Michael,

I don't know the percentage of Portlanders who live on the inner east and west sides, but I don't think you do either. I seriously doubt it is 80%.

The inner west side is hilly. What inner west side can you possibly be talking about?

To say "most" of these people work there too is surely wrong. If it were, we would not have a downtown commute. The Sunset highway would not be a parking lot.

Measuring the average trip is also grossly misleading--a commute counts as 1 trip, same as the multiple trips to the local store.

I mentioned marginal tax rates because the poster wondered what led to the extensive network of bike friendly roads in Netherlands. One explanation is a very large public sector that pays for this. The same thing that explains their very generous health insurance system.

We can be dreamers, that's fine. But we have to live in the real world, too.