Calculate the slope of the railway tracks and make a conclusion about the slope of the bike path.
y=4/3x-1/3
Practice makes perfect
We are told the bike path will be parallel to the railroad tracks. This means they will have the same slope. Let's calculate the slope of the railroad tracks by substituting the points we see in the graph, ( 8,0) and ( 11,4), into the Slope Formula.
The slope of the railroad tracks and, consequently, of the bike path is 43. By looking at the graph shown, we see that the bike path will pass through the point ( 4, 5). We can substitute this information into the point-slope form of a line to create our equation.
x- x_1= m(y- y_1)
↓
x- 4= 4/3(y- 5)
The above is a possible equation for the bike path. If we want to obtain the slope-intercept form, we need to isolate y.
