A couple random thoughts, in no particular order... :-)

My office/warehouse is 1/3 mile from my house. I bought the house after we built the warehouse because I specifically wanted to be live someplace close enough to the office that NOT using the car would be a no-brainer. To travel that 1/3 mile, I have to either a) access a left turn lane across two high speed lanes of through traffic, something many cyclists won't attempt, or b) cross the high speed road completely and use the opposite side side walk instead, something I do when on my Dutch bike which I can't pedal fast enough to safely "merge" across the high speed lanes or c) cut through a business park and across a grassy field lifting my bike up and over the parking lot curbs twice and pushing through the field. NONE of these options feels "safe" or "convenient" or easily "accessible". Each one feels like a compromise. And this is just 1/3rd of a mile.

To get to the nearest grocery store, which is 1 mile away, I have to cross no fewer than THREE unsignalized freeway on or off ramps. In each direction. One of those crossings requires me to merge and cross over a lane of traffic that is exiting the freeway at 45 miles an hour or so. It's dangerous enough that a camera crew from a local news station came out and filmed me doing it for the evening news. Skip ahead to minute 4 of the video at this link to see me on the news talking about this crossing. https://btaoregon.org/2013/09/brookw...should-fix-it/ Riding a bike one flat mile to the grocery store should be a piece of cake. But with "facilities" like these, it's no wonder that the use of bicycles for transportation or daily utility trips is a vanishingly small percentage of trips. Hell, even *I* nearly always take the car.

Mind you, I live in a suburb of Portland, OR, the much acclaimed bicycling mecca of the US. Sure, downtown and close in neighborhoods have lots of bike commuters and car free residents, but a mere 13 miles from downtown, I might as well be living in Outer Mongolia.