The American Automobile - Le Morte Auto?

Amid the slow demise of American automakers General Motors and Ford Motor Company, Americans should take a moment to analyze what the automobile does for them today. Today, I would argue, cars in America have outlasted their usefulness. As American cities become more and more congested with automobile traffic, we are poised to spend more of our time idling our cars than running them at 60mph or faster. Is the automobile in America actually slowing us down?
By facilitating the birth of urban sprawl, and the push for wider and wider highways, the automobile has fueled the blight of our cities more than the beauty of our country.
What solution should our country look to, with congested roads and greater traffic on our highways? As regressive as it sounds, we should look to the bicycle or walking or public transportation and rational city design. We have the technology today to create bicycles that can go 50mph or faster. Imagine highways with not a single car, but thousands of zooming recumbant bicycles going along at 50mph or faster. Think of how many more bikes could fit on a highway than huge gas guzzling SUVs. Think how much slimmer and healthier Americans would be if we were asked to bike to work every day.
Americans should wake up to the ills that automobiles bring us, especially in congested city traffic. What good is a zero to 60mph in 5 seconds car if it can only inch along in stop and go traffic for 2 hours every day? What good is a transportation machine that is slower than bicycling when traffic builds up? What good is pouring billions of dollars into our public infrastructure if we could use what we already have and adapt it to manual powered transportation?