Oxford Professor: Cycling is 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
I don't think it's required to be a professor to tell this. It's pretty obvious that a 2 ton car is worse for the climate than a 15 kg bicycle. They also do completely different things though.
The article seems to bash on electric cars for no particular reason.
You know what would be even more environmentally friendly than even bicyling to work? Staying at home. Working from home could save a lot more and doesn't require infrastructural investments.
Anyway, the percentages mentioned are still quite low. It would make a larger difference to focus on other kinds of transport than personal vehicles.
There are larger fish to catch. One of them is the ships. A lot of them transport fuel. Changing personal transport to electric cars, regardless of how efficient they are or not, will also have the effect of lowering the amount of fuel to be shipped around. The environmental impact of distributing fuels is larger than the impact of personal vehicles, so by all means, we should change as many industries and transport forms to electricity instead of fuel, including personal vehicles.
That's great if the city can rezone to make the city bikeable/walkable. You can't just add bike lanes or a path to an existing city designed around cars and expect it to make a change. Things are too far apart for people to just switch transit methods from cars. Having to bike 5 miles to various stores all the time isn't viable.
At least where I live, the city centre was built and designed around walking and public transit, but then the city destroyed those streets to make way for cars. If the city were to reverse those changes and build back areas designed for walking and cycling, it would result in a much better city centre, without any drastic restructuring.
Yeah. My city put in bike lanes literally everywhere and I never see anyone on them. They still have to cross traffic all over the place so they’re really not much safer.
On the other hand, there are some bike paths that were put in next to the old railroad. These rarely cross traffic and they have people riding them all the time.
Put the fun between your legs.
I have 30km there and 30km back from the from the shops on country roads. An electric car seems a safer and more practical way to encourage a change in my circumstances.
Old mate commented before reading the headline 💀💀💀
That is only really a good solution for the few that live in the countryside. If sufficiently many people live close enough to one another without a shop, that is a issue that is best solved by improving planning and introducing local shops (reducing the distance all people in the community have to travel).
You do you, other people live in the city
There is also a social engineering aspect. Our populations and cities have been developed in a spread out fashion with services and shops established in hubs. They aren’t the villages of the early 1900s. The car was the major design influence, hence the problem. Some people are lucky and can walk, others are able to cycle however many just can’t conceive anything other than a car. That’s where EVs come in.