And nothing beats a car for getting around.

A train takes me 15 minutes to get to work, a bike about 20, yet on the rare occasion that I’ve driven it’s taken me over 40 minutes… I’ve skateboarded the journey in 30…

“We may have our own preferences, but the biggest influence on our choice of transportation mode is what modes are available to us and how useful they are. Above all this is determined not by culture and personality but by the kind of infrastructure and transportation service provided.”

True. But, in completion to what you say, what exactly determines the type of transportation and infrastructure made available to us? Sure, part of it is the natural environment and the length of distances faced.I guess one could argue that the USA relies more heavily on private transport due to the vastness of its spacing and the long distances between cities. Yet, one can’t argue that if properly invested into, public transit couldn’t do the same for transportation needs that our cars do- and in many cases at less costs. USA may extend on a larger space than most advanced countries, but it also has a larger population than many of the latters. A recent study I read showed that a simple tax of 2 cents per mile of each American driver could be enough to propel a sophisticated public transportation system accross the country, to equal the developped highway system we built in the 20th century.

The real reason of why America doesn’t have that many trains and efficient bus routes consists of two factors. The first one is political lobying: more public transit means less work for car sellers and manufacturers , and so companies like General Motors strongly advocate against it. The second reason is economics- more exactely supply and demand. There aren’t many trains and buses because people don’t demand them. Car ownership has become a part of American culture, and most middle class citizens actively preffer individual rather than shared transport. Driving your own car is a part of the American cultural status quo. This sentiment is strengthened by the general public oposition to any bigger government intervention.

So, what we use to transit from one place to another is caused by what is readily accesible to us, but at the same time what is accesible to us is determined by social, political, and economic factors. Therefore, our prevelent mode of transport is in fact a cultural matter.

Instead of buying everything from one corner grocery, the suburban-consumer has the option of traveling as far as 50 miles to get the products they need for their home.

The suburban retail-warehouse model, where the consumer does the “last miles” of transport (rather than having a truck move goods to lots of small retail boutiques in a dense urban grid), is extremely and obviously efficient. Going to the optimal place and transporting the optimal good integrates the consumer into the supply chain.

Many suburban homes are productive factories of food, entertainment, education. They are also “last mile” production facilities, tailoring furniture, producing restaurant grade food, using computer technology for education and communications. They are mini-office-factories. Suburban families are highly productive, and have the green space in which to live and work…much as an ideal high tech workplace has a campus.

Then the leap is to understand that what applies to you, applies to others. The most powerful examples of the effect of situation is where the place wasn’t “always this way”, such as Phoenix’s light rail and Copenhagen’s cycling infrastructure.