Pg. 113: cycling can make societies fairer
Pg. 113: bike is the most equal and democratic form of transport, more inclusive
Bike can expand physical and social boundaries
USA - transport is 19% of household budgets [cities], 25% if in a car-dependent place
Pg. 115: "The deeply unjust is that in thousands of cities, from London to New York to Shanghai to Delhi, transport is mainly built around cars, and thus explicitly for the benefit of the richer-than-average minority who disproportionately own them. More than this, the external social costs of driving tend to fall predominantly on the less prosperous, who are more likely to live near a main road, enduring noise and smog, with their community bisected by busy traffic"
Mayor Enrique Peñalosa built hundreds of miles of protected bike lanes, viewing them as the key to equality
Louise Jeye saw the bike as middle-class women's freedom. This was at the time when there was a wider social revolution that followed invention of first modern-looking bike in late 1880s. The bike helped loosen constraining social standards of Victorian era
In "The Eternally Wounded Woman," the author talked about how doctors praised cycling to help with female being sedentary
Not exactly progress because women felt so much more free on the bike in the Victorian era
Gentrification by young progressional who want to live close to work
Gentrification and bike lanes are connected now, rising housing costs have socially transformed many neighborhoods
Pg. 134: "One historic criticism of bike advocacy in places like America and the UK is that it has tended to be dominated by the more vocal privileged riders, and can neglect what are known as "invisible cyclists." These tend to be people from very low-income households who ride to their jobs because they have little other option, yet rarely appear on official statistics, let alone arrive outside city officials' offices lobbying for safer bike routes in their communities. In the United States, census data shows the group most likely to cycle (and walk) to work are people with household incomes below $10,000 a year - that is, the very poor. In the last few years, both bike advocacy groups and their backers in city governments have become more aware of this issue, particularly in America. Minneapolis, a city with well-documented income and racial divisions, is about to embark on a plan to build almost 150 miles of protected bike lanes. Lisa Bender, who cofounded the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition before jumping the fence to become an elected city council member, says these are designed to run to poorer, more distant neighborhoods, as well as the better-off inner suburbs"
Tamika Butler talks about social justice & biking
Pg. 137: "Talk of bike lanes, she says, must be part of a wider narrative about other inequalities connected to things like employment and relations with the police"
Pg. 138: "Right now, drivers pay to enjoy mobility," said Angel Gurría, a Mexican economist. "But the cost to the environment and to people's health isn't fully reflected in the price we pay to drive. If you're a motorist, this might sound like pretty radical stuff: driving, worldwide, needs to be disincentivized by being made more expensive. But Gurría was absolutely right. He was talking about the global blight of vehicle-related pollution. It's an indicator of the sheer, unimaginable human toll from the global dominance of motorized transport that even this third-most lethal side effect - after physical inactivity and crashes - possibly kills about a million people a year around the world"
WHO estimates that 3.7 million people die early from outdoor air pollution
PM2.5s - fine particles from exhaust
Poorer nations see a predominance of pollution problems even though they own fewer cars
Pg. 139: "The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 3.7 million people a year die early from outdoor air pollution - but this includes all sources, including industry, power stations, and smog from people burning domestic fuels. These all mingle together, along with pollutants blown in from other countries and separating the individual health hazards is difficult. One 2012 study from the UK, however, estimated that emissions from road transport contributes to about 40 percent of air pollution deaths"
Study by ECF compared emissions for bikes and bikes
Pg. 146: "A major study from 2011 by the European Cyclists' Federation (ECF) began by trying to compare average emissions for bikes and e-bikes with other forms of transport, taking in both the environmental cost of manufacture and of use, which for bikes included extra calories consumed by the rider. Even after factoring in a hefty average bike weight of nearly almost forty-five pounds, the ECF calculated emissions of twenty-one grams of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per kilometer, with e-bikes putting out just one gram more. In contrast, the emissions for a car were 271g/km per person, with 101 g/km per bus passenger"
Pg. 147: 2015 report said that e-bikes can be more energy efficient per passenger kilometer than rail systems
What does this mean, that e-bikes are more energy efficient?
People who are not car owners pay about 35 percent of total costs of vehicle use
Economic efficiency of a car-dominated transport system is very overstated
Victoria Transport Policy Institute report on the hidden costs of cars
"Effective speed" vs. "actual speed"
"Effective speed" factors in how long we need to pay for the car
Paul Tranter at University of New South Wales talks about effective speed
Pg. 173: "Tranter argues that the modern equivalent of this is the time people spend earning the money needed to pay for a form of transport. And you need to spend a lot more time at work to pay for a car and its running costs than those a bike"
Tranter says that effective speed would be the same even if building new roads would double average in-car speeds
Main principles of bike infrastructure:
- Bikes should be kept separate from motor traffic on busy roads [Dutch bike infrastructure manual says that the separation must be physical]
- On roads where separation is not practical, cars should slow down to 20 mph. Make back streets less appealing to go on [bike permeable dead ends or one ways]
The DUTCH crow manual and "sustainable safety" five basic principles
- High traffic volume through routes, local routes, distributor roads, link the two
- Homogeneity - size, speed
Pg. 369: "Dr. John Zacharias, a Beijing-based academic and urban planner who has lived in China for decades, believes cycling could make a return in the country in part through bike-share schemes, allowing people to connect to urban rail stations. "I have this feeling it's going to take off - bike sharing with metro systems, " he says. "Just now the walking distances don't allow the metro systems to penetrate very far into residential districts. A bicycle-sharing system extends that by about three times"
Pg. 372: "This big deal would ease pressure on crowded inner cities. The moment people can get from a suburb rapidly, reliably, and at low cost, these suddenly become far more attractive, for both living and businesses. In turn, the gradual demise of private cars would make the suburbs more walkable and bike able, and thus increasingly pleasant places to live"
"Roads were not built for cars" by Carlton Reid
Late 19th century cycling organizations led lobbying for property paved highways
In 1896, the rule for cars were mid 1890s, bikes ruled the roads
Pg. 383: "The Finnish capital, Helsinki, has outlined an ambitious plan to not so much bar cars from the city center as make them pointless, thanks to the proposed "mobility on demand" system, taking in shared bikes, driverless cars, buses, and other means, all organized via one app. It will not just be a Nordic utopia. Lyon, birthplace of the modern bike-share system, is plotting to extend its Velo cycle network to electric cars and other communal means of transport"