You're right, the average American commute favors cars much more strongly. At 10 miles I'm remarkably close to my work and have a favorable biking environment most of the route. Yet it still is a bad alternative and in 7 years I have yet to see a single person bike along that route.

The question of "why don't Americans bike to work more" is not going to be solved with any number of bike routes (which I support the building more of BTW) until it can be solved for frankly trivial cases like mine. It suggests that local environmental conditions are probably more important to favoring biking than any number of infrastructure initiatives. Simple things like "bad weather" and "showers at places of employment" and "places to store bikes so they won't get stolen during the day" probably have to solved en masse long before bike lanes become part of the discussion.

All the unused empty bike lanes in the world aren't going to kick start a biking revolution.

Actually, at 10 miles, you're about median for distance. It's what's in between your home and your work that's abnormal.

Most employed Americans live, work, or both inside highly urbanized environments where parts of their commute involve roads that you can't reliably do 20mph on, much less 60. Crowded roads and stoplights put a real crimp on speeds, and it can take 5-10 minutes to cover a mile -- if you're lucky.