Ten years ago in many European cities, offices typically had spaces for six bicycles, half of which were never used and spaces for 50 cars which were always full. Today, there are fewer car spaces and many more spaces for bicycles which are always full. This change to cycling may seem strange to some as cycling is more effort. Possible causes are rising fuel prices, the introduction of higher parking charges for drivers in major cities, increasing awareness of environmental issues, expensive public transport and traffic jams.
Which one of the following can be drawn as a conclusion from the above passage?
A. Using a bicycle is now the most popular way of travelling to work.
B. Travellers are now much more environmentally aware than they were 10 years ago.
C. People will not cycle to work unless employers provide more cycle spaces on site.
D. Travellers are now less happy to pay the costs of car use than they were ten years ago.
E. More people cycle to work now than 10 years ago.
Summary of Steps to Solve Drawing Conclusion Type Questions:
- Read the Question (Every question)
- Go through the text and underline evidence
- Read the answer and eliminate the outliers
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- (easiest to eliminate contradictory conclusions)
- Using the underlined evidence and examples, prove each conclusion. Ask yourself “is this another piece of evidence? Or is this proved and strengthened by what’s in the text?”
- Remember to ignore bias and disregard answers that may be true in the real world, but are not supported in the text.
This text can be a bit tricky, but the most important thing to realize is that we cannot make a conclusion based off WHY more people are cycling. We cannot do this because there is only speculation here, it explains possible reasons but nothing is concrete. This question is easier to eliminate the answers rather than making our own conclusion and then trying to find a matching answer.
A It only says in the text that there is an increase from the original 6 bike spots and a decrease from 50 car spots. We cannot know by how much or little the decrease is, for example you could have 10 bike spots and 40 car spots, so even if the bike spots are filled and the car spots half filled, there is more cars than bikes. Also people could carpool so more people could arrive by car than by bike. Therefore A is incorrect.
B We do not know the reasons for why more people are biking and there is only speculation.The wording of the sentence: “ Possible causes are rising fuel prices, the introduction of higher parking charges for drivers in major cities, increasing awareness of environmental issues, expensive public transport and traffic jams” lists only possible options, so we cannot be certain. Therefore B is incorrect.
C This is a distractor answer and not even relevant. Maybe in some offices this would be the case but this is a generalization. Therefore C is incorrect.
D This was one of the options listed as to why people are starting to cycle more to work (said that fuel prices are rising) but we can only speculate why people are driving less and cycling more, it could be for different reasons (from possible choices mentioned in the text or not). Therefore D is incorrect).
E As we know that there are more bike spaces, which are always full, and in the past there were only 6 and they were half filled, we can see that there are more people who bike now. Therefore this is the only conclusion that makes sense, so E is the correct answer.