TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY
URBAN MOBILITY: BICYCLES, E-CARGO BIKES AND THE CITY BY EYAL SANTO
How bicycles and e-cargo bikes impact our cities.
I
magine the day when we’re all rewarded for leaving our cars at home and travel to work, school, or errands using our bicycles; the day our employers incentivize us to commute using active transport: walking, cycling, riding public transit; the day when our local businesses are encouraged to switch from using dangerous and polluting delivery vans and trucks to clean, quiet e-cargo bikes. Imagine the impact all this would have on our emissions, pollution, noise, collisions, and casualties, on our urban life quality, and, essentially, on our very own health and wellness. So, it is time to decide: Which city do we want? The world’s most successful cities are ones whose elected officials and executive management realized flipping the transport hierarchy pyramid is the key: Pedestrians come first. A city should be a city for people, not cars. Cyclists come second. And to avoid creating conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists, make sure no cycling on sidewalks and offer a continuous network for bike lanes segregated from traffic where needed and shared with vehicle traffic on traffic-calm streets. Public transit comes after cyclists: robust service, efficient and effective, to all parts of town, reliable and frequent with a continuous network of dedicated bus-only lanes. The easiest way to move people from cars onto public transit is to build easy access to sheltered bus stops and build reliable service where riders do not need to mind the timetable. It always excites me to quote Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, who built one of the most robust and profound mass transit systems in the world: “If we are all
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equal in front of the law, then we must accept that a bus carrying 100 passengers has 100 times more right of the way than a car carrying a single passenger. Let’s look at bikenomics, the economics of the bicycle system. In every city where car lanes have been removed for bike lanes, local businesses along the way have thrived. The more bike infrastructure, the better bike culture is formed, and more people will switch to biking. Our urban quality of life will improve. And our urban society will be healthier and happier. Car dependence comes with a price. It does not only end with more than $9,000 annually for car maintenance and ownership; it continues by increasing our cost of living through parking requirements and wrongful zoning codes that fuel our housing prices.
Copenhagen, Denmark Copenhagen is an excellent example of a cycling city. In 2019, there were five times more bicycles than cars.
Imagine what could happen when a city reduces car ownership by only 15,000 cars. This is exactly what happened in DC from 2005 to 2009: the population increased by almost 16,000 people, but car registration went down by 15,000 vehicles. Living and working in a bikeable city has value beyond personal convenience. It also allows more money to stay closer to home, fueling the local economy instead of inflating deep pockets far away. In Copenhagen, Lund University researchers concluded that for each kilometer cycled instead of using a car in the city, the profit for urban society is 31 euro cents from 15 euro cents loss in cars up to 16 euro cents gained in cycling. The Danish Minister of Health also concluded that for every kilometer cycled,
Shanghai, China
The Netherlands
© ALAIN DELORM
© TOLKAMP METAAL SPECIALS
Copenhagen, Denmark
Berlin, Germany
© CITY CHANGER CARGO BIKE
© HERMES
