Why do you ride when you could drive?

It might seem strange if you never lived in Tokyo, that we often ride our bikes here when we could drive (especially when the weather is nasty). The truth is that often we can get somewhere local faster on a bike than in a car. Tokyo roads are narrow and have low speed limits. Add to that the traffic, including pedestrians and bikes, that you might have to deal with, and driving can be very slow. Not to mention that when you get to the other end, you might, or might not find a free park to put your car in, or have difficulty parking your car. In most cases it is much easier to park a bike!

Here are roads I rode on today:

Note that this narrow road has all sorts of obstacles on the actual road: electricity poles and signs. To drive this you can't actually drive much faster than 20km/h because you'd be dodging these obstacles as well as any pedestrians or cyclists who are sharing the space with you. Not to mention the possibility of kids or other vehicles emerging from the many near-invisible roads that empty onto it. You will often have to give way to oncoming traffic on these narrow roads as it's not possible for two cars to pass easily in all places along the road.

 This one is a bit wider and faster at 30km/h, though still has some poles on the road. There are no dedicated footpaths (sidewalks), the painted lines are to indicate where you should walk.

This is a quite a wide two-lane 40km/h road that wasn't very busy, mostly because it's got t-intersections at either end of its relatively short length.

And the "big" two-laned 50km/h road. Cars were ripping along here, probably faster than the speed limit. I've driven on this road many times, and the lanes are quite narrow in places. There are also many traffic lights, so if you get up to speed, you quickly have to decelerate to stop again.

Here's another 30 km/h road, with a footpath and poles on the road. The white T on the road is to indicate that there is an entering road on the right.