On Tuesday, July 3, 2018 at 1:15:43 PM UTC-4, sms wrote:
On 7/3/2018 9:33 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

OTOH, promoting cycling decreases gas sales and infrastructure may decrease economic activity to the extent there are fewer roads and more difficulty getting goods to market. Bicycle infrastructure may be killing our economy! MAGA! Get rid of bike facilities!
You are 100% wrong.

Gasoline is an extremely low-margin product, at least at the retail
level. For example, Arco was "encouraging" the per-gallon retail price
to be set at 10¢ over the wholesale price, which is why credit card
sales aren't accepted at most Arco stations, and why other stations
usually charge more for credit. When you have a fixed dollar amount as a
margin, rather than a percentage of the retail price, the higher the
price of the item the less the retailer makes.

A cyclist is using much less concentrated, and much more expensive fuel
than a vehicle driver. A decent beer, bought by the case at Costco, is
about $1 per bottle. That's nearly $11 per gallon, though the
consumption rate per mile is less. At a pub or a bar the cost is at
least 5x. Add in the cost of food and it's clear that cyclists are
spending far more per mile than solo vehicle drivers. It's harder to
calculate the relative economic activity for tandems versus two-occupant
vehicles. The latter uses about the same amount of fuel as a
solo-occupant vehicle, while two tandem riders don't use much less fuel
than two solo occupant cyclists.

Less commuter traffic on roads will make getting goods to market easier,
saving fuel and time.

I'm sure that Frank will demand a double-blind study involving 50,001
cyclists in 57 countries to prove these points but alas no entity
appears willing to fund such a research project.

There was so much nonsense in that post that no researcher worth his/her salt
would want to touch it.

- Frank Krygowski