If everyone bicycled like the Danes, we’d avoid a UK’s worth of emissions

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/road_eqs_carh...

> Cars are MUCH more expensive to buy and own (sales tax used to be 180%, but I’m expat).

The 180% tax rate is the highest bracket. So you don’t pay that rate on the first $x of the car’s price.

So really expensive cars are almost three times as expensive, but cheap cars are about as expensive as in all other countries. Which is why you see a lot of cheap/small cars in Denmark.

Still, you can do a lot to make cities more bike friendly. In Silicon Valley it’s my impression that Palo Alto is vastly more bike friendly than all of the neighbor cities.

I love biking - taking the car would be horrible, especially parking wise, and the public transportation, while good and regular is just not for me.

Denmark may be warm compared to say Minnesota but it's further north than a very large chunk of the world's population.

Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany and basically all of Europe didn't always have the cycling infrastructure they have now, it's a relatively recent thing. If there's support, it can be built.

For hills, there are e-bikes. Yes they're more expensive than a regular bicycle but they're still a pretty recent invention. They'll surely get cheaper as they mature.

When that comes up, people make comments like "The problem with banning private jets for reasons of climate change: it is nothing but symbolism." and "Good intention but in my opinion this is a non-starter." and "This seems like the worst kind of envy politics.", to quote three of many HN comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32342021 from 16 days ago.

In the beginning, bike paths can be just painted on the ground / plastic barriers in riskier places. It can be improved upon later as the roads are going through more thorough maintenance / renovations.

Once some reasonably safe infrastructure is in place, the bike traffic often picks up pretty quickly on its own.

Critically, bicycles have very close to the same random route ability as cars. They’re excluded from most limited-access highways but otherwise can go directly to a place 2 miles away by traveling approximately 2 miles and without significant waiting times for the user. Contrast that with public transit that might need to go 5+ miles and involve a transfer, multiple waits, and walking on both ends to cover that same 2 mile journey.

It was practically possible for me to cycle to my old office. It was comically impractical (though technically possible) to use a combination of multiple buses and multiple subway lines to get there. For that commute (and I think many other journeys), bikes are competing with cars not public transit.

> The few exceptions where car modal share remains low and car ownership is relatively high, such as Switzerland, Japan, and the Czech Republic, have well-developed and efficient public transportation systems (e.g., public buses and subways) to satisfy their main mobility demand.

Thus, a ranking of "Vehicles per 1000 people" isn't necessarily indicative of vehicle use, and it's the latter which generates CO2 (for IC engines) and other pollutants, not mere ownership.

The paper calculates the effect of changing the modal share of bike use world-wide to match that of Denmark, and presents the first ever (to the authors' knowledge) substance for that calculation.

> The parties have agreed that an extra tier will be introduced, whereby a lower 25% tax rate will be applied to the car’s value up to DKK 65,000 in 2021. The 85% tax rate will then be applied up to the slightly higher value of DKK 202,200 in 2021, with the 150% rate above that level.

So you can buy a 80k DKK car and pay only 25% tax.

(Which is the sales tax rate in Denmark for all consumer goods)

Also, he gets to eat more cake without getting fat. Bastard.

Also, office buildings in industrialized nations usually have the necessary plumbing for a shower.

The pandemic showed that in many cases it's possible to work remotely - at least some of the time.

~30% of positions are desk jobs. Imagine 30% less people commuting daily.