It shouldn’t surprise anyone that choosing a bike over a car makes a major contribution to eco friendly living. By lowering pollution, roadway congestion, and obesity rates, the decision to power your own transportation does great things for our planet. Those benefits are intuitive, but a new campaign to encourage biking reveals people might’ve underestimated the good bikes can do. Analyzing pollution, economics, and medical trends, the decision to ride a bike to work is clearly good for people and the environment.
From a personal and national economic perspective, biking to work makes a lot of sense. With rising gas prices, costs of insurance, and monthly car payments, transportation absorbs 20% of most household budgets. A good commuter bike will cost a few hundred dollars, but that money can be reclaimed by a month of saving on gas money. More expansively, though, biking can save our country billions in roadway and medical expenses. A bike lane is cheaper to construct and maintain than a car lane; by reducing the number of cars on the road, traffic moves faster, sees less accidents, and results in fewer deaths; and with more of the population exercising through cycling, obesity and related medical expenses plummet. When Portland, Oregon began putting money toward biking, the city alone projected $400 million in savings by 2040.
Environmentally, of course, cars have horrendous repercussions, which makes biking one of the most powerful components of eco friendly living. Every car pulled off the road results in a legitimate drop in worldwide emissions. It might seem like drips out of the ocean, but opting for a bike is one among the most powerful personal green choices you can make. Air becomes cleaner, governmental expenses get reduced, and people are healthier: even for those who don’t feel passionate about the environment, biking has a great impact on the world.
