The growth is most pronounced in dense city centers where bike access is part of the road plans. But there’s definitely room for improvement: 50% of car trips in Australian cities are less than 5km, with 30% under 3km. Those are certainly bikeable (and even walkable) distances.

In the U.S., initiatives like Clif Bar’s 2-Mile Challenge target these particularly-polluting short jaunts. Americans are slowly making steps away from their cars, but there are some lessons to be learned on this front from Oz.

Australia’s clearly heading in the right direction and partial carectomies abound. Advocacy groups aren’t sitting on their laurels though - national cycling organizations and 60 councils are proposing an increased investment in the country’s cycling infrastructure with the Healthy and Active Transport (HEAT) Proposal.

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uep said:

As a daily bike commuter in Melbourne, I can say with great pleasure that I'm seeing more and more cyclists almost weekly. Some of this recently may be due to the better weather and longer daylight hours of summer (while we read stories about commuting by bike in the snow but it's clearly becoming more popular. I've personally cajoled/shamed/encouraged at least 5 new bike commuters to start in the past few months. Melbourne has a target of 10% of all commuter vehicles entering the CBD to be bikes within the next few years. I thought that was pretty ambitious, until I learned that the figure is already at 8%. I'm assuming this excludes trains, trams and buses (or counts them as one vehicle) rather than counting passengers, of course.

January 24, 2008

Mark R. said:

Thats great to here. Now if only we (USA) can get more people to bike to work on a regular basis. I for one do it 3 days a week and I'm toying with the idea of "fasting" from my truck for a month. as long as future bike plans don't included dedicated bike lanes on my routes I'm fine. Unlike other cyclists I think bike lanes cause more problems than they solve, are more dangerous and create more auto rage against cyclists than it solves. My basis is because City's don't properly maintain the bike lane, the lane then fill with glass debris and trash forcing the cyclists in the auto lane and ticking them off or/ causing more flats etc.

January 24, 2008

Matty Lang said:

Up here in Minneapolis, aka the great white north of the USA we take pride in ranking behind only Portland, OR as the city with the second highest number of bicycle commuters. To brag a bit, we accomplish this in Minneapolis without Portland's temperate climate and without Portland's top notch (for major American cities at least) investment in quality bicycle infrastructure. I mostly work from home at the moment, but I've been car-free since 2001 and the grand majority of my trips are by bicycle here in Minneapolis year round. (Yes, even during the past couple of weeks when we've had wind chill factors in the -30 F ranges.) I must admit that we winter cyclists get way much more credit than we deserve. It is not really that much of a challenge unless you're talking about a cycling for a very long distance in one shot.

January 25, 2008 | url

Matty Lang said:

Sorry about that quick, sloppy comment. I meant to type that Minneapolis is second to Portland in the percentage of people who commute to work via bicycle in the United States. This is according to the last US census data. Anecdotal evidence strongly supports that bicycle commuting numbers will be much higher after the next census.

January 25, 2008 | url

Satish said:

Nice to come across such news stories from around the world. As a citizen of Pune, India I realize we have a long way to go in this direction.

January 28, 2008 | url

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