But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam [...] They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.
Completely matches my experience, and it's astonishing how strong the effect is.
It is what I use, summer and winter, in the Swedish countryside. While these older bikes might not be the epitome of efficiency (which is part of the reason why I'm trying to convert one to wood gas - plenty of wood here) they are easy to fix and a lot more fun than many other self-propelling vehicles. When it rains your clothes get wet, when it snows they get white. So what? When it is cold you dress up, when warm you do the opposite.
You might think this is impractical. You're probably right. Sometimes you have to trade in some efficiency and practicality for other, less tangible benefits.
You get to where you're going and in my experience you just kind of have a blah feeling.
Where as if you get on a bike to go somewhere not only is the trip there enjoyable(provided the route is not overrun by hordes of car zombies~), but when you get there you're nearly guaranteed to be in a good mood. Like "Alright, yeah let's do this!"
~even then though, it's hard to not enjoy a bike ride.
A car somehow alleviates those concerns?
There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
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"You're talking about people who"
I was saying that when I choose between car or bike, it is most often going to be bike.
I wasn't making any broad prescriptions for society, but if I were to...
Caveats: Good winter tires are expensive, the magic isn't the spikes but the rubber. Be careful when you step off the bicycle, you have no clue how slippery it is. After bicycling a while with winter tires you can't bicycle without them, you lose all reflexes for handling slippery ice.
This is probably helped by the fact that the activity of riding a motorcycle is much more demanding than some other forms of transport this mainly because of all the cars that are actively trying to assassinate you daily!
Because of this focus it is much easier and actually important to let go of work-related things!
If I'm walking or biking somewhere, especially anywhere work-related, it feels so damn good. If I know that in the past I'd have been doing it in a car, it feels twice as good. If I see lots of other people in cars trying to do the same thing, I have the moral problem of trying to control my schadenfreude.
The one exception I'd make for automated vehicles, but it's only a partial exception, is trains. As someone once quoted on HN: "Everybody hates buses and everybody loves trains." Trains don't have the quality of walking or bicycling, but they have some other lesser quality that still feels pretty good. Well, maybe motorcycles and trains are tied for second. :)