tl;dr Bicycles are first class vehicles in Amsterdam, public transit coming in second, cars last. This will never work in America because Americans are complet

tl;dr Bicycles are first class vehicles in Amsterdam, public transit coming in second, cars last. This will never work in America because Americans are completely obsessed with three things: 1) Living in suburbs, 2) Owning cars, and 3) Not paying for realistic public transportation. If Americans had to pay for realistic public transportation, it would be harder to afford a car, and they might not be able to live as far from their jobs as they often do now. It's not exactly a chicken-and-egg problem as much as an eat-my-cake-and-have-it-too problem. If you live in the county seat of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, you're about 50 minutes drive to Trenton, 1hr to Newark, 1.2hrs to Philadelphia. There is no real public transit to get to a bigger city (one that might have jobs). There are, however, "shuffle routes", basically small shuttles that run four or five times a day inside the county, from which you can take more shuffle routes and eventually buses and trains to get to a major city. But this is more an exception than the rule: to get into and out of Hunterdon County, you must use private transit companies like greyhound and trans-bridge. Large swaths of the country are like this, and it directly affects cities because people are coming to work in the cities in cars, or via trains and buses after they drive to them. Bikes are not really even remotely an option.