Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently.
More and more young people are choosing bicycles, buses and trains over owning a car out of the sheer cost. In Berlin, it’s public transport, not cars, which is the coolest way of getting around.
In Copenhagen, a city that has a long held reputation for being bike-friendly, a whopping 62% of people choose to cycle their commute.
In the French city of Lyon, the number of cars entering the city has fallen by 20% compared to just a decade ago. As the city’s network of bike hire stations continues to grow, town planners are hoping for a further 20% decline.
In London, where cycle super-highways are becoming popular, the share of journeys made by car has fallen by a quarter since 1990.
Car free days are rising in popularity in many of the world’s largest cities, giving people a taste of what it’s like to live with less noise, traffic and pollution. Bogota was one of the first cities to introduce a car free day, and it’s now become so popular that it’s been extended to a full week.
Bogotá’s Ciclovía is fantastic! I was there in the mid-nineties and they closed a major artery, the Carretera Séptima, on Sundays. Here some pictures.
I’m on the edge of suburbia, butting up against ag rural. It’s ten miles to the next town either direction. My bike gets forty on a full charge. And most of the streets (with the exception of the major roads every couple miles, most of which have functional bike lanes) are one and a half lanes wide, 25 MPH and I usually only see people walking their dogs and the postmister when I’m out there. My 20mph governed ebike does great for getting me around locally. I ended up slapping a collapsible 35L milk crate on the back (I think that’s the right volume) for when I need to pick up a couple hundred pounds of kitty litter. Which the wife says is tomorrow yaaaay
I guess my point is (I actually have one this time!) I bet a bunch of rural folk could do pretty well using an ebike as their primary vehicle
They’re slowly adding bike lanes along some rural roads in Sweden. I wish they’d hurry it up, because with e-bikes and cargo bikes you could just skip having a car, especially if they added some good bike garages near bus/train stations.
I think so too, e-bikes are very underrated. it becomes a problem if the distances get to 30-50 miles between townsthough. Maybe some battery swap tech with solar recharging stations could do the trick.