Actually, a bike equipped right can carry and haul easily 100lbs of payload in addition to the rider and 100 miles in a day for a person who is in shape is not unrealistic by any means. People are endurance work horses when in shape, horses peter out pretty quickly. Now if you move the terrain covered from roads (even gravel) to the wild expanse I think a horse would win out over a bicycle.

Europe has been dealing with high fuel prices much longer then we have in The USA (I read someplace England imposes a tax of almost $5.00 on each gal of gasoline) look to Europe to see a glimpse of where the USA may go for its transportation needs. I don’t see horses as a major part of European travel & transportation life.

Other then mass transit, mass transit will not work for most of the USA.

My bet is we'd see the roads full of Tuk Tuk's before horse carriages, which I think would be awesome. That new convertible looks very neat.

http://www.tuktuknorthamerica.com/

There aren't nearly as many horses in New York as there used to be, and there didn't used to be as many as there are now cars. According to this site the average life span of a horse in New York was only 2 1/2 years. During which time it produced 24 pounds of manure a day. Multiplied by 100,000-200,000 horses and you have enough manure to choke the life out of any city. Even before the advent of the internal combustion engine and automobiles, the horse was being replaced by steam powered trolley's in the cities and trains outside of them. A large city during the turn of the city was a very health place to live.

As much as I like horses, as a wide spread transportation system, their time has past. Leave them where they're at as animals that give us pleasure and occasionally do work that can't be done in any other way.

As urban transport in today's environment, I cannot see horses replacing motor vehicles. However, if the urban environment changes, perhaps it could be of use. I think the first thing that would need to change is the use of the motor vehicle. Gas is expensive, but we are still using our cars and other vehicles. If it is cheap enough for us to drive our cars and trucks, then it is cheap enough to use motor vehicles as transports in commerce. When and if the costs of driving cars and trucks becomes prohibitive, then horse drawn transport might be an alternative for local commerce. I don't horses would be used for long distance transport. All that said, I think battery technology will be such that the use vehicles powered by only electric motors will be practicable, and horses will not be used.

I think horses might be used as transport in more rural situations, where the by-products can be put to use as fertilizer, is more practical.

24 pounds, that a lot of s*it.


Like I said above I have been to Mackinaw Island several times, no autos allowed there. Lots of horse sh*t all over, along with pee running down the streets everyplace. It’s not a pleasant smell. And they have a lot of people running around cleaning it up all day, and there is still a lot of it there. You have to watch where you step. I can’t imagine what it would be like in a large city where you know it would not be diligently cleaned up.

In mine country (the Netherlands), we have loads of measures to reduce pollution and driving:
- High taxes on fuel.
- Road Taxes (heavier and dirtier = pay more)
- Plans of introducing a system that charges people per km, instead of a fixed road tax. The more you drive, the more you pay.
- High taxes on new cars.
- Higher taxes on new polluting cars and less tax on economic cars.

It also has lots of things to stimulate other form of transport.
- pretty much all bosses will either give a card for public transport for commuting or pay a max of 0.19 cent per KM.
- bicycles lanes everywhere
- bicycles parking space also everywhere
- subsidized public transport
- public transport will even stop in very small villages.
- You can buy a bicycle using your left over vacation days, without paying tax

Bicycles are much more popular here, kids, teens, adults, they all cycle and you many mother have cargo bicycles, trailers, etc. to carry the childes to school.

As a member of the American driving Society and Carriage collectors association I have a different view.
Let us first dispense with the notion that vehicles drawn by draft animals are some unsophisticated assemblage of obsolete materials. My modest collection's senior vehicle is a Victorian hansom cab used in the old Basil Rathbone movies,with an english maker's plaque dating it to 1891.I bought it when the studios foolishly auctioned off a large portion of their materials. Needless to say, my cab is still going strong into it's second century. How many Checker Cabs are still operating in NYC? How many have recouped their purchase price 4 times over renting it out to those same studios?
Carriages used woods of differing species in remarkable ways; some for rot resistance in wet climes, flexible shafts to take on the torque of a vehicle, wheels with spokes at different angles to take the strain of local terrain conditions.And finally in my brief comments; wood, though our world stocks are abused, is a renewable resource with far less environmental harm than your titanium cooksets and plastic impact bumpers on cars.
Indeed, one of the reasons my hobby even survived was a minor event called WW2. Many people throughout the UK found themselves without petrol for vehicles. Many a rural family dusted off grandfather's jaunting cart, hooked up the welsh,fell or hackney pony and had viable transport. It was no accident de Havilland came up with a rather remarkable aircraft called the Mosquito tapping into the UK's carriage, furniture and cabinet guilds ready workforce.But then the agility of the Mossy descended from rugged vehicles of suprising agility to first time viewers of a cross country competition at speed.Agile/ an english horseman who wrote of horse communication told of driving a delivery wagon on a rural road. One new horse, paired with a older stablemate bolted at site of a huge american convoy. the then young boy lost teh reins and could only hold on. the older horse bit and kicked the younger horse into a series of left and right hand moves to swerve around a mile long stretch of trucks and tanks before coming to a safe stops. Again, so much for clumsyness of design.
I would direct naysayers of effective draft animal use to the association of traditional timbermen who skid logs out by horse, the Draft Horse Journal and the many mounted police units around the country.
I am always amazed how people, sitting on top of the accumulated riches of culture, medicine and technologic advance have utterly no clue how those amenities were acquired, and how foolishly we are forgetting the tools used.
Everybody check your PSKs for those disposable lighters now, no obscolete foolishness like metal matches, wooden matches or fire pistons allowed. We are modern after all.

b) That's why it's going down in price... They realized the impact would be a tid-bit worse than originally expected ha, ha. no

Horses are a fun, comfortable way to travel. Saddle horses, pack mules and draft horses are able to reach areas that even four wheelers and dirt bikes have trouble. A policeman on horse back is both an visible symbol of authority and an easily approachable one (horses have fuzzy faces kids love to pet). Policemen on horse back, shoulder to shoulder with shields and batons are about as effective a tool against rioters as is available. The physical effect of a mounted, armed man on a man on foot has not diminished with time.

However, I don't think that horses can be a viable replacement for the widespread use of gasoline or electric powered vehicles, either in urban areas. The month of September was the first time in more that 15 years that new car sales in the United States dropped below 1 million(according the the Korea Herald).
-Grain stores for a million horses would a major health hazard in terms of attracting rodents and insects.
-1 million horses produce a vast amount of manure.
-Horses require up keep and training most Americans don't have and have no interest to invest in. The Walmart and Gap crowd simply aren't going to get involved in horse transport.
-Over long distances horses don't compare in speed to any form of public conveyance. Over short, urban distances a whole new infrastructure would have to be built to accommodate horses and would concentrate the problems that horses present.

Without a major energy crunch and a massive drop in population, I don't see horses ever replacing more modern locomotion for most purposes.