Cars in the land of bikes, bikes in the land of cars

A small but growing minority in Southern California, that fabled land of the automobile, is trying to raise the profile of the humble bicycle this month via BikeSummer 2005. Curiously, as that event kicks off with significant news coverage, another media outlet is presently offering its latest account of the automobile's steady rise in that fabled land of the bicycle, China. As they say, the grass is always greener ... . But just in case you forgot, the very same issue of The Economist that is foretelling the rise of automotive China has another story reminding us why a car-centric society isn't all that it is cracked up to be: it seems the latest figures from the Texas Transportation Institute estimate the annual cost of time and energy lost by Americans while stuck in traffic now amount to more than $60 billion, with (of course) greater Los Angeles being the worst affected. I've long been skeptical of such efforts to quantify the cost of traffic delays, believing they both overestimate the amount of lost worker productivity and underestimate the larger social cost of losing invaluable hours of time with friends and family. Nonetheless, maybe the Chinese could learn a little bit from us before it's too late--and maybe they could teach us something, too. There's got to be a happy middle ground there somewhere.