Replacing two car trips per week....

Recently I saw a discussion on another website about peak oil. Someone there was deriding the "environmentalists" who want us "to all use bikes". He was saying "that is not a realistic solution". Perhaps there is no single solution to our current mess of oil dependency. Perhaps, however, if we combine solutions, we will make a dent in this thing.

I came up with the charts below to show what would happen if 1/3 of the USA population replaced

only 2 car trips per week

with a bike trip using an electric assist bike. The bottom line is that this would

save

5.5 billion gallons of gas, prevent the release of 59 million tons of CO2 and save $17 billion dollars, keeping them in American's pockets rather than sending them overseas.

Maybe this is just a drop in the bucket, but 5.5 billions of gas is a mighty big drop. Could 100 million Americans bike an average of 30 miles per week? It doesn't seem like a stretch.

Here is the table on which the calculations are based:

Bike-vs-car-trips

(PDF)