The Dutch invest €595 million annually on urban biking, resulting in €19 BILLION saved in public health care costs alone. That’s how smart governments do the right math on investing in better mobility.
Let’s be clear — it wastes public money to NOT do it.
#CityMakingMath, hat tip to @modacitylife for their excellent books!
@BrentToderian @modacitylife@mastodon.world
The Dutch population is 17.5M, the US population is 331.9M. Assuming the same costs (which they aren't, because our healthcare treatment costs like-for-like are WAY higher) means $359B more in for-profit healthcare, meaning the investment class gets more money. Which is exactly what the system is supposed to do - make the wealthy even more wealthy. The problem isn't that we can't do the math, it's that our system has entirely different priorities.
@ScottSoCal @BrentToderian @modacitylife Yep, the key to understanding the U.S. system is that one person's "waste" is another person's profit. Well, a company's profit. The system is built around rent extraction, so why do something cheaply and efficiently when you can do it in a convoluted, expensive and wasteful way, i.e. an opportunity for corporations to profit?
From this perspective, the big disadvantage of #bikes and #publictransit is that they're too efficient and inexpensive.