Spreading out like that was a deliberate choice on the part of American city planners. It was an unnatural experiment that failed, and which can and should be undone.

https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/1/7/americas-suburban-experiment

I mean... It's not like Dutch people use their bikes to go between cities (maybe sometimes, but they got buses and trains, too). The bikes are for local trips, which make up the vast majority of trips you'll do. It sure helps that cities in Europe are laid out in a less spacious manner, but that's not an unfixable situation for the US.

10-20 km is an easy bike commute distance if the infrastructure allows it. Especially with electric bicycles. I'd guess that most people in the US don't travel more than that for their daily routes.

But how much "actual travel" do you do? Most of my travel is urban, where cycling tends to be the fastest and most efficient option when you factor in traffic, parking dilemmas, etc.

I'd say outside of 2-3 months in the winter, I make around 80% of trips by e-bike. The car is still there when I need it. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not an either/or proposition.

Let's be real, we have long since given up on USAians coming to their senses. But the rest of humanity might like to save themselves still.

The Netherlands is also one of the flattest countries in the world. We should still all cycle more, but it would require much more effort to cycle 5km in San Francisco or the Himalayas than in the Netherlands.

I have regularly commuted by bicycle when living in The Netherlands, England and Germany and bicycles are really only for traveling inside the city not for going between cities.

Back when I lived in The Netherlands at one point I had a bicycle at home and another parked at the train station on the city where I worked, so I would commute to the train station nearest to were I lived using my home bicycle, leave it there, travel by train to a different city, pick up the bicycle I had there from the train station and use it to do the last leg to get to work. At the end of the day I would do the reverse.

Even having a bicycle to cover just 1 or 2 km is quite a time saver (easily turning a leg of a journey that takes 15m walking into one that takes 5m).

That said, I could do it like that because in The Netherlands there are proper parking places for bicycles at all train stations plus trains are pretty good.

When living in London (which at the time seriously lacked good conditions for cycling) I just used my bicycle to go from home directly to work, which was maybe 4km, took me around 23 minutes and was actually faster than using the Tube (the subway), whilst in Berlin it was sorta the same length of ride but from where I was living to were I was studying.

Obviously in all those places the bicycle was also useful for things like doing my weekly shopping (just get some bicycle bags).

Mind you, having a bicycle doesn't exclude also having a car, though I never really got a car in Germany (I was there for 3 months only, living and studying in Berlin) whilst in London I actually ended up selling my car because it was just a massive money drain (especially because in the last place I had to pay for a garage) which I barely used since even without a bicycle, public transportation is excellent when living inside in or near the core of the city (so, Zone 1 - 3).