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

I don’t doubt this at all.

But it’s going to be 10 degreees Fahrenheit on my way to work tomorrow.

Public transit that doesn’t double my commute time is what’s going to get me to stop driving. Not a bike.

Cycling is not the solution. It's infrastructure.

I would love a walkable city. But I can't afford housing close to the city. The bus or train system isn't strong enough or convenient enough. Our country are set up for cars. Housing prices are set up for people to drive further to live.

Have affordable housing near the places I work and I won't need to drive. Stop blaming people for living their lives around a broken infrastructure. Stop cramming bicycles down our throats. We are not the problem.

As an avid bicyclist who tried their best to live car-free: it's easier said than done for anyone living in the US. I used to make 7 mile commutes to work, even in winters that could go below zero some days. It's doable, but it wasn't easy either. I completely sympathize with anyone who wouldn't want to bike in those conditions, even if a whole bunch of people do so in places like Finland.

But the worst part is the infrastructure. Motor vehicles dominate everywhere. Motorists are routinely hostile to bicyclists. Despite my best efforts to be safe, I've had multiple close calls and was once nearly rear-ended by someone who was going about 50 mph. Technically I did get hit - I had veered to the right just in time to feel the side of their car brush on the side of me. Miraculously suffered no injury, and only one of the support bars on the rear rack had been dented in.

Point is, unless the infrastructure changes, I would never expect others to switch to biking. It is dangerous.

This is a very simplistic solution to a really complicated question. I say this as a cyclist myself.

Cycling is great for short commuter trips. But it doesn't replace long trips at all, not practically anyway.

Cycling, while great for your health, consumes extra calories that you wouldn't otherwise have to expend. That extra food has its own carbon footprint. Depending on your diet and where it comes from, that extra carbon footprint can actually be quite significant.

Cycling reduces congestion. No argument there.

Even if you cycle, you are probably cycling to local stores that have their merchandise driven in on big trucks. It's still probably more efficient this way, but far from net zero. Remember that the environment you live in is still mostly powered by gas guzzling equipment. That equipment will need to be electrified.

And that's my point. Cycling is not a one size fits all solution. It is one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

... even if you swap the car for a bike for just one trip a day.

That's the real takeaway that I hope everyone can acknowledge.

Outside of long distance (50km+ each way) commuting, the majority of single-occupancy car trips tends to be super short distances (something like <5km).

Replacing those short trips can be fun, easy, quick, and could have a massive positive impact on society. We just need more people doing it. 👍

Cycling, outside of the few separated bike trails, is a death wish in TX.

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

There's the problem. These articles always come off sounding tone deaf to me, because they refuse to acknowledge the existence of people that don't live in big cities. There are a fuck load of people that don't live within a 15 minute drive of a grocery store. People that have multiple kids that go to school and have after school activities 10+ miles from their house. People that live more than 25 miles away from where they work.

I realize the authors might have good intentions, but when I hear articles that basically say "your EV isn't good enough, you need to ride a bike" I can't help but think "oooooh fuck off." Not everyone lives in a city. Not everyone wants to live in a city. An EV is the best option I have, so quit giving me shit for it.

I'm going to call bullshit, the biggest sources of emissions for logistics and transport aren't consumers. It's industry use, including airlines and sea freight.

Even if you don't include sea freight, then passenger cars are still only 45% of total transport emissions.

The title is even very clearly worded as an opinion, with it being "important" being intentionally subjective language. Get some bicycles and shit, support cyclist infrastructure, but also definitely support electric rail, planes, and freight.

But what if I fart a lot during

For context: The environmental impact of PRIVATE JET travel can be over 1000 times more than other travel modes. Aviation produces just under one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, accounting for 2.5% of global CO2 pollution.

Let the exploitation-class cycle to Davos.

honest question is it practical to shop for 4 people using a bike? how do we get around the need to move things? i,guess if you had an e bike and a trailer it could work?

Yeah, I’ll just haul my kids around on an electric bike when it’s 20 degrees F (-7 C) with a windchill around 0 (-18 C), which also coincides with EVs getting absolute shit range because current batteries hate holding charges at that temperature. Also, I drive a 20 year old vehicle with 190,000 miles that I paid $3000 for 6 years ago or so. EVs and even E-bikes cost a whole lot more than that without the utility.

On top of that, calling vehicles that contain lithium batteries “zero-carbon” is laughable. The mining, refining, and manufacturing process in itself is an environmental disaster. I agree we need to find new modes of transportation powered by methods other than burning coal, natural gas, and dinosaur juice, but we don’t currently have the solution to this problem.