I
grew up in a town where living without a car meant you were poor. My hometown had five bus routes and it was not bicycle friendly in the least. I don't know how people did it. In DC, it's almost the opposite. Living without a car means you can afford a place in a walkable neighborhood.
RPUS has a post about Alan During whose car broke down and, as a sort of experiment, he's trying to see how long he can go without a car. He's been keeping updates on a blog. He concludes that a mile is about as far as people are willing to walk (I'll believe that - I think Metro determined that few people that walk to their stations walk more that a quarter mile). He doesn't discuss bike range or the "bikeshed" to expand on the "walkshed" but I put it around 5 miles.
Of course, if you didn't have a car, how would you get your bike to Shenandoah?
