No Gas=Less Greenhouse Gas: The Bicycle Equation

There is the Paris Climate Accord.  And there are other agreements between nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Among them is the European Green Deal, adopted by the European Union member states.

A common criticism of such plans is that they're "too little, too late."  Or, more precisely, the goals are ambitious but there are few or no details about what will be done to meet them, or how.  Also, many scientists and others who study pollution and climate change say that the target dates are too far into the future:  The crisis is, and therefore the work needs to be done, now.

In an article she wrote for Parliament, Jill Warren points out another deficiency of the EGD which, I suspect could also be a fault of other plans to "go green" or make cities--and the planet--"sustainable."  I mentioned it last month in writing about Nicolas Collignon's excellent Next City article.  

Essentially, both Warren and Collignon say that any plan to make a city or this planet more livable or "sustainable" should include bicycling--or, more exactly, ways to get more people to ride bicycles.  But planners, whether at the municipal or continental level, seem to have a blind spot where there are vehicles with two wheels, two pedals and no motor (unless you count the humans pedaling them).  Neither says, but I believe both agree with, what I am about to say next: While not everyone will, or want to, be a racer or long-distance tourer, most people can cycle for short trips.

And, I think that each one makes a proposal that, while seemingly very different, are very closely related.  Collignon says that one problem with much planning is that the planners think we can "technology" our way out of our problems. (Some of that mentality is, of course, a result of the sway technology companies have over policy-makers.)  Thus, planners are oblivious, not only to bicycles, but other low-tech solutions.

As planners think in terms of high-tech, they also tend, especially if they are in large governing bodies like the EU, to see the world in macroeconomic terms.  That is why, I believe, that the drafters of the EGD don't mention something that, when I read about it, seems glaringly obvious:  re-shoring Europe's bicycle industry.

Road transport accounts for 26 percent of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions.  I suspect the proportion in similar in Japan and other developed economies.  Some of those emissions come from vehicles transporting manufactured goods, and still more from planes and other forms of transportation.  Re-shoring bicycle (and other) industries would mean that bikes, parts and accessories now made in China would be manufactured once again in France, Italy and other EU countries, as they were until around the beginning of this century.

Cyclists waiting at a red light in Munich, Germany.

Warren's idea ties into Collignon's because as raw materials and manufactured goods have to travel shorter distances to their customers, the means of accounting for, as well as transporting, them don't have to be as technologically sophisticated.  

So, yet another voice is saying that planners and policy-makers need to take a longer and closer look at the bicycle.  Let's hope that Jill Warren and Nicolas Collignon are seen as oracles or prophets rather than as Cassandras.

Why Don't They Include Bicycles?

One of the more interesting (to me, anyway) ironies of my life is that I often ride in or through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, the site of the 1964-65 World's Fair. 

My now-vague memories of having attended with my parents and younger siblings (whose memories are probably even vaguer than mine, if they have any at all!) include visions of flying cars and sidewalks that weren't because, well, people didn't walk:  They were conveyed on belts to their destinations.

It was a time when progress was depicted as inevitable, limitless and always aided and abetted by technologies that made our daily lives less arduous--and took ever-greater quantities of resources.  Nuclear energy would be the power source of the future because advances in its technology would render it "too cheap to meter." In those days, "sustainable" was not part of planners' vocabularies.

Sometimes I wonder just how much we've moved on from such thinking.  In his article for Next City, Nicolas Collignon points out that even as cities like New York  Paris Milan and Bogota invest in bike lanes and other incentives to trade four wheels and one pedal for two wheels and two pedals, too much of today's planning is based on such innovations as self-driving cars and flying delivery drones. At the same time, according to Collignon, too many planners neglect the role bicycles can play in making cities more livable, sustainable and affordable.

So why do planners have such a blind spot for our favorite means of transportation and, well, just having fun?  Well, since you, dear readers, are smart people, you probably have the answer:  money.  Specifically, where the money comes from:  automotive and high-tech companies, which have much deeper pockets than any in the bicycle industry.  

Photo by Francois Mori

Of course, those auto and tech companies--even the ones that tout themselves as "green"--have ties to the fossil fuel and military (given our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I cannot call it "defense") industries.  That may be a reason why those planners have similar blind spots to the effects clean-looking technologies and "cleaner" automobiles actually have--or why they bought Uber and Lyft's sales pitch that their services would reduce traffic.  If you live in almost any major city, you can see how much that prophecy has come to pass. 

I also can't help but to think that those companies--and, sometimes, the urban planners themselves--are, openly or covertly, stoking drivers' resentments toward cyclists.