Oxford Professor: Cycling is 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

Cycling would also help to reduce the amount of dangerously fat people. Which is an ever increasing problem.

Electric cars have very little upsides compared to gasoline cars. They're basically made for the car industry. Not the consumer.

What we need is more cycling and public transportation.

Roads and highways would be perfectly fine cycling infrastructure, if we just got the giant motorized death machines off of them.

Yeah, but bicycles don’t have the same profit margins as cars

Edit: just gonna add that I was being snarky with this comment. I’m for walkable cities with quality public transportation infrastructure.

Cycling and walking are also far healthier options since they count for the whole "if you walk at least 30 minutes a day your chances of heart conditions drop by 70%" thing.

Even better, the fewer the cars around, the better it gets for everybody who walks and cycles (due to decreased pollution and less danger on the road).

Even electric cars and even if 100% of our electricity was from renewables still pollute due to the micro-particles produced by the tires when rolling on the road (and heavier vehicles make this worse).

I just want cheap and reliable mass transit.

I have an EV and I still agree with this. An EV is better than an ICE vehicle but it is no substitute for designing cities around people - footpaths, cycle lanes, recreation, public transport etc.

to be honest; a factor of 10 seems a bit low

Yes, I will cycle 15 miles (one-way) to the nearest produce section.

I'm all for bikes in sufficiently urban areas, but they are never going to be reasonable for 90% of America (by land mass, not population).

We need passenger train service (or other mass transit) that can cover lower density areas and still be reliable. (There's active train tracks within 100m of both my driveway and the produce section, so for me a passenger train would be ideal.)

who do I need to kill to get the infrastructure going?

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.

Ah thank god we still have 5 years. Now the climate scientists just need to advise the general public to start shooting all the cars through the motorblock because it has been scientifically proven that is the one way we'll make it.

Published: March 29, 2021 10.59am EDT

OH MY GOD!!!! WE ONLY HAVE A YEAR LEFT TO MURDER ALL THE CARS??

Unfortunately I live where its cold and raining 99% of the time. They are trying to build a line from where i live to where I work though so it might be bearable to bike the distance to the station in the rain

I think something that gets regularly overlooked is scooters. They can be gas or electric and they will drastically reduce emissions. ICE scooters can do 100 mpg and the manufacturing emissions are going to be a sliver of what a car or truck would be.

I used to cycle 7 km to work, but now, after moving to suburban village, there is no way to go other way than car. Especially with small kid. Unless you are fit enough to do 25 km every day by bike and risk your life (and potentially kid's) on the street between cars. So no, there is not realistic to "fuck cars". I am speaking from European perspective, probably US has the car things much more fucked up.

I can’t see this taking off in my city. It’s tropical here and during the colder months it’s in the 80s.

People are not going to cycle to work because they will be drenched in sweat by the time they arrive.

If sending 800 emails is the equivalent carbon released as biking instead of driving for a day then watching a 4k movie must be equivalent to burning down 10 acres in the Amazon. 🙄

Even if you need/prefer an ebike you get about 85 ebike batteries out of one Nissan leaf not even a powerful e-car the most pedestrian one.

but they're not handicap friendly... public transport serves a purpose... edit: I'm not saying keep using cars, I'm saying get more trains and rail... and then free up space for more bike lanes whatever

All I need now is the knowledge, sense of balance, and confidence to ride a bicycle

no shit sherlock!

They always ignore the rest of the world. Sure you can bike ride in yor little university town built from riches pillaged from the world but the rest of the world? You want India and Africa to ride bikes? Did they include the absolute infrastructure update in their calculations?