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.

Not To Die--Or Kill--For

Some of us have seen bikes "to die for."  When I was a teenager, almost anything with a frame made from Reynolds 531 tubing and Campagnolo components would have been, if not Nirvana, then a ticket to it.

Speaking of which: A year before he offed himself, Kurt Cobain expressed shock at ticket prices for his band's concerts:  $17-18.  In today's dollars, those prices would be double that amount. At the time, other acts charged anywhere from 50 to 75 dollars for the privilege of attending one of their shows.

Anyway, what I said in the first paragraph might, for some of you, beg the question of whether any bike is worth dying for.  Or, to follow this line of thinking, worth killing for.

That is what Bobby Peters asked Tellious Savalas Brown.  Peters, however, was not merely posing a rhetorical question during a casual conversation.  Rather, he was determining the course of 19-year-old Brown's life.

Three years ago, at a Columbus, Georgia bus stop, Brown fatally shot 60-year-old Roy Wilborn to steal his bicycle. Turns out, he'd committed an armed robbery of a restaurant and shot at said restaurant's employees.  Oh, and the car he used to get to the crime scene, and wrecked in fleeing from it, was stolen--hijacked at gunpoint, to be exact.

The hijacking charge and more than a dozen others were dropped in a plea deal.  But, as a penalty for killing a man for his bike, robbing the restaurant and shooting at employees, Judge Peters sentenced Brown to life with the possibility of parole--after 30 years.

"Why do all this?," the judge asked. "All over a bicycle?  This just doesn't make sense."

Bikes Without Brews?

Around 2010, a new kind of business emerged:  the bike cafe.  Some were established bike shops that added counters, stools and even tables and served coffees, teas, snacks, sandwiches and even light meals and craft beers.  Others, though, like Red Lantern in Brooklyn, offered bikes, accessories and repairs along with fuel for the ride (or re-fueling for after it) from the day they opened. 

About five years ago, Red Lantern closed.  According to its owners, Brian and Lena Gluck, the final nail in the shop's coffin was a large rent increase, although they noted that they started to lose business a couple of years earlier when a Starbucks opened two blocks away and the Citibike program rode into full gear. The bikeshare program wasn't the "gateway drug" to a bike purchase, Brian noted. Although Citibikes, like most other share programs' bikes, are heavy and clunky, people weren't interested in getting a nicer bike.  Rather, they liked "compromising between not getting stolen, not having to maintain it, and not having to lug it up four flights of stairs," he explained.  Also, many Citibike users are tourists who aren't going to buy a bicycle during their trip unless it's very different from, or much less expensive than, whatever they can buy at home.

He's not the only one who misses Red Lantern.

The factors Gluck cited upon closing the shop may well have led to other bike shop/cafe establishments ending their runs.  After Red Lantern, I noticed a few other such closures. At the time I thought it had to do with the things that led the Glucks to close their shop and, possibly, that Millenials--who were those establishments' chief patrons and sometimes the proprietors--were simply moving on to other things.

But now I am hearing of, and reading about the end even more such businesses, here in New York and elsewhere.  Still others--like Mello Velo in Syracuse, New York--are getting out of the brew 'n' bagel business.  I have to wonder whether the cafes of  Mello Velo and other such establishments simply never recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.  While bike shops remained open, I can't help but to think that when masking was mandatory early in the pandemic, people didn't stay for coffee when they bought their bikes or had them fixed.  

If that is the case, it's ironic:  While the pandemic was a boon for many shops (though others closed because they couldn't get any more inventory), it was a disaster for almost anything having to do with hospitality--except, of course, for takeout.