Highways Should Allow Bike Lanes

The world’s economy is sinking like a rock, and global warming threatening to corrupt the world as we know it. Yet as this is happening, the country still continues to drive cars that might just endanger life the very way we live. The country seems to be turning a blind eye to an obvious solution that lies right in front of them. That solution is cycling instead of riding cars.

      Bicycles are of those things that could save the way we live today that are taken for granted.  With more people riding bicycles, there would be less people riding cars, which would mean less pollution. If there was a bike lane on highways, then people could ride their bike to work instead of driving, or got to the store on their bike instead of driving half a block to the corner store. With people riding a bike, they would be burning calories instead of oil.

      Riding cars is one of those things that we just do without thinking about it. I mean, think about it. Let’s say this one car is driving 50 miles per hour (MPH) for 1 hour at 25 miles per gallon (MPG). They just used up 2 gallons of gas. Now, alone that doesn’t seem like much. But multiply that 2 gallons by 1.3 million per day, and you have 2.6 million gallons of oil being burnt every day, with a great fraction of it going into the air. Now, is this really what you want happening every day, with the planet’s demise looming closer with every gallon of oil?

      Another thing to consider is whether we can afford to drive everywhere. The country is suffering a financial crisis at the moment, and everybody just wants to keep on buying oil for their cars. In this time of need for our country, is this really going to help us at all? What we need is a cost efficient way of getting around, without having to spend $50 every other day just getting around. With bicycles, it only costs about $500 to get a good one, and then repair it every once and a while for about $30. Overall, paying for riding a bicycle for a year costs about the same amount of money as it does to drive a car for a month. With everybody having to cut back on spending and such, why doesn’t everybody help their body and wallet by riding bike?