runs out, the
price of gas will dramatically shoot up. The economic ramifications of
this suggest that the sooner we accommodate oil free transportation into
our daily lives the better.
10. Watch any TV show, look through any magazine and you will come across
ads showing how cars will make you cool,
sexy, popular, respected, at one with nature, safe, etc. The car and oil
industries spend billions of dollars each year to promote a benign image
of driving, but the function of all this is to assure profits and
manipulate consumers, and nothing more.
Here are a few great Bikes shops…
Veloce Bicycles in the Hawthorne neighborhood
The Revolver Bike Company in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood
Bike Gallery in Woodstock and Cherry Park neighborhoods
Citybikes Workers Cooperative in the Buckman neighborhood
Clever Cycles in the Abernathy neighborhood
Sellwood Cycle repair in the Sellwood neighborhood
Bicycle Repair collective in the Hawthorne neighborhood
Community Cycling Center in the Alberta arts neighborhood
Waterfront bicycle rentals in Downtown Portland
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