Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

I've downloaded the study on which the premise of this article is based and, as usual, it's assumed that the energy needed to move a bike has no carbon footprint, while in reality it has.

Specifically on an European diet(~1.5-2g CO2/kcal) a cyclist is responsible for ~27g CO2/km, which is not negligible and puts cycling on par with public transport.

I don't believe cycling to be a solution here. It's said that 25% of trips in the Netherlands are currently done by bike, but what is left out is that, according to this study(2012):

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01441647.2013.80...

50% of trips are still done by car.

Looking at distance traveled it's 75% cars and 8% bicycles.

That's after decades of changes in infrastructure to accommodate cyclists.

And the study say nothing specific about EV, also if you read the study that is supposed to justify why it ignore diet emission, it doesn't talk at all about a supposed lack of food increase in the face of increased physical effort, but health benefits from eating more legumes and fruits or physical efforts. The study seems pretty poor with the quality of data they have, they should try to understand why people doesn't cycle, with a computed bike or public transportation traject duration, and see if it explains the lack of cycling.

A lot of Dutch people live in suburbs and work in cities, that explains the bulk of car traffic. If you look at trips within cities though, the bicycle has a much larger portion. In Amsterdam 38% and in Groningen 57%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen

Comparing distance travelled is not really a useful metric in my opinion. Virtually no one is going to ride their bicycle 20-30 miles to work each day, when many people will happily travel this distance by car. It's for the short <5 mile trips that you want to incentivize people to take a bike instead of a car. That's where you have the most to gain in terms of making your city a more pleasant space to be.

Fair point, but I believe distance still matters in terms of CO2.

I don't see cycling as a serious proposition here, because it doesn't solve any new problem that isn't already handled by public transport.

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