Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving • Hacker News Board

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#21

Post by crzwdjk » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

squidfood wrote: post #10

In my city, they've just taken some two lane roads down to one lane and eliminated car turning lanes, to add bike lanes. Those bike lanes see maybe 1 bike every 15 minutes, while the cars are now significantly more backed up (I've noted an extra 5-10 minutes of idling to travel a mile during busy times, no idea how many cars total in a day). Without denigrating the need for bike safety and separated lanes, I really w…

It's a good question. Whoever is responsible for the road/bike lane should probably be doing some traffic counts to see how things are working out, but who knows if they've bothered to collect the data.

One problem with just going by your impressions is that cars take up an awful lot of space and a road can look full of cars, even if they don't represent a majority of people. On the typical NYC (or Boston) street, pedestrians outnumber cars 10:1, but get much less than half the space. For another example, the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago has 7 lanes in each direction, and two subway tracks in the middle. The subway can (and likely does) carry more people than all the expressway lanes.

Another problem is that in urban settings specifically, the capacity of a road is pretty much always limited by conflicting traffic at intersections, and so the exact number of lanes doesn't actually make a difference as long as it's enough to feed cars through the green lights at an optimal rate.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#22

Post by squidfood » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

timthelion wrote: post #20

squidfood wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except: I don't see any evidence that it has worked at all - at least not in the 2 years the lanes have been there. Nice idea, but data would be nicer. (aside: always nice to see downvotes for wanting observations and data - if the data belies my observations, I'm all for that).

This really comes down to a "moral health of the citizenry". In Germany and the Netherlands these programs work. In the US, less so. If you were to take a %100 data based approach, and not take into account the choices of people, you would no longer be studying sociology but rather mind control. If you have a way, that actually is effective at changing peoples behavior, regardless of what the people want then that is…

In this city's case, they've dragged their heels on public transport - nothing near what I found in Amsterdam, for example. Slowing down car drivers by 5 minutes will not get them to switch to the public transport that would add 30+ minutes. Include better public transport, and more people would switch. But throwing up obstacles without providing alternatives doesn't do the job (and based on my city, there would have to be some mind-control to get more public transport funded, unfortunately).

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#23

Post by antisthenes » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:05 PM UTC

As always, the practical, dirty, coal-using, environment neglecting China is way ahead in practice than the Boston PhD theorists funded by billions of old US money.

This is a solved problem: you generate electricity via Solar and commute via electric bike, lowering kcal consumption and increasing average speed and range at the same time.

The problems are cultural and infrastructural - it needs a critical mass of cyclists to become safe to ride electric bikes in the US, otherwise you risk being run off the road by the majority of drivers who are distracted using their phone.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#24

Post by sixstringtheory » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

I'd bet that most people eating fast food meat probably aren't commuting by bike. You can do both at the same time with a car, though, and burn fuel waiting in line at the drive thru to boot!

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#25

Post by sonthonax » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #23

As always, the practical, dirty, coal-using, environment neglecting China is way ahead in practice than the Boston PhD theorists funded by billions of old US money. This is a solved problem: you generate electricity via Solar and commute via electric bike, lowering kcal consumption and increasing average speed and range at the same time. The problems are cultural and infrastructural - it needs a critical mass of cycl…

Phone use while driving needs to be cracked down on though draconian measures like roadside flogging.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#26

Post by sonthonax » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:10 PM UTC

ysea wrote: post #12

alephnil wrote: post #8

You can't turn off the body, and you need exercise to stay healthy. Thus it does not really make sense to compare cycling to driving like the article does. If you are driving to the gym, and then using the energy you would have used biking at the gym, you will cause the combined emissions of both cycling and driving. The only way to get away from that is to be more passive, so that you would require less food, and th…

Precisely, I either bike or bus to work every day. If I take the bus I do some other form of exercise instead. And I certainly don't eat less on the days I ride the bus. I would imagine most people that get around by bike maintain a steady level of exercise during times when they are biking less. Whether or not the author's intent was to discourage biking and encourage driving they have done exactly that.

I run 8 miles to work a few times a week. I still shock my colleagues with how much I eat those days.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#27

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:10 PM UTC

ysea wrote: post #12

alephnil wrote: post #8

You can't turn off the body, and you need exercise to stay healthy. Thus it does not really make sense to compare cycling to driving like the article does. If you are driving to the gym, and then using the energy you would have used biking at the gym, you will cause the combined emissions of both cycling and driving. The only way to get away from that is to be more passive, so that you would require less food, and th…

Precisely, I either bike or bus to work every day. If I take the bus I do some other form of exercise instead. And I certainly don't eat less on the days I ride the bus. I would imagine most people that get around by bike maintain a steady level of exercise during times when they are biking less. Whether or not the author's intent was to discourage biking and encourage driving they have done exactly that.

[deleted]

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#28

Post by anon_d » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

While the article is clearly setting up the calculation in a very slanted way, I think the point they are making is still interesting.

I definitely don't think this is (or even an attempt to be) an effective criticism of the environmental value of biking.

However, even with a biased setup like this, the fact that the numbers can be massaged into the same ballpark really shatters my intuition here. I think my take-away is that I've clearly been underestimating the climate impact of meat consumption, and that's interesting.

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#29

Post by antisthenes » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

squidfood wrote: post #10

In my city, they've just taken some two lane roads down to one lane and eliminated car turning lanes, to add bike lanes. Those bike lanes see maybe 1 bike every 15 minutes, while the cars are now significantly more backed up (I've noted an extra 5-10 minutes of idling to travel a mile during busy times, no idea how many cars total in a day). Without denigrating the need for bike safety and separated lanes, I really w…

Not enough incentives to use bikes in the policy then.

Not all countries and people are the same, so what maybe be enough incentive for 1 person or culture (oh, they made bike lanes? I'm going to bike to work now! versus oh, the road still has cars on it? I'm not biking, because it's not safe!) is not enough for another.

Either way, the only one to blame here is the local government for either not doing enough research initially or not incentivizing people to use bikes over cars enough (e.g. we'll pay 50% of your new bike price up to $X )

Re: Climate Impacts of Biking vs. Driving

#30

Post by timthelion » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

timthelion wrote: post #14

Things the author failed to include in the study: 1) Road land use, a bike lane is narrower than a car lane. 2) The energy invested in building the car. Aluminium parts, which cars are made of, have very significant energy investments. 3) CO2 emissions of asphalt used to pave the roads that cars drive on. 4) CO2 emissions of the cars tires vs the bikes tires 5) Calorie consumption of the person driving/riding in the…

That's not to say that this kind of analysis is always useless. I have a whole bunch of old junk in the attic, and I feel it would be a pitty to throw it out, but if I were to spend hours sorting through all it and finding uses for the things, the callories burned would probably outweigh any benefits from reusing the items which probably aren't needed by anyone anyways. So my instinctive reaction to "not throw things out" might actually be bad for the environment when taken to the extreme.

I'm just saying that this analysis in particular is simplistic, wrong, and harmful.