Cycling is more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities • Hacker News Board

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

#581

Post by adrianN » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 5:56 AM UTC

moistbar wrote: post #407

uoaei wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your lawful right on roads in both cities is that you may occupy any traffic lane at any time on a bicycle. Be sure to ride in the center (maybe even slightly to the left) to avoid encouraging those behind you to try to squeeze by. Motorists are used to cyclists being slow because of this overly cautious approach that novice cyclists take to riding bikes on roadways. Another way to help retrain motorists' expectation…

>A more long-term, better solution would be to redesign infrastructure either to keep cyclists separate from motor traffic That's what I'd propose. Carving up the already scarce roadways to try and squeeze in a "safe" lane for cyclists is going to make it far more dangerous for both bikes and cars. Bike lanes that run above the street would be far safer.

That's a ridiculous proposal. Imagine the cost of creating a whole secondary road network above the current road network and the extra spaces needed for ramps up and down the elevated cycleway. This is something you can do in very special circumstances, but nowhere close to a general solution.

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

#582

Post by hello_newman » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

rtlfe wrote: post #411

zip1234 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community board meetings in general are a problem that nobody has found a great solution to. Oddly enough, the pandemic has caused most of these to go virtual, which has nerfed a lot of the power of the highly motivated old people with too much time on their hands.

Honestly the easy solution is to ignore the CBs. Surveys show that the majority of people want more bus and bike lanes, so just build them and skip all of the "community input" aka "giving veto power to a small minority". https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-bike-lane-survey-dat...

Wow, the blatant hypocrisy of this comment. Imagine some cause or topic in your local government that you're passionate about and someone saying, "hey, let's just do what we want because f*ck what the other side thinks".

If you don't like that a group of people have more perceived power than you in your local government then find a way to fix it ethically. Don't bypass local democracy just because you think it's easier to take a shortcut.

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

#583

Post by nightski » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:02 AM UTC

patrickyeon wrote: post #542

nightski wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It sounds like you bike for most of your transportation in your city? That's what "anti-car" people (speaking as one myself) want: to emphasize infrastructure that enables and encourages that. The "anti-car" thing isn't "ban cars entirely in all cases", just "stop assuming everything needs to be car-first at the expense of every other modality".

Yea my point is that if you want to be less car centric, maybe try moving out of the big city. It's ironically easier to obtain that lifestyle in a small city in America than the "walkable urban utopias" everyone seems to desire on HN.

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

#584

Post by libraryatnight » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #574

FpUser wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"To me owning a car seems much more miserable!" Well you are free not to own it. Nobody's forcing you. Actually my main mean of transportation in Toronto is bicycle myself (well I work from home for the last 20 years anyways). I also own car (van actually) and it gives me great and hassle free degree of freedom. If I am in a mood and I often am I can jump in and in few hours be in complete wilderness swimming in som…

Car centric infrastructure forces people to own cars.

And I don't know a ton of people that "buy" cars they can afford, they buy car payments they can afford. I just can't help but feel that breaking that cycle would be a societal good ( for people, sorry automakers).

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

#585

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

> 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?).

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

#586

Post by randomsearch » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #585

> 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…

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]

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

#587

Post by adrianN » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:29 AM UTC

africanboy wrote: post #255

jedberg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch have solved the kids/cargo problem. My friend lives in a suburb of Amsterdam. She has an electric assist bike with a cargo carrier. She uses it to carry kids and cargo, like groceries and such. She used it to carry four kids (her three and one of mine) when we visited. We took the rented car and she beat us there.

Netherlands is not a good benchmark for the rest of the World where altitude it's a thing > The Vaalserberg is a hill with a height of 322.4 metres (1,058 ft) above NAP and is the highest point in mainland Netherlands before anyone gets the wrong idea, the biggest problem is not going up, but going down (especially with kids, cargo or kids+cargo)

Electric bicycles are a thing now, as are strong brakes.

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

#588

Post by jamil7 » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:31 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #509

fvdessen wrote: post #307

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 viciou…

> 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 norma…

Are you suggesting that a cyclist would cancel out CO2 gains because they would need a whole extra meal of lamb per day? Apart from not being true this ignores all other externalities of car ownership and usage in cities.

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

#589

Post by piva00 » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:32 AM UTC

blix wrote: post #538

digital-cygnet wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I fully follow "I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it", but I think there are two potential points of disagreement: 1) Living in dense cities is not for everybody, but given that large and (at least pre-covid) growing majority of people in the developed world do choose to live in cities, I think it's safe to say that there is a very sizable demand. For an example of the bene…

The pre-covid world is kinda over. Density has very clear downsides that have never been more apparent. I don't know how often you do the train + car rental thing, but the friction is much, much higher than driving (especially if you have any sort of gear like you would for skiing). Not everyone wants to be so contricted both in freedom of movement and in living space.

The friction of owning a car is much, much higher than having to care a few times a year on how to carry your skis or sporting gear on a train and renting a car afterwards.

Personal anecdote: I was born, grew up and lived up to my mid-20s in São Paulo, Brazil. It's a city where a car is a basic necessity, much like in the US, public transportation sucks and is spotty, never on time. I owned cars, I loved the frictionless way to get out, getting the elevator out of my apartment, down to the underground garage, turning my car on and driving away, easy. But that car sat idle 98% of the time, I paid road taxes, maintenance, parking spot, etc. for the convenience of having a car ready to go at an instant time.

Nowadays I live in Sweden, I never need a car apart from moving houses or carrying some large furniture. A few times for a road trip here and there, I can just rent a car when needed and I come out on top of expenses still, the peace of mind of not having to take care of a car is another huge bonus.

The pre-COVID world will still exist, cities are a necessity if you want to have good public services, without higher density a city has no way to fund high quality public services.

I would like to know what clear downsides, apart from disease spread, has COVID showed from living in high density cities? And I mean cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and so on.

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

#590

Post by supert56 » Thu, Apr 08, 2021, 6:33 AM UTC

digital-cygnet wrote: post #530

nightski wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure I fully follow "I am pretty far from your utopian dense dream yet largely living it", but I think there are two potential points of disagreement: 1) Living in dense cities is not for everybody, but given that large and (at least pre-covid) growing majority of people in the developed world do choose to live in cities, I think it's safe to say that there is a very sizable demand. For an example of the bene…

People aren’t always choosing cities, there are greater work opportunities in cities and so that is where people have to go. This was true of factory work in the past when people migrated in droves from farms to work in factories because that was their only option and moving to work in cities for office jobs has just been the latest form of this.

Many people (although not all) would choose space in the countryside over dense in the city if they had a choice. I imagine this becomes even more likely as people have families and begin to prioritise other life aspects over and above work.