this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
488 points (94.5% liked)

Bicycles

3110 readers
28 users here now

Welcome to !bicycles@lemmy.ca

A place to share our love of all things with two wheels and pedals. This is an inclusive, non-judgemental community. All types of cyclists are accepted here; whether you're a commuter, a roadie, a MTB enthusiast, a fixie freak, a crusty xbiking hoarder, in the middle of an epic across-the-world bicycle tour, or any other type of cyclist!

Community Rules

Other cycling-related communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Evkob@lemmy.ca
488
Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities (theconversation.com)
submitted 10 months ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/bicycles@lemmy.ca
122 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.

The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will not feed in fast enough to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years. Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Cycling is great for short commuter trips. But it doesn’t replace long trips at all, not practically anyway.

Depends on what "long trip" means. 20km? 50km? 500km?

Sure, a bike isn't ideal for "long trips", but it's easily integrated into other forms of public transportation, which is also better for society than having more EVs.

[–] n2burns@lemmy.ca 10 points 10 months ago

Sure, a bike isn’t ideal for “long trips”, but it’s easily integrated into other forms of public transportation, which is also better for society than having more EVs.

You nailed it. I'm mostly WFH, but twice a week, I have to go into the office which is ~110km away. Fortunately, there's a train between the two cities and the station is 750m from the office, so it's a nice 10min walk. My home, on the other hand, is 3.5km from the station and that walk takes 45min even if I'm booking it. On a bike, it's a reasonable 12min ride.