'Pretty remarkable': UBC study finds e-bike rebates led to decreased car use
'Pretty remarkable': UBC study finds e-bike rebates led to decreased car use
This is why if ANY government is serious about reaching climate targets, achieving "vision zero" goals, or improving the quality of life of their people, they should be highly subsidizing the industry and also offering rebates to anyone (including businesses) who wants an e-bike.
Even just nixing one road expansion project could likely pay for tens of thousands of e-bikes in a region.
Not just that, but it also puts significantly less wear and tear on the road vs cars. So you can save money there by getting more people to bike.
Do we really need every road to be dedicated to cars anyways? It's a lot of repaving. You could dedicate a few roads to bikes, or bikes and buses, and potentially repave way less often. And repaving and repainting isn't cheap. The more you think about it, the weirder it is that we've paved a massive grid of roads so that anyone can drive in a 500x500 foot square. Dedicating some foot traffic, some to bike and bus/rail, and some to cars could help people get away from having to drive everywhere because anything else is too unsafe due to cars.
Not just that, but it also puts significantly less wear and tear on the road vs cars.
And that translates to lessened pollution from concrete dust. The roads wear down, and when they do, it gets into our lungs. Yet another benefit of switching to bikes.
And that's even before considering the decrease in dust/pollutants from repaving like you mentioned:
You could dedicate a few roads to bikes, or bikes and buses, and potentially repave way less often.
Every time we re-pave, we spew a shit load of concrete dust/pollutants into the air we breathe. The less we do that the better.
Plus less concrete means less CO2
Not just that, but it also puts significantly less wear and tear on the road vs cars. So you can save money there by getting more people to bike.
Yeah, there was a video or podcast, I forgot from whom, where they talked about costs. They showed that cycling infrastructure actually MAKES cities money, and car infrastructure always loses money.
When you factor in lowered healthcare costs, less infrastructure costs, increased local business and community involvement, more equitable transportation options, and climate - giving everyone an ebike could be one of the best things that any place could possibly do.
I love that modern cities like Paris and Amsterdam and unfucking their transportation system by making fewer car roads available (or making them narrow, rather than expanding them) and putting an emphasis on cycling and other forms of micro and public transportation.
Every city in the world should be following their lead.
Shifter on Youtube has a fantastic video on how Paris is changing their roads to be better for biking. Highly recommend it! I hope my city uses it as a template.