Comment by idle_zealot

I've biked around in a bunch places in the US, and the reality is that it really is terrible. Bike infrastructure is F-tier almost everywhere, rising to D-Tier in supposedly bike friendly cities like Portland.

Bike infrastructure generally

* Is designed to be unsafe. Door zones are common, actual physical protection or segregation is rare, ESPECIALLY for intersections.

* Stops and starts randomly. Just look at Google maps for a city, you'll be able to see that the bike network is completely fragmented, with many bike lane suddenly disappearing on a road for no apparent reason.

* Randomly changes style/design principles even within the same city, so both you and drivers are constantly confused unless you're already used to a route.

* Is poorly enforced, with drivers routinely driving or parking in bike lanes with punishment being a rarity.

Now, some spots have good bike trails that work for their commute, and that's a great option when it's available. But I'm a bit tired of the "biking is actually okay in the US!" gaslighting.

Some people still manage, I do sometimes, but after getting hit by cars a couple times I tired of making excuses for it. There's a reason hardly anyone bikes for their commute in the states: overall, biking in the US is simply awful, and that's the truth.

And if you need help and can afford it, ebikes exist. Some of them really cheap. Hopefully not skimping on safeties though.

I've ridden bikes for transportation in a handful of regions in the US. It is essentially always bad, it's just a matter of some people being able to look past or tolerate the awfulness.

Yes, some people are okay sharing a lane with cars, or using a strip of paint for protection, but accepting a poor status quo doesn't stop the status quo from being poor.

Occasionally there's a route that's legitimately good, almost always due to having an off street trail you can use for the bulk of the commute. Those can be great.

But once you hit bike lanes in an urban area, it's virtually always terrible. A lot of Americans are just used to the terribleness and don't notice it anymore, the same way they don't notice how almost every neighborhood is designed to be unwalkable (and how most are designed to be economically segregated besides).

450k tax-free, too, because it's a cost saving and those aren't taxable*.

Myself I've not driven at least since late 2017, thanks to excellent and cheap public transport; even before the Germany-wide €58/month ticket, the more expensive Berlin-AB ticket that I used to get was much much less than your $15k/year.

Do most people plan like that?

* usually, though IIRC buying a house in Switzerland gets you a tax equal to the money you saved from not renting it?

For some people yes.

But a lot of people are mentally stubborn, and seem to have inbuilt excuses of, "it wouldn't work here!" despite not spending even ten seconds thinking about it.

It is not feasible to take a bike or public transportation to work in many parts of the world so a policy change like that would just incur an additional cost to those who have no alternative.

A better idea is to encourage other types of transportation in private companies rather than penalize existing companies with taxes. If taxing the companies will raise prices on consumers, you might as well consider it an additional tax on the people.