Chris's Random Ramblings
Ivan Illich sums up the effect in these startling figures: "The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes. Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren't restricted to asphalt roads."
That people would spend that much time dedicated to their car seemed very large, and I was skeptical about whether or not it is really true. So I did some very rough calculations on what the numbers could look like in Australia. Assuming say a $25,000 car that you'd expect to last at least 8-10 years, and spending about $4000 a year on insurance, maintenance and petrol, and using the average annual wage in Australia of just under $50,000, just paying for the car works out at around 400 hours a year, or about 8 hours a week. So do people really spend 1100 hours a year sitting in traffic? That turns out to be 3 hours a day which isn't totally out of the question given how far some people are willing to commute these days. So perhaps the number quoted is perhaps just a bit too high for an average.
I am however, not convinced its a particularly good argument to use to encourage cycling versus driving a car or taking public transport. If you slightly reword the question from "how much time do people spend devoted to their cars?" to "how much time do people spend devoted to transportation?", then I don't think the number would change significantly between someone who cycles or takes public transport, and those who drive but have to cover the same distance. You can certainly save money by cycling (especially if you don't own a car at all, as a large portion of commuting by car is a fixed cost), but you spend extra time actually making the commute. Given that a lot of people work fixed hours anyway, you essentially just trade off some of your own time for more money.
Not that there aren't significant benefits from cycling (such as fitness) or from taking public transport (environmental), but the comparison isn't as clear as the above quoted statment might first indicate. I think Mikey does make one very good point "People will always make time for the things they are truly interested in." - and essentially for many people, getting more time for themselves and/or their family overrides their interest in their fitness, the environment, or simply the pleasure of cycling. More thoughts on this later when I finish arguing with AIX.