15 Quotes by Elly Blue

If you ignored all other economic and community benefits of bicycling, the factor of health alone is more than enough reason to invest hundreds of times as much as we currently do into retrofitting our entire country to be a bicycling paradise.

The primary causes of unhappiness? Having a bad commute. If you have a job, the drive there is the most stressful thing you’ll do on any given day. And people with particularly long car commutes are more likely to be depressed, have a mental health breakdown, and even get divorced.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.