Comment by aeturnum | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aeturnum | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're approaching this from the wrong direction (the article's framing doesn't really help). It's about how we allocate funds at a high level, not that every city needs to have an equal amount of cycling. From a climate change perspective, we care little about where we take cars off the road.

So while it's true that Siberia won't ever be bike-first, we should understand that each person we can get to transition to biking is worth 10x the carbon reduction of getting them to transition to an EV. It will also be harder! But the 10x heuristic should help us think about how to balance the increased difficulties against increased benefits.

Also, this is a transition that will eventually involve everyone. There will always be people who can't cycle and we need to maintain room for them to be full participants in a non-petrochemical-based economy. This makes low-carbon personal transport like cycling even more valuable in the context of needing to allow people with more limited mobility options access (they will need the parking spaces we increasingly hope to move away from).

> we care little about where we take cars off the road.

as someone who almost completely abandoned the car, even though I live in Rome, one of the most car crowded cities in the West (and probably the World), if we care about taking cars off the road, we need to make cities walkable

Many areas of Rome already are and have been by design, because pedestrians and cars don't compete for the same space and there are large enough sidewalks

in the city centre where streets are narrow, cars usually drive very very slowly, because the road is occupied by people walking and have precedence

But when pedestrian share the space with other vehicles, like in car restricted areas, that's where things start to get unpleasant if not impossible

bikes, electric bikes, scooters they all make walking difficult to the point that pedestrian need to be careful about them more than with cars

in this covid times with virtually no cars for Rome standards, my biggest concern when I am around is avoiding riders and their bikes, they are everywhere and respect no rule.

I can be relatively sure that on a one way only street no car is gonna suddenly appear from the wrong direction, not so much with bikes (and other two wheeled vehicles) especially because they are extremely quiet

this is my experience after 45 years as a Roman citizen and 7 years without a car

> if we care about taking cars off the road, we need to make cities walkable

I couldn't agree more! IMO increasing walkability will be key to both increasing density and decreasing carbon impact.

The point I was driving at when saying we don't care where we take cars off the streets is that taking 100 cars out of, say, Rome, has about the same impact as taking 10 cars out of 10 other cities. There are places which are more interested in moving away from cars today than others and, while we eventually want to get all of them, we can start where resistance is lowest.

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