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

Bicycles

3119 readers
4 users here now

Welcome to [email protected]

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
[email protected]
488
Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities (theconversation.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

True about Toronto. But it's also pointing out how Toronto gets much less snow than most of the rest of Canada (apart from maybe Vancouver). But it draws a lot of comparisons with Oulu, where it snows much more than Toronto (and Montréal) but they actually do snow removal well.

Montréal's forte is the separated bike baths that zigzag across the city, creating a safe artery. And I'm not talking about Bloor, College/Gerrard or Davenport level painted stripes with broken barriers. But actual two-lane paths.

Toronto could have the same, at least as an artery kind, connecting the East and North East via Don Valley and Taylor Creek, West along the Humber. Alas there's no winter maintenance for some reason on these pathways.

Maybe things will change under Olivia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

No I do agree that the video does provide a good argument that it is possible to fix. It’s pretty clear that with good, well maintained paths that more people will bike.

What I doubt is convincing Canadians that we need to spend a lot more building and cleaning up paths.

The video literally says it’s “laziness” whereas big infrastructure spending isn’t not attractive to North Americans. And their example of, “this one city figured it out” is not as convincing as “all of Europe figured it out”.