by dfgdghdf on 4/7/21, 5:43 PM with 753 comments
by Tiktaalik on 4/8/21, 12:25 AM
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.
by fvdessen on 4/7/21, 9:07 PM
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
by jedberg on 4/7/21, 6:33 PM
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.
by steelframe on 4/7/21, 7:45 PM
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.
by CabSauce on 4/7/21, 6:22 PM
- 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
by sergeykish on 4/8/21, 1:58 AM
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
by laingc on 4/8/21, 1:23 AM
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.
by abeppu on 4/7/21, 6:59 PM
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.
by rollcat on 4/7/21, 7:46 PM
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.
by acd on 4/7/21, 6:48 PM
1. Cycle 2. Electric Bus/Tram/Taxi 3. Electric Car/Biogas Car
by frereubu on 4/7/21, 7:22 PM
by Ericson2314 on 4/7/21, 11:03 PM
- 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 :/ ...
by Tade0 on 4/8/21, 2:53 AM
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.
by dheera on 4/8/21, 2:25 AM
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?
by ppf on 4/7/21, 7:17 PM
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).
by glangdale on 4/8/21, 3:11 AM
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.
by peterthehacker on 4/8/21, 12:47 AM
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.
by Johnny555 on 4/8/21, 12:33 AM
by vkou on 4/8/21, 1:38 AM
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.
by cwkoss on 4/8/21, 6:14 AM
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?).
by balls187 on 4/7/21, 10:44 PM
by m463 on 4/7/21, 6:19 PM
by physicles on 4/8/21, 12:36 AM
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.
by xhkkffbf on 4/7/21, 6:20 PM
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.
by rdiddly on 4/8/21, 1:20 AM
by gordon_freeman on 4/8/21, 3:20 AM
by imnotlost on 4/7/21, 7:14 PM
by causality0 on 4/7/21, 11:08 PM
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.
by hokkos on 4/8/21, 12:17 PM
by skeeter2020 on 4/7/21, 10:46 PM
...
>>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.
by Johnny555 on 4/7/21, 11:46 PM
by hi41 on 4/8/21, 8:12 PM
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.
by globular-toast on 4/7/21, 7:52 PM
by eldenbishop on 4/7/21, 11:25 PM
by pjmlp on 4/8/21, 5:44 AM
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.
by nemoniac on 4/7/21, 8:27 PM
Where I live (Amsterdam) there's plenty of cycling so I wonder if there might not be more to win from electric cars?
by kmonsen on 4/8/21, 3:05 AM
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.
by julienb_sea on 4/7/21, 6:44 PM
by gowan on 4/8/21, 1:05 AM
* 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/
by irrational on 4/8/21, 12:58 AM
by taurath on 4/8/21, 4:26 AM
You can solve for density, but the other 2 aren’t in a cities control.
by jonnycomputer on 4/7/21, 6:49 PM
by torgian on 4/8/21, 5:08 AM
And from there, only walking and cycling traffic above ground with buses and trains for public transport.
by uoaei on 4/7/21, 11:08 PM
This goes for electric cars, bikes, and even your little OneWheel.
by dcchambers on 4/7/21, 8:47 PM
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.
by sigzero on 4/7/21, 11:36 PM
by ykevinator3 on 4/7/21, 8:34 PM
by samcheng on 4/7/21, 7:00 PM
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!
by jeddy3 on 4/7/21, 8:14 PM
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?
by b0rsuk on 4/7/21, 7:11 PM
by acwan93 on 4/7/21, 6:43 PM
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.
by jtdev on 4/7/21, 6:22 PM
by garyrichardson on 4/7/21, 6:47 PM
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.
by phnofive on 4/7/21, 6:11 PM
> 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 ‘?’?
by Robotbeat on 4/8/21, 4:41 AM
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.
by olivermarks on 4/7/21, 6:41 PM
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