Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities(theconversation.com)

559 points by dfgdghdf 5 years ago | 753 comments

Tiktaalik 5 years ago |

Switching to electric cars from ICE cars is continuing to do the wrong thing and make the wrong choices, but doing this wrong thing a bit better.

It's still the same status quo, woefully terrible and unsustainable transportation model.

Automobile oriented transportation doesn't scale, is a huge waste of resources, and perpetuates unsustainable, ultra expensive and resource intensive sprawling urban development patterns.

In contrast more compact cities with bike lanes take CO2 intensive cars off the road, and less cars means less parking, which enables cheaper buildings with less CO2 intensive concrete parking lots. Wins all around.

It's frustrating to see so called environmentalist politicians that go all in with big electric car mandates but can barely put any money toward active transportation and rebuilding our cities to be more space efficient and accordingly use less carbon.

Remarkably former British Columbia Green Leader Andrew Weaver even got on twitter recently to oppose a Victoria area protected bike lane and got into all sorts of arguments with cyclists. Incredible to see an environmental leader do this.

digital-cygnet 5 years ago | |

In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems. Without really staring at the underlying geometry, it is hard for laypeople to understand that automobile-centric development patterns are by-and-large incapable of producing the kind of human-scale, dense, walkable areas that are (1) instinctively pleasing to be in, (2) generators of economic value, and (3) much more environmentally sustainable than the alternative.

All this being said, I find it hard to fault 'environmentalist' politicians for their embrace of the electric car: politics is "the art of the possible", and the conventional wisdom, at least in the States, does not yet recognize automobile-centrism as a key problem. There are a lot of entrenched interests in favor of the status quo - not just the traditional car lobby (auto manufacturers, suburban developers, oil companies), but the ~half of Americans who live in suburbs, hence having their lifestyle and wealth reliant on cars remaining a dominant form of transportation. If the choice is between gas cars and electric cars (as, for a mainstream politician it basically seems to be), I am at least happy we are moving towards the latter, even though neither are the right answer.

Shameless plug: I recently attempted to visually explain the first issue (why geometry makes cars unsuited to dense transportation) on my nascent blog: https://digital-cygnet.medium.com/a-quick-visual-illustratio...

nightski 5 years ago | | |

How many people want to live in dense cities without any means of escape? It sounds miserable to me.

But I live in a really small city (< 250k) and drive maybe 3-5k miles a year (mostly to our cabin in a neighboring state) and bike a LOT. It's kind of ironic I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it.

zip1234 5 years ago | | |

Nice blog post. It really does come down to just how big cars are and how much space they take up. A car in motion takes up a ridiculous amount of space factoring in stopping distance.

sunstone 5 years ago | | |

The coming sea change in electrifying transportation will include roads just as much as cars. Right now we are just barely off the bottom of the 'S' curve of transitioning from ICE to electric. But in about fifteen years we'll be near the middle of that curve and that's when we'll realize roads could be much better if the ICE cars where banned. With only electric vehicles the air will cease to be continually poisoned by emissions and then roads and streets will start to move indoors. Covered roads will become practical with electric only vehicles and the majority of those e-vehicles will be a lot smaller than the current average ICE car because electric technologies make smaller vehicles much more practical. The current boom in e-bikes is just the beginning of a major trend to electric smaller vehicles.

A lot more quickly than you expect ICE vehicles will be restricted to the highways and periphery of towns and cities because they'll be too big, heavy and poisonous. In a word they'll become unsafe for urban transport and our cities will become much more healthy and livable.

tomjen3 5 years ago | | |

>In my experience, most people really do not understand how fundamentally unsuited cars are to solving urban (or dense suburban) transportation problems.

In my experience, most people who are against cars really do not understand how fucking awesome it is to drive a car and how well it works in terms of getting me from A to B in the minimum time with the minimum fuss with plenty of space for my shopping. Nothing else comes close unless you are only going around an uber dense area in rush hour.

Yes, there are issues with cars. I will still rather be stuck in traffic, sitting in my own comfortable indoor seat than riding a bike to work or taking the bus with no guarantee of a seat, nor enough space to sit even if I get it. A little planning and I am at work before rush hour and it isn't even an issue.

If I was to take public transportation it would need to not take twice the time (I measured it from the time I was outside my building to the time I was inside at work), it would need to be far more comfortable and I would need to be certain that there wouldn't be trouble in the bus.

But most of all? I would need to be certain that the people who made the changes were previously happy drivers and are now happy public commuters.

I did just buy a nice bike for the exercise and the ease of parking, but it only makes sense for short journeys to dense places where parking is the major issue.

Retric 5 years ago | | |

The issue boils down to roads and parking more than cars. Trees need sunlight, but cars don’t so roads work just fine segregated below street level away from pedestrians and inclement weather. It sounds expensive, but work out how expensive NYC’s above ground road network costs both in terms of land value and ongoing property taxes and you see just how pricy cheap roads end up.

Go 3D to segregate N/S traffic from E/W traffic thereby eliminating traffic lights and things really pick up. Of course it’s much easier to blame cars, but counties only have so many people you can actually build enough infrastructure to solve the root issues.

908B64B197 5 years ago | | |

Love the explanation. But what about adding some underground parking?

Ma8ee 5 years ago | | |

If they started to charge the same for parking and street space as for any other property in places like NYC, the problem would disappear rapidly.

noja 5 years ago | | |

Is parking possible on both sides of each apartment block (re: your blog post)?

mrshadowgoose 5 years ago | |

Most humans enjoy being comfortable. Costs (financial and ecological) ignored, it's safe to say that a large portion of the population would choose to proceed quickly from point A to B in the comfort of a private enclosed vehicle.

Obviously this desire needs to be balanced with environmental protection, practicality and accommodation of those who legitimately want to cycle or walk. There are a few technologies coming down the pipeline that should help achieve a compromise between all of these:

-mass electrification of vehicles

-pervasive small-diameter tunneling: The jury's still out on whether this can be done cheaply enough, but if this works out, it completely solves the urban scaling problem. Passenger vehicular traffic in cities can be pushed down into the ground, freeing up existing space for cyclists and pedestrians. Parallel tunnels can be trivially added when specific routes require additional capacity.

-self-driving vehicles: Self-driving taxi services would reduce the demand for personal ownership of vehicles, thereby reducing the total ecological burden.

I'm in complete agreement with you that automobile-oriented transportation, as implemented today, is completely awful. That doesn't mean we should reject the human element, and force people to do things they don't want to, when technological progress can allow us to satisfy those wants responsibly.

globular-toast 5 years ago | | |

People are only comfortable in cars because they've learned to be. Before I owned a car and cycled every day I didn't once think it was uncomfortable and that I'd rather be in a car. My body was used to it.

nine_k 5 years ago | |

Taxis, small delivery vehicles, utility cars, cars and trucks for countryside use, and various trucks for city and highway use can all be electric, with all the benefits of EVs.

If you want public transit be more popular, build denser cities. E.g. on Manhattan using the subway is a no-brainer, and you are rarely more than two (long) blocks from a subway station. In some more remote parts of Brooklyn, you often cannot reach the destination by subway alone, and you have to take a bus. Even further away, traveling by a bus either becomes too slow, or the bus does not come close enough, and a car is inevitable. I suppose there is no way to make public transit economical or time-efficient in agglomerations like Houston, even though LA manages a bus network somehow.

Cycling such distances us also problematic: you either have to be pretty fit and take a shower when you arrive, or you have to have all the time in the world. Cycling within a dense city is pretty practical, though.

digital-cygnet 5 years ago | | |

There's a chicken-egg problem at play, though. We can't build denser cities because we need to build 4-lane roads and parking; we can't get rid of these roads and parking because people need cars because the city isn't dense enough yet. It's certainly solvable on the many-decade timescale by smart, consistent city and state governments, but it's going to be a gradual slog of incrementalism (e.g., see all the changes NYC has made to shift from car centrism since the 90s - gradually adding bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, closing 14th street to private cars, congestion pricing for taxis,...)

The distance problem with cycling is solvable (though it pains me a bit to say this as a recreational cyclist) by electric bikes and other micromobility solutions (e.g. Citroen Ami). The streets of NYC are chock full of delivery drivers and others zipping along at 25mph on cheap, quiet electric bikes with ranges of many dozens of miles. Once we have a better regulatory regime for these (so people aren't blowing so many lights and hitting so many pedestrians), I could see them being a viable alternative to cars for many-mile use cases, at least during dry/temperate weather.

brailsafe 5 years ago | |

I agree, but I think Vancouver has a pretty good handle on its car/parking situation. That's Vancouver proper, not the suburbs. Most new buikdings that go up have their parking underground, and then drivers in the city are squeezed for the most part in terms of parking options and so on. The parking lots that are still around seem to be from older buildings, that then get replaced with higher density eventually. When I do drive, it's actually still pretty pleasent, because it's for necessarily driving dependant activities.

Even though there's quite a lot of electric cars, there is still a remarkable level of noise generated next to patios along main roads, so improving that would be nice, if we can assume that cars won't go away entirely.

Compare that to the prairies, Alberta, or even the island, and it's a world of difference in terms of surface level lots. Would be curious what your opinion is as (presumably) a bc resident.

__turbobrew__ 5 years ago | | |

I live in Vancouver proper and rarely drive. The city has done a pretty good job on the bike routes; I can get to nearly anywhere in Vancouver within a 30 minute bike ride from my home turf of Mount Pleasant. I think forcing parking lots under ground and limiting parking spaces has been great for the city! It is definitely a trend with new buildings to have limited parking options. My workplace office houses about 60 people but we only have 4-5 parking spots which incentivizes alternate transit modes. Having limited parking options means that many people at my work live local to the office and either bike or walk to get there, which I think is awesome!

Ultimately the city of Vancouver cannot grow out anymore therefore we need to grow up without increasing the amount of traffic on the roads. I think the key to limiting traffic on the roads is to build dense walkable communities connected by solid transit options.

Regarding solid transit options: I think the city desperately needs a broadway skytrain all the way to UBC and a skytrain line which goes from metrotown straight west down 49th avenue connecting with the canada line at oakridge and ultimately terminating at UBC.

Going east-west in the city kind of sucks right now and most of the crappy buses to ride on are east-west due to overcrowding.

vgchh 5 years ago | |

While I appreciate the contrarian view, it’s not either/or. Cars are a wonderful thing and facilitate independence and long distance travel. Electric cars are even more wonderful things. And Bikes are wonderful for active transport and but not a substitute for cars

barnabee 5 years ago | | |

It should be an either/or for travel within cities. I live in London and own a car, which I never use to travel around the city or at rush hour, only to leave on trips or for occasional movement of bulky items. The congestion charge (£10/day) and schemes such as local government closing off many residential streets to through traffic (which makes Islington wonderfully pleasant to walk/cycle around, it’s awesome!) help make this a no brainer, but I’d be happy for things to be taken much further with more restrictions and charges, as there are still far to many cars in London.

Cycling infrastructure still needs much more investment and we should be changing rules to massively encourage electric micromobility as well. The safety arguments against it are nonsensical when compared to the cars it replaces, and better provision on roads would make it even safer.

Tiktaalik 5 years ago | | |

I never said it was an either/or situation here, but when governments put money toward things you can see where their priorities are.

Right now with continuing near zero investment in active transportation the government is saying that its pretty much going go with the near status quo, minor and easy to achieve solution. The amount of CO2 reductions that follow will reflect this lack of ambition.

WalterBright 5 years ago | |

In the Seattle area the existing train tracks are removed and turned into bike paths which transport about < 1% of the people the rail lines could have served.

Seattle also will dig a new transportation tunnel, and fill up another tunnel with the excavated dirt, so a lot of money is spent and capacity does not increase.

spodek 5 years ago | |

Exactly. Electric vehicles is a tactic that works within a strategy of fewer cars. A strategy more vehicles, even if electric, will eventually result in more total waste.

A strategy of fewer vehicles works, all the better with a tactic of converting to electric.

Want to lower emissions? One easy, cheap way is to convert car lanes to bike lanes or simply remove them. Lots of other government subsidies worth removing too, especially to fossil fuel extraction.

fvdessen 5 years ago |

Cycling is not only good for the environment, but for cities in general.

During the last confinement, when car traffic completely stopped, I realised that cars are the single biggest reason why living in the city can be unpleasant. People may not realise it consciously, but when they move out of the city, what they are looking for is a place with not as much cars driving around.

Cars destroy cities by making a vicious circle of making it unpleasant to live there, therefore enticing people to move to the suburbs and commute by car, which make the problem worse.

Setting up biking infrastructure fixes this, because it reduces the room for cars used by commuters, while creating room for bicycles used by people living in the city.

With less cars, you can make the city center where people work liveable. You can have offices mixed with housing and have people live close to their work place, further diminishing the need for cars.

If you think that your city can't possibly be a good place to cycle because weather / hills / etc, you are probably mistaken. Electric bikes and the appropriate clothes make biking pleasant in most places. IF there are not too many cars and infrastructure for the bicycle of course, which is probably the thing you don't have

jedberg 5 years ago |

Switching from gas to electric is something I can do all on my own. Switching from gas car to cycling is something that would require major investments from my city and developers.

Both are noble goals, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. Switch to electric now, and also encourage new roads and new developments to be bike friendly, so that switching to a bike is something that will be viable in 20 or 30 years for most cities in America.

Edit: To clarify, the investment I'm referring to is rezoning entire cities and tearing down single family homes and replacing them with mixed use buildings to bring commercial spaces closer to residential spaces. Most American cities have commercial centers and are then surrounded by residential, with very little mixing of the two. For example the closest place for me to buy food is .75 mile away, but the closest supermarket is 1.5 miles and I have to cross two major roads and a Freeway to get there.

steelframe 5 years ago |

Cities need to build completely separated trails that accommodate both cyclists and pedestrians. Ideally that means providing pedestrians with a raised sidewalk portion.

I've been an avid road cyclist for many moons (hence my username), but I've pulled back on that after my 5th road crash. As I've been getting older, my ability to "bounce back" from serious injury has diminished, and I'm now left with arthritis in my hand from my most recent crash where a motorist broke it by passing too close and hitting me (https://imgur.com/a/LdNQSRT). The difference in speed was probably less than 10mph, but that was enough to cause a lot of damage.

Every bike ride in mixed vehicular traffic is a roll of the dice, and no matter how experienced and defensive you are as a rider, your luck is eventually going to run out. Somebody is going to do something really sudden and dangerous, causing you to crash. When that happens, it's then a question of, "How bad this time?"

I'm fortunate that my commute can be done 80% on completely separated paved trails. These days I throw my bike in the hatchback, drive the 20% of the distance to a park-and-ride by the trail, and ride on the trail into the city.

If there weren't a trail along my commute route, I wouldn't be commuting by bicycle at all. It's my city's commitment to build the infrastructure that makes me willing to do it.

CabSauce 5 years ago |

That's great. Assuming the following:

- Your commute is sufficiently short

- You have facilities to shower and dress at work

- You have sufficient time to shower and dress at work

- You don't have to bring kids or sizable cargo

- Weather is sufficiently good

- You're sufficiently healthy

sergeykish 5 years ago |

I've recently discovered Not Just Bikes channel [1], and can't recommend it enough.

He is Canadian, commuter, not a cyclist [2], yet he found that in Netherlands are the most livable cities, to the point he's decided to rise children there [3]. He answers all the critique raised in this thread. And describes how Netherlands achieve its goals - bike paths are on another level there, they are specifically organized on different routes [4].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMed1qceJ_Q

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1l75QqRR48

laingc 5 years ago |

I used to live in Europe, and a bicycle was my primary mode of transport. That was when I was a single man with no children. However, I can't see how I could possibly use a bicycle for really any transport at all today.

Advocates of cycling, I would be genuinely interested in how you would logistically achieve a typical weekend day in my life, which might consist of:

- Transporting myself, my wife, my daughter, my dog, and (say) 3 large bags full of the stuff that they require from my house at the rural/suburban boundary to the part of town where the hardware stores are - about 25km away, with about 600m elevation change.

- At those hardware and big box stores, I'll need to buy (say) 300L of sand (bagged) for the sandpit, a new powertool, a bag full of clothes, and a new bed for the dog.

- We then need to have some breakfast at a cafe, and transport the whole lot home.

- We have to do all of this in the rain or in the very high winds that my city is famous for.

- Total time to achieve all of this has to fit between my daughter's naps, so we have about two and a half hours all up.

Some version of this is my life almost every weekend.

Now, I would genuinely like to hear how I could achieve anything approaching this using a bicycle. I'm not being facetious - I don't know how it would be possible at all - but cycling advocates seem determined to assume that I somehow can, so I'd love to know how.

abeppu 5 years ago |

> colleagues and I reveal that people who walk or cycle have lower carbon footprints from daily travel, including in cities where lots of people are already doing this.

Not to disagree with the broader point, but I think it's worth distinguishing "travel" from "transportation". I don't have a car, and I bike and walk for almost all of my daily personal "travel". But, I think this also makes me more willing to use delivery services, in which case I'm offloading some carbon footprint to trucks and vans which might not be counted as part of my "daily travel". Part of the appearance of reduced emissions can come from sweeping some emissions into a different category.

avianlyric 5 years ago | |

You might be offloading some carbon onto delivery service, but those services are almost certainly more carbon efficient and you using a personal car to go shopping.

A delivery van might do 200+ deliveries in one trip. Compared to a single delivery in your personal car. That a huge number of people to split the carbon cost between.

You might argue that delivery can travel further, but that would just be ignoring the carbon cost of have goods delivered and stored in a grocery store.

I think almost certainly deliveries are more carbon friendly, after all the goods are coming from the same source, but with delivery every step the carbon footprint is shared with 10s to hundreds of other people. The only exception to this is probably takeaway food, in which case I recommend that you cycle to restaurant and eat there.

abeppu 5 years ago | | |

I'm willing to believe that a delivery service is more efficient than me personally driving an empty car to pick up something and bring it home. I'm just saying, depending on how stuff is tabulated, one could systematically over-state the emission reductions associated with being a daily cyclist.

zip1234 5 years ago | |

I routinely take my ebike to the pharmacy, get takeout, even some groceries. I have cheap pannier bags that can hold a couple bags of groceries: https://banjobrothers.com/products/market-pannier

TulliusCicero 5 years ago | |

I've very pro-bike but this is a pretty good point.

That said, with big panniers or a cargo bike, it's pretty easy to take care of daily needs with a bike. We have an electric cargo bike, and it's somewhat uncommon for us to feel like we need a car for something.

rollcat 5 years ago |

Well I wish cities would also make the infrastructure accessible to other muscle-powered vehicles, like skateboards, longboards, scooters, inline skates, etc.

Personally I very strongly prefer longboards over bicycles for commuting (it's more fun, you can just grab and carry it, both of your hands are always free when riding, etc) however there's just so many things that are fine-ish for bikes or pedestrians, but ruin the fun for skateboards. Cracks in the pavement. A street crossing with a lowered curb that is just slightly too high to roll over. Narrow sidewalk next to a busy, downhill street. Cracks in the pavement. Cobblestone. Badly timed traffic lights. Cracks in the pavement. Dirt roads. Potholes.

One important observation, a city that's awful to skate tends to also be much less accessible to pedestrians. You might think it's irrelevant until you meet someone (or end up) in a wheelchair, or with a stroller.

acd 5 years ago |

An Electric Bus or Taxi is also more important than an electric private car simply because they drive more people per hour.

1. Cycle 2. Electric Bus/Tram/Taxi 3. Electric Car/Biogas Car

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/shrink-your-travel-footprint

frereubu 5 years ago |

My sense is that popularising electric bikes has a huge impact in cities because it takes away a lot of the physical effort. The first time you ride an electric bike something clicks in your head, and I've seen it in people from all walks of life. It instantly recalibrates your mental radius for cycling, including things like hills etc. The Netherlands is a favourite reference point for cycling advocates, and justifiably so in terms of infrstructure planning, but it's incredibly flat. Electric bikes make that quibble a moot point.

dfgdghdf 5 years ago | |

It is very flat, but it's also quite wet and VERY windy. The Netherlands would not be the best place to cycle if it weren't for the infrastructure that they chose to build.

frereubu 5 years ago | | |

That's true. A friend went on a cyling trip through the Netherlands thinking it was going to be easy, and his enduring memory of it was the rain...

Ericson2314 5 years ago |

Yeah it's a bummer to see so much about electric cars in the Biden infrastructure proposal.

- Make driving miserable,do a carbon tax - do a carbon dividend - keep the infrastructure about good things like trains

A.k.a. planning for major centralized supply (public transit) and incentives for demand. There's no point directly funding electric car stuff because a) it is not good enough as pointed out, and b) it doesn't benefit from planning as much anyways.

I don't get why these things aren't more obvious :/ ...

Tade0 5 years ago |

I've downloaded the study on which the premise of this article is based and, as usual, it's assumed that the energy needed to move a bike has no carbon footprint, while in reality it has.

Specifically on an European diet(~1.5-2g CO2/kcal) a cyclist is responsible for ~27g CO2/km, which is not negligible and puts cycling on par with public transport.

I don't believe cycling to be a solution here. It's said that 25% of trips in the Netherlands are currently done by bike, but what is left out is that, according to this study(2012):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01441647.2013.80...

50% of trips are still done by car.

Looking at distance traveled it's 75% cars and 8% bicycles.

That's after decades of changes in infrastructure to accommodate cyclists.

hokkos 5 years ago | |

And the study say nothing specific about EV, also if you read the study that is supposed to justify why it ignore diet emission, it doesn't talk at all about a supposed lack of food increase in the face of increased physical effort, but health benefits from eating more legumes and fruits or physical efforts. The study seems pretty poor with the quality of data they have, they should try to understand why people doesn't cycle, with a computed bike or public transportation traject duration, and see if it explains the lack of cycling.

xputer 5 years ago | |

A lot of Dutch people live in suburbs and work in cities, that explains the bulk of car traffic. If you look at trips within cities though, the bicycle has a much larger portion. In Amsterdam 38% and in Groningen 57%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen

Comparing distance travelled is not really a useful metric in my opinion. Virtually no one is going to ride their bicycle 20-30 miles to work each day, when many people will happily travel this distance by car. It's for the short <5 mile trips that you want to incentivize people to take a bike instead of a car. That's where you have the most to gain in terms of making your city a more pleasant space to be.

Tade0 5 years ago | | |

Fair point, but I believe distance still matters in terms of CO2.

I don't see cycling as a serious proposition here, because it doesn't solve any new problem that isn't already handled by public transport.

dheera 5 years ago |

> We also found that the average person who shifted from car to bike for just one day a week cut their carbon footprint by 3.2kg of CO₂ – equivalent to the emissions from driving a car for 10km, eating a serving of lamb or chocolate, or sending 800 emails.

This is interesting, but might it be possible that at least some those cyclists ate 1 more serving of lamb (or other high-carbon meat) or chocolate than they normally would have because they biked? Or did they eat 1 more serving of mostly plant-based food?

Did they do an analysis of the amount of food consumed by the cyclist on the day they biked vs. the days they did not bike?

ppf 5 years ago |

It's absolutely true, and something that is forgotten in the rush for "green" EVs. In the long run, the fuel is not the unsustainable part of mass public car ownership, it's the rest of the car (or at least, the idea of owning a multi-ton high-speed metal box that can carry you and a large amount of your possessions as far as you like).

Using EVs to transition to something else, leaving behind craters and huge scars from mineral extraction, and huge amounts of e-waste, is just absurd on its face (but very profitable).

glangdale 5 years ago |

Public transport would like a word. The fact that public transport, which is probably way more important than either bikes or electric cars is not even mentioned in the article is wild.

Obviously it doesn't have to be either/or, but I think the largest change would be widely accessible public transit (which is also a multiplier for the effectiveness of cycling, if well-designed - you can move your bike on the train or the bus, and it takes cars off the road). And I'm happier for other people to cycle; this eases pressure on the roads, reduces pollution and noise and accidents, etc. Yay cyclists!

I also have already thoroughly (if unconvincingly) been Eurosplained at over "how age, disability, weather, kids, cargo, population density, topography, etc. etc. are all non-issues for cycling" and "how it's the one size fits all solution for everything" in terms of accessibility so would be happy to avoid rehashing all that.

[ although if you have some anecdotes about 80-year old Swedes riding their cargo bikes uphill both ways every day through winter and summer that you absolutely must share, go for it ]

Despite all this, I still somehow feel that emphasizing cycling more than a combination of transit+walking is hopelessly ableist and not really very practical for a lot of the urban layouts we actually have, particularly in the west. Amsterdam's population density, for example, is 10x higher than Sydney's, and it's way flatter.

peterthehacker 5 years ago |

The environmental argument for more bike friendly cities is one thing but I think that the quality of life argument is even stronger.

One of the things I miss the most from my college days was being able to ride my bike everywhere. I could go for weeks without driving and it was wonderful. Now days I almost never ride my bike anywhere (other than by my house for exercise) because there are just too many cars and careless drivers.

If only more cities were like Copenhagen. When I travelled there I was blown away by how bike friendly the city is. There are some parts of the city that are only accessible by bike and the roads that allow cars have elevated bike lanes, which are much safer than the “share the road” bike lanes we have in the US. The psychology of road rage just disappears with bikes. Once all the metal and glass around you disappears we are much friendlier in traffic and accidents.

Making the world more bike friendly isn’t just good for the environment but good for our well being.

Johnny555 5 years ago |

It's funny how so may drivers will say "Stop stealing car lanes and turning them into bike lanes! Roads are for driving, not bikes!" and at the same time they'll complain that their "free" parking was turned into bike lanes because apparently roads are for driving and parking, but not bikes.

vkou 5 years ago |

Yes. The sustainable future of transportation is not the 5,000 lb electric car that drives one person around for 90 minutes a day, and stands idle for the other 1350.

The sustainable future of transportation is the electric bus, the electric trolley, the electric train, and the electric scooter. We need to be taking more steps towards it.

cwkoss 5 years ago |

> We also estimate that urban residents who switched from driving to cycling for just one trip per day reduced their carbon footprint by about half a tonne of CO₂ over the course of a year, and save the equivalent emissions of a one-way flight from London to New York.

Put differently, reducing air travel is much more effective than ground travel habits at reducing your carbon impact.

> When we compared the life cycle of each travel mode, taking into account the carbon generated by making the vehicle, fuelling it and disposing of it, we found that emissions from cycling can be more than 30 times lower for each trip than driving a fossil fuel car, and about ten times lower than driving an electric one.

I'm surprised that bicycles are only 30/10x less. It seems like, before any usage, manufacture of a single car would use far more than 10x the energy of manufacturing a bicycle (1000x?).

randomsearch 5 years ago | |

It's hard to reduce your air travel if you don't actually fly. Nearly half of the UK's population didn't take a flight abroad in 2018 [1].

Just making the point that your lifestyle might not be representative so be careful when making arguments based on it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/25/1-of-eng... [1]

balls187 5 years ago |

In 2006 I started commuting to work by bike. After two days, after 5 near miss collisions with automobiles, I stopped.

rakugaki 5 years ago | |

Hmm... well, that isn't normal for most places. I hope this comment doesn't scare any newbies off. It's likely you can find a chiller commute than the one this guy tried.

Tiktaalik 5 years ago | |

Your experience reveals the structural flaws in the infrastructure of our cities.

They're designed to maximize traffic flow for cars with little to no thought towards the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

When there exist separated bike lanes, people can be assured of their safety, and that's when you see cycling growth.

m463 5 years ago |

I wonder if telecommuting like many are doing right now trumps everything.

physicles 5 years ago |

As an American who has been living in China for some years, I don’t miss the car-centric lifestyle one bit. But I don’t see a viable path to wide adoption in the US, especially since your choice of transportation is now part of the fucking culture wars.

For bikes to have real gains, you must somehow make cars less appealing. And while individual mindset is similar in China and the US — everybody really really wants cars now — the outcome has so far been different. Here’s my guess as to the reasons why, with the most important first:

- It’s super hard to buy a car here. The waiting time for a new number plate is something like 10 years (for the non-rich anyway). I’m so thankful for this — I can’t imagine this city with tons more cars. (You used to be able to jump the queue by buying an EV, but the waiting list for that has grown now too)

- Even after you buy a car, there are days when you can’t legally drive it, depending on the last digit of your number plate.

- It’s straight up annoying and expensive to drive to most places in the city. Traffic is terrible, and for short trips you’ll spend way more time and money parking than driving (its common for a 10 minute bike ride to be a 30-40 minute drive during rush hour). That said, the city does not seem interested in fixing this problem by widening roads, which I take as a win.

- There is bike infrastructure: not only are there decent bike lanes, but drivers are used to sharing the road with bikes. It’s not Scandinavia, but it’s way better than the US.

- There are shared bikes fucking everywhere, so it’s always an easy option. It’s super rare that I end up somewhere and cannot find a bike.

- There is zero tolerance for drunk driving. If you’re going somewhere to drink, that’s a trip you’re not driving.

All this said, even though there are so many bikes on the streets that they stack up at traffic lights like cars during rush hour, I feel like the number of bike commuters is 1-2 orders of magnitude less than the number of subway commuters. There’s a scale (population, and geographic size) at which you can’t just promote biking, you must invest in public transport.

xhkkffbf 5 years ago |

Cycling is wonderful and I've lived with only a bike and no car at least three times in my adult life. But cycling just isn't going to work in many, many cases.

Large parts of the population are too old, too infirm or handicapped in some way to make it more than a few blocks. Yes, some could be forced to lose some weight and get in better shape, but that's not going to work for many people with chronic conditions.

Then you need to take into account that the weather is bad for a significant part of the year. In the north, snow and ice make it dangerous to drive a car with all wheel drive. Bikes are downright dangerous in those conditions. Gentle rain may be workable but many rainy days make it dangerous to ride. Even a sunny, summer day is not-so-good for those who need to go into an office or a meeting without taking a shower to wash off the sweat.

Now mix in the fact that bikes can't carry more than a token amount of luggage. Parents with small kids, people with groceries, and anyone working on any project bigger than say, knitting or watchmaking, can't carry their stuff on a bike. The extra weight exacerbates all of the issues with hills, health and weather.

Now mix in darkness. In winter, many people leave home before it gets light and come home after darkness. Sure, you can manage with a good light, but it's just markedly more dangerous at night on a bike.

Now let's talk about how this dream of biking hurts the poor. By definition, people who can't afford very much end up in the worst homes and that almost always means the places with the longest commutes. Sure bikes are cheaper than cars and that sounds good for the poor, but the reality is that their poverty consigns them to live much, much further away.

I like bikes and I would like them to be used when possible, but bike-rights advocates don't do themselves any favors by making extreme statements like this. Bikes just can't replace cars for a significant number of people. Oh, sure, the young, unmarried, childless hipsters who write these things can do okay, but they're ignoring that there are many, many people who can't. Bike talk like this is anti-old, anti-family, anti-worker and anti-poor.

rdiddly 5 years ago |

They seem to leave out the obvious, which is that there's just no way transporting you plus 1-2 tons of car from A to B, is ever going to use less energy than transporting you plus a 20-pound bike, or you plus nothing.

gordon_freeman 5 years ago |

I'd love to buy an Electric car in a heartbeat as I think a lot about climate change and would love to play my part to reduce emissions by driving an EV but so far it is not just practical and affordable for me. The EMIs are high, range anxiety is there especially we go on a lot of road trips so when it came time to buy a new car I went with Corolla Hybrid. It gives 57 MPG and costs 300/month in EMI. And it is pretty reliable so looks like I'd need to wait a few years (5-7 years at least) to buy an EV.

imnotlost 5 years ago |

If you want me to ride my bike more on the street I need physical barriers between me and the people who happen to be driving a car while texting, tweeting, snapping selfies, napping, etc.

causality0 5 years ago |

We also found that the average person who shifted from car to bike for just one day a week cut their carbon footprint by 3.2kg of CO₂ – equivalent to the emissions from driving a car for 10km, eating a serving of lamb or chocolate, or sending 800 emails

So I can offset my car's carbon footprint by reducing my meat and sweets consumption by five servings a week? Either something's fucky with that math or cars aren't nearly as bad as I thought.

wffurr 5 years ago | |

Or lamb and chocolate are really bad.

hokkos 5 years ago |

This article is a little strange, because TheConversation articles promote a scientific paper from an academic author, and it is the case here [1], but if you read this paper, it bring no specific information or proof about about the title presented here, no specific mention or calculation about EV.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.102764

skeeter2020 5 years ago |

>> Switching from gas car to cycling is something that would require major investments from my city and developers.

...

>>Switch to electric now, and also encourage new roads and new developments to be bike friendly, so that switching to a bike is something that will be viable in 20 or 30 years for most cities in America.

Your attitude towards the proposal of moving to bicycle is literally the same as those against moving from fossil to electric.

Johnny555 5 years ago |

Most people don't need a full size car for city commuting, but many don't want to bike for valid (and not so valid) reasons. Why not split the diffrence and go all in on small lightweight NEVs (neighborhood electric vehicles). Their smaller size, low 25mph top speed and limited range make them less resource intensive than regular cars but still give people a car-like driving experience.

hi41 5 years ago |

My grandfather was a math teacher. Raising several kids in India with that meager salary, he could only afford a Hercules bicycle which he rode what feels like several decades. He could not afford even a scooter or a moped.

When I came to USA, I bought a car and several after that. I thought at that time how awesome I was.

How wrong have I been at this one and so many others. He was a good man.

globular-toast 5 years ago |

Only when cities completely ban car travel will cycling increase. Cars are currently first class road users. They get extra protection and sympathy from the police. All infrastructure is built for them with cycling infrastructure being laughable and often regressive. On top of that, most people are just too fat and lazy to cycle by choice.

Tiktaalik 5 years ago | |

Banning car travel isn't required for cycling to grow, but cars will need to give away some of their lanes to build first class separated cycling infrastructure.

You're right in pointing out that cars are "first class" road users.

It's unthinkable to many that a lane of a road could be taken away from exclusive car use and used to create a separated cycling lane.

It's incredibly challenging to restructure our road infrastructure more equitably. It will be a bigger challenge than pivoting from ICE to EV.

Laarlf 5 years ago | |

That is correct. You will not convince most people to ditch the car unless you deliberately make it horrible or by completely banning it. It’s like poisoning alcohol during prohibition.you’re putting “public” interest over personal interest at all costs.

mustafa_pasi 5 years ago | |

Banning unnecessarily big cars would be enough. My utopia would be a city where people all drive around in micro city cars like the Citroen Ami. It would fix 95% of the problems with no real decrease in living standards for anyone.

Laarlf 5 years ago | | |

For the price of an ami you can get a lot of used car. Why is that relevant? Because small electric cars suck. They really do. Driving them isn’t pleasant, charging them mostly impossible and they are about as ugly as you can imagine. Not really something I’d spend 4 months of my income on when it is basically just a replacement for a scooter. Which can be had for 50€ and some dedication.

eldenbishop 5 years ago |

I ride a bike, around 2000 miles/year and I'd love to be able to spout the statistic their claiming. But please, /they are also stating that driving a car 10KM has the same carbon footprint as sending 800 emails. That kind of claim makes the whole article suspect.

tomglynch 5 years ago | |

I don't understand what the problem is with the statement.

pjmlp 5 years ago |

I love cycling, on the Summer, no way I am arriving completely wet facing blazing rain, icy roads or snow.

Not my thing.

As for public transportation, that is a great option, when it isn't a single bus every hour, taking 1h 30m to destination, which can be done in 30m with a car.

nemoniac 5 years ago |

I can imagine this is true in a city where there aren't many electric cars and there isn't much cycling.

Where I live (Amsterdam) there's plenty of cycling so I wonder if there might not be more to win from electric cars?

kmonsen 5 years ago |

Step 1: Remote work from home removes ~90% of car traveling without any need for a bike?

I want to have a car for when I need it (take dog to vet, kids etc), but want to not use it for daily commute.

julienb_sea 5 years ago |

The zeitgeist has clearly made their choice. Every comment even mildly questioning the viability of cycling as a replacement for transportation in most contexts is downvoted.

karaterobot 5 years ago | |

There are some topics I don't even ask good-faith questions about on HN, because the topics are so tribalized that nobody is likely to give a response that doesn't assume malice.

gowan 5 years ago |

non-leisure city biking is hard. the hardest things for me to learn was

* if you are getting into a tight spot then own the lane. it is better for a car to see you and hit you then for it to not see you and hit you.

* always have high intensity blinking lights ... (in some places it's illegal to ride at night without lights)

more safety tips: https://bicyclesafe.com/

irrational 5 years ago |

Or, how about we continue to work from home? I used to fill up my car with gas weekly. Now I'm filling it up monthly or longer.

taurath 5 years ago |

You need density, flat-ish terrain and often nice weather for mass cycling.

You can solve for density, but the other 2 aren’t in a cities control.

jonnycomputer 5 years ago |

Cycling as transport, not bicycling as leisure.

torgian 5 years ago |

Somehow, I feel like the best compromise is to have cars all be underground. Underground tunnels to go to different parts of the city, with public subways and carriages to take you wherever you need to go. Underground parking too.

And from there, only walking and cycling traffic above ground with buses and trains for public transport.

uoaei 5 years ago |

Electric vehicles do not eliminate anyone's carbon footprint. They only frontload it due to the extreme environmental costs of mining for battery materials, battery manufacturing, and transport.

This goes for electric cars, bikes, and even your little OneWheel.

dwiel 5 years ago | |

Do you have any data for this? Last I checked, about a year ago, there was a recent news article referencing a couple year old paper referencing a couple year old industry release referencing an older paper. It turned out a critical assumption was way out of date.

Definitely interested to see new data on this if you have it.

dcchambers 5 years ago |

I'm an avid commuter-cyclist and weekend bike warrior and I am lucky to live in a very bike-friendly city (well, for the 8-10 months of the year that we don't have snow anyway).

I think the main issue people have with cycling is that it's not a quick fix compared to the promise of the electric car. It means a real investment in biking infrastucture and a change of mindset & funding at the national, state, and city level. It means a complete re-thinking of how the average American city is built. It means you need to actually get outside and leave the comfort of your perfectly climate controlled life. None of these things are easy for the average person to accept. We are far too spoiled.

TL;DR - It's easy to greenwash with an electric car. And people like things that are easy.

sigzero 5 years ago |

"More important"? Maybe. Gonna happen? Nope.

ykevinator3 5 years ago |

I think the author has self serving blinders on. The hypothetically in indisputable but the reality of it ever happening is a non starter.

samcheng 5 years ago |

I'm surprised at all of the anti-cycling sentiment here.

It's really a better mode of transportation than the car, in certain situations. It's healthy, relaxing, good for traffic and the environment, and convenient for short trips.

The article isn't saying that you need to ditch the car for a bakfiets, just that you can have a significant positive impact by doing SOME of your trips via bicycle. Remember that most car trips are with a single driver and no passenger, and are short trips around town.

Give it a shot!

TulliusCicero 5 years ago | |

Most Americans have only lived in places where biking is treated as a toy, and where adult biking for transport is dangerous and uncomfortable. Thus, they end up believing that it must be so everywhere, that good biking for transport is impossible.

It's an issue of ignorance. If everywhere you've lived is like that, you assume it's a law of the universe. Even if someone points out that other cities manage it fine, you're already emotionally invested, so you'll deflect (e.g. "well that city isn't identical to mine, so obviously it's irrelevant") rather than consider a different possibility.

supertrope 5 years ago | |

Very few people choose to bike in an environment hostile to pedestrians and bicyclists. The infrastructure and culture has to come first. And the infrastructure won't come until there's a critical mass of people demanding it.

lovegoblin 5 years ago | |

> I'm surprised at all of the anti-cycling sentiment here.

Given how profoundly anti-bicycle North America in general is, I'm actually surprised it's not a lot worse.

dang 5 years ago | | |

Please don't take HN threads into regional or other flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jeddy3 5 years ago |

Oh my god, the pushback in every single article that even mentions bicycles are so predictable.

As soon as one straw man argument is adressed, it's changed to the next one.

- First, But what if you need to move a sofa, or are disabled??

- Then, but what if you have 20 miles to your job, and 20 miles in the opposite direction for groceries??

- But what if you have four kids?

- What if it rains sometimes?

- What if you live in Sahara or north of the Polar circle?

- What if your e-bike gets stolen?

Next Up: what if someone gets offended by seing a bicycle?

dang 5 years ago | |

Please don't repeat flamewar tropes, even if other comments are also repeating them. It just contributes to the tedious repetition. The drivers-vs-cyclists flamewar is one of the nastiest and most repetitive that we ever see.

The only solution to bad comments is some weighted average of (a) adding more good comments and (b) not adding more bad comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

b0rsuk 5 years ago |

When was the last time you've seen cycling in an action movie?

_Microft 5 years ago | |

Does Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander count?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UfQRfYmbZI

acwan93 5 years ago |

There's a demonization of cyclists in general if you live in an American city. Until this stigma goes away, which will usher in infrastructure and mentality changes, this will not occur.

City councils believe cycling is recreational, not for commuting or for "real" use. I mentioned this about getting my LA suburb to actually embrace Class II bike lanes previously, and there's simply no political will.

Simply put, it's sexier to put EV charging stations than bike lanes as a form of virtue signaling.

duxup 5 years ago | |

I would say there's a demonetization of everything these days where so many topics are full 'us vs them' tribal ordeals now.

Laarlf 5 years ago | | |

Live and let live is a dead concept. Large cities kinda are the reason for that. Before, small towns had small communities with similar interests.

JoeAltmaier 5 years ago | |

Yeah our local town council has bike paths under dept of Recreation. So they go from nowhere to nowhere. And they get closed for 6 months because some truck got parked on it for some unrelated construction project. And they don't get repaired or even maintained adequately.

stemlord 5 years ago | |

I believe a lot of bicycle hate in middle class American culture is a result of propaganda from big oil corporate lobbying.

I also read somewhere recently a theory that big cars are a way of protecting (even just psychologically) wealthy people from reality as they have to travel through areas of poverty to get from one wealthy pocket to another. Makes sense when recalling Rob Moses's work with nyc

ErikVandeWater 5 years ago | | |

> I also read somewhere recently a theory that big cars are a way of protecting (even just psychologically) wealthy people from reality as they have to travel through areas of poverty to get from one wealthy pocket to another.

That theory seems to arise from a disgust for the wealthy (rightly or wrongly) as opposed to an earnest evaluation.

I would put money on the theory that big cars can have more nice things in them and are safer, so the rich buy them.

chmod775 5 years ago | |

> City councils believe cycling is recreational, not for commuting or for "real" use.

And nobody gives them a talking to? If any official said that here they would never live down the humiliation. They'd be the butt of every joke for weeks.

Some societies appear to tolerate stupid ideas that I'd be afraid to say out loud. Or maybe nobody actually believes that.

Is there actually someone from a city council or whoever on record saying that? I am doubtful.

It's not even this specific thing. There's a lot of "nothing going is going to happen because X believes Y" to go around that may just be straw men. Seems more like a defeatist attitude to me than something resembling reality.

TulliusCicero 5 years ago | | |

There are hardly any active commuting cyclists in most cities, so no. Anyone who speaks up is outnumbered 50x by motorists who feel extremely entitled to never have to see a bike.

Gualdrapo 5 years ago | |

It's not just in the so-called America. In countries with rich cycling traditions, like here in Colombia or even in Spain, you can easily find people who hates cyclists. News about a cyclist killed in road-rage incidents are not rare.

abrowne 5 years ago | |

Depends on the city? Minneapolis-St. Paul has ok cycling infrastructure for North America that certainly could be improved, but I don't see a negative attitude

TulliusCicero 5 years ago | | |

Wait until you try to replace some car parking lanes with protected bike or bus lanes to improve throughput.

clairity 5 years ago | |

that's a manifestation of the power and perspective of wealthy residents more than sexiness or virtue signaling. it's the same reason why it's so hard to aggressively internalize the costs of sprawl, to in turn lay the groundwork of incentives to move cities in a meaningfully more sustainable direction (rather than the weak appearance of it).

jtdev 5 years ago |

Cycling to/from work, grocery stores, etc. is completely infeasible for 6 months of the year in approximately 1/3 of the United States. In addition to seasonal infeasibility, much of the U.S. is rural... good luck commuting 15 miles each way to work.

globular-toast 5 years ago | |

Right, so before cars were widespread (~50 years ago) people just didn't go to work?

I didn't own a car until I was 27 and when there's no other choice, you definitely can use a bike in all weathers. It sucks, but that's life. You appreciate the warmth more after weather so cold it makes your face sting.

As for rural living, the article is talking about cities, so the idea is you travel to the edge of the city by car then get on a bike.

twiddling 5 years ago | | |

"Right, so before cars were widespread (~50 years ago) people just didn't go to work?"

People lived a lot closer to their work then..,

ahelwer 5 years ago | |

I biked to work year-round in Calgary, Canada every workday during a 16 month internship. Including during heavy snow. Tungsten-studded bike tires made it easy. This was before the current era of electric-powered fatbikes, which easily handle such conditions.

cameronh90 5 years ago | |

15 miles is not that far. 45 minutes with a US (20MPH) e-bike. Average commute is 30 mins each way. And that's time you don't have to spend at the gym now.

jtdev 5 years ago | | |

You going to shower at work? How do you get your kids to school? Are you going to put them on the handlebars?

5555624 5 years ago | |

>is completely infeasible for 6 months of the year in approximately 1/3 of the United States

Why? Because of winter? They make cold weather gear for cycling. You can even buy rechargeable, heated gloves. You can buy studded tires, as well.

I had a year-round, 10 mile, each way, commute for 19 years, in temperatures ranging from 0F to 100F. (Humidity, raising the Heat Index over 100, is far worse than the cold.)

alkonaut 5 years ago | |

If it’s doable in Scandinavia I’d say it’s doable in the whole US too. It’s not comfortable some days, but it’s doable (disclaimer - I don’t do it even in nice weather but I pass a lot of people with my car that do).

garyrichardson 5 years ago |

> This is partly because electric cars aren’t truly zero-carbon – mining the raw materials for their batteries, manufacturing them and generating the electricity they run on produces emissions.

Ok. But then unless you're hand making the bikes out of wood you scavenged from fallen trees and don't use rubber tires, neither are bikes.

Like many pro cycling articles this one is one sided and assumes there is one solution to our environmental problems. Sure, we need people to cycle more, but we also need electric cars, changes in how and where we live, changes in what we eat, etc.

Probably the fastest way to impact all of this is internalizing the cost of carbon into all of our activities.. ie a big fat carbon tax.

avianlyric 5 years ago | |

> Ok. But then unless you're hand making the bikes out of wood you scavenged from fallen trees and don't use rubber tires, neither are bikes.

Are you honestly trying to imply the making a bike has even a vaguely similar environmental impact as making a car?

I mean seriously, a bike weights at most 20kg. A car at least 1000kg. That means you should be able get at least 50 bikes out of a single car.

garyrichardson 5 years ago | | |

No. I'm making two points:

1) Bikes aren't environmentally free either. Over the lifetime of each is the environmental impact of an ICE car -> EV the same as EV -> bike? Maybe not percentage wise but the data I've seen implies getting the ICE car off the road is the most important step. It's like the comparison of going from 10mpg SUV -> 30mpg compact car is more important than a 30mpg compact car to a 50mpg hybrid.

2) convincing everyone to switch to bicycles isn't realistic. More bikes is better. Wholistic solutions beyond just bikes are required.

phnofive 5 years ago |

The headline claim as laid out in the article:

> we found that emissions from cycling can be more than 30 times lower for each trip than driving a fossil fuel car, and about ten times lower than driving an electric one

Assuming we’re comparing single occupant passenger vehicles to bicycles (incl. e-bikes), this seems fairly self-evident and hardly actionable.

> We observed around 4,000 people living in London, Antwerp, Barcelona, Vienna, Orebro, Rome and Zurich.

> [...]people who walk or cycle have lower carbon footprints from daily travel, including in cities where lots of people are already doing this.

Okay, again, big surprise. Where that infrastructure exists to support such a move in dense cities, abolishing private car ownership would surely have some climate impact, but can we quantify it any better than .03x of ‘?’?

Robotbeat 5 years ago |

There's been a kind of anti-electric-car trend of late pushed by some concerned by climate change. I think this is a massive mistake.

Electric cars are good PRECISELY because they don't require a lifestyle change. That means you won't get a massive pushback.

Because this can't be about just convincing the convincible, folks who already don't have kids and who live in cities. We need to actually transform all of America. Who mostly DON'T live in places where they could feasibly get rid of their car.

Electric cars are a miracle. Cleaning the grid we absolutely know how to do (the grid is 30% cleaner than it was a decade ago, and we've barely been trying). They allow us to electrify in-place. That minimizes the political constraints to climate action in a way that literally nothing else does.

But what I worry people will take from articles like this is that if they don't bike, they might as well just get a conventional car. This couldn't be further from the truth.

olivermarks 5 years ago |

My sister and her husband were keen cyclists in London, despite constant bike theft and falls due to terrible road condition but they now have artificial knees and a bad back respectively and can't cycle. My sister in particular is incensed about the road blocks put up all over London that have resulted in several local deaths as emergency vehicles can't get through to attend to heart attacks etc.

In dense urban areas those fit enough can cycle as they do in China and other Asian cultures but there is a concern in the west about weather conditions practicality, hilly terrain etc. I get that lots of global warming worriers love cycling but there is a practical element to this that is all too often ignored

* Noise. From where I sit, the only noises that filter into my apartment from the city are occasional laughs or shouted conversations from bargoers, loud trucks grinding gears on the avenues, or honking of desperate commuters * Lack of space. Basically every city block in the USA is surrounded on all sides by areas where, if you walk into them without your wits about you, you could be smashed by a multi ton vehicle. When streets are closed for street fairs or the like, the "lack of space" complaint often drifts away - the whole city is your space again. * Danger. See above. There is of course also higher crime in cities, which I cannot find a way to pin on cars. * Grime/poor air quality - pretty self explanatory