By Ceri Woolsgrove

As Christmas is approaching, the bicycle world has been treated yet again with another study.  Just yesterday we highlighted a Swedish study on how much healthier commuting cyclists were compared to those using cars and buses . And now we have a US study showing that cutting out short auto trips and replacing them with mass transit and active transport would yield major health benefits.

The study in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives claims that the major benefit would come from replacing half of the short trips with bicycle trips. That’s no surprise, so let’s put the health benefits aside for a moment and focus on the money. According to the study  a shift to the bicycle and mass transit would during the warmest six months of the year save“about $3.8 billion per year from avoided mortality and reduced health care costs for conditions like obesity and heart disease.”  

Money talks these days and it is important that cycling can be shown to be heavily into the positive numbers when looking at cost-benefit. Figures like this are always important to getting cycling acknowledged as a form or transport that cuts across many issues health, environment, urban planning, mobility and economic good sense.

So it’s very sad that US politicians have been trying to eliminate federal money for bike paths and walking trails. Thankfully they’ve failed three times in the last two months.  If anything, one would expect that there’s a real political argument for building more bike paths. It’s cheap (Bike lanes cost anywhere from $5,000 to $60,000 per mile  while cheap freeway construction in Michigan is pinned at  $8 million per mile), it creates more jobs per dollar spent, and saves money: a lot of money.uld likely save an estimated $7 billion, (not mentioning the 1,100 lives each year from improved air quality and increased physical fitness).

Now that’s surely something an economic rationalist can cling onto.