Hot take: if you can choose between an #ebike and a car, of course take the bike.
However if your choice is between a regular bike and an e-bike the former is much more environmentally friendly.
In short, biking become less and less environmentally friendly the more regular bikes get replaced with e-bikes and e-scooters.
Why is it that people cycle more in the Netherlands than in any other country ? The answer is in the infrastructure. Long established blog with content up to the present day detailing how the infrastructure of the Netherlands makes cycling so pleasant that almost everyone cycles in this country and a higher proportion of cycle journeys are made here than anywhere else
@hembrow @WhyNotZoidberg I feel like blaming ebikes for that seems like a bit of a stretch, then? Especially as the prices for all bikes are high. One reason I bought my ebike was precisely that - if I was going to buy a cargo bike anyways, I might as well get electric assist.
If car ownership is increasing, that's the issue, and the ebike stuff is likely to be a symptom and not a cause. I do also wonder about public transport cuts, which are themselves something RW governments like to do.
@prestontumber You can feel that way if you want, but e-bikes are at least a large part of what is destroying cycling in my country and I'm not happy about it.
Public transport has little, to nothing at all, to do with any of this. Dutch people don't use public transport very much at all.
About 2% of all journeys in this country are by train, and about another 2% are by bus/tram and subway combined. That's not changed in years.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2015/05/how-much-do-dutch-really-cycle-how-is.html
@WhyNotZoidberg
...literally nothing you have posted supports that, especially if regular bikes are getting more expensive as well. You can do "old man yells at cloud" all you like, but it's not actually objective.
Disregard public transport all you like - inadequacies in transit are a reason people may choose autonomous modes of transport, and cars are one such mode. You can say "that hasn't changed in years" - has the population? Has the housing market? Has the median age?
@prestontumber Not only have you completely missed the point, but you've also begun an ad-hominum argument. Is that objective in your world ?
You clearly have no idea about how the Dutch bicycle market works.
To maintain our fleet of 23 million bicycles in 2000 with sales of 1.5 m bikes per year in 2000 required that each bicycle would last around 14 years. A bicycle would typically be on its third or fourth owner by the time it was beyond economic serviceable age and end up scrapped.
With sales of proper bicycles plummeting in large part because of people who buy new bikes buying e-bikes instead, and because e-bikes go to landfill after five years because they can't be repaired, we now need each new real bicycle to last 60 years in order to maintain the fleet size. That's impossible.
This effect will take a few years to make itself obvious, but without enough bicycles we won't be able to cycle as much as now.
If you can magically come up with a method whereby a fleet of 23 million bikes can be sustained from annual sales of 350000 new bikes without requiring them to last >60 years on average please let me know.
Please read the blog post. I already explained all of this, *and* also answered many of the typical responses that people come up with:
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2022/03/the-challenge-of-declining-bicycle.html
@WhyNotZoidberg
@hembrow @WhyNotZoidberg You're the one who started the incivility, not I. You don't get to go on arrogantly about "feelings" when my statements were clearly just a courtesy to avoid pointing out that you were making the fairly elementary logical fallacy of confusing correlation with causation.
I have heard your argument, I just find it perplexing you want to pretend that bicycle sales exist in a vacuum, even in a country as bike-friendly as NL.
@prestontumber I wish I had a solution but unfortunately, I don't.
"Don't buy ebikes" is indeed a non-starter. They've been pushed incredibly heavily by bicycle manufacturers and the idea of not being required to do much actual pedaling has clearly been made very attractive to "bicycle" customers. Consumerism is in. Repairability and sustainability are not. E-bikes lean on an open door with today's consumers.
I think what we're watching now is very close to a repeat of what happened a hundred years ago when many established bicycle manufacturers switched first to manufacturing motorbikes and then started making cars. Just like early motorbikes, early e-bikes also looked like bicycles. But newer e-bikes are becoming steadily less bicycle like, heavier, bulkier, much less efficient and no longer really rideable without the motor. It's the same profit chasing as a century ago combined with the same selling ease to the customer as before.
Sadly, "don't vote for right-wing politicians who make driving more attractive" is also a non-starter. My country recently voted for our most right wing government since the 1940s occupation. We already have a remarkable number of financial disincentives for cycling and they're not going to fix any of that.
We're in a bad place.
@WhyNotZoidberg
@jonathanavt Absolutely agree.
The documented negative effect of e-bikes on the fitness of teenagers is especially sad to see.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2497778-rivm-maakt-zich-zorgen-nederlanders-zijn-flink-minder-gaan-bewegen
Human powered bicycles have to be built to be efficient or they're not usable. Even the better E-bikes are horrible to ride without assistance, and the ridiculous designs (e.g. fatbikes) are basically impossible to ride.
Fatbikes remind me of the Yamaha FS1E of the 1970s. These were really popular with teenagers in the UK because they were unrestricted in speed (if built before a certain year) but because they had pedals they were licensed in a really liberal way. You couldn't actually pedal then anywhere, though. Those pedals existed only to get around the law.
I understand they were also available in NL under similar conditions (but I didn't live here then).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_FS1#/media/File:Sweet_16_Fizzy.Yamaha_FS1E._-_Flickr_-_mick_-_Lumix.jpg
@WhyNotZoidberg
@jonathanavt Indeed. 20 km just isn't that much to ride in a day if you keep a reasonable level of fitness. Actually, it's only slightly more than you need to ride each day (without assistance) in order to keep your body at a reasonable level of fitness:
https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2017/12/cyclings-recommended-minimum-daily.html
But as we already discussed, people aren't too concerned about fitness these days.
Fifteen years ago things were very different and e-bikes were IMO quite a positive thing. For instance, I remember working on adapting an e-trike for a young girl who'd been thrown from a horse (the danger of horses being a whole other subject). She could no longer balance or pedal well and providing her with an e-bike meant she could still join in with friends on the way to and from school or for after school events. One of our kids had a friend who used an e-bike because she had a breathing problem, so that allowed her to join in with everyone else. But now it's just everyone, all the time.
I sometimes wonder if e-bike usage, and perhaps also increased driving, to some extent now compensates for long-covid (over a million Dutch people suffer from this).
@WhyNotZoidberg
@prestontumber compared to normal bikes? Yes they are worse. I don't think anyone can argue that the combination of mining, electricity for charging (that might come from coal or oil plants, at that) isn't worse than a theoretical half a burger or whatever. That said unless your dietary needs are way off you actually don't eat more, you just lose some weight.
Also this video is made by an e-bike manufacturer.
I wonder if you actually watched the video, because - unless I'm mistaking this for a different analysis of ebikes I've watched - they mention the issues with mining and manufacturing. That said, these amounts are absolutely *miniscule*, especially the charging.
@WhyNotZoidberg My problem with your statement is that it implies something like this:
walking > transit > bikes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ebikes >>>>>>>>>>>> cars and trucks. Even if I grant your premise, which I do not, the reality is probably a lot closer to walking > transit > bikes >> ebikes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cars and trucks.
Let people have fun with, and feel good about, a thing that has been consistently shown to get people into cycling.
@prestontumber ??? No idea where you got that from.
All I said is that people who can handle a normal bike no problem and switch a functional bike to an e-bike (or worse, a scooter ) are doing a bad thing
@WhyNotZoidberg "However if your choice is between a regular bike and an e-bike the former is much more environmentally friendly."
This is incorrect, full stop. You literally said *much*. If you'd said "slightly", you'd be saying what I am saying.
For the record: your statement doesn't match up to my lived experience. My acoustic bike broke on me all the time, my cargo ebike never has.
@prestontumber Idon't see a single comment supporting that assertion. I see a lot of comments pointing out that if you haven't got the option for regular bikes for some reason, e-bikes are a great alternative.
We can put this to rest, but the biggest problem not addresses is the longlivety: bikes last around 15 years, often longer with minimal care. That would require several battery replacements on an e-bike.
@WhyNotZoidberg Again, not consistent with my experience - I have had a lot more reliability from my cargo ebike than with my older commuter bicycle.
Multiple people have cited theses and studies in this thread. You've argued back, and I will concede it is possible my initial position of walking > transit > ebikes > bikes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cars and trucks is possibly wrong. It still seems far likelier to be walking > transit > bikes >> ebikes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cars and trucks.
@prestontumber and I don't buy that with the data I have , but maybe you just bought a crap bike? While with the price a cargo e pedac costs you better get a quality product...
To that point I might add my suspicion that one reason bike sales are down is not scooters etc but that bikes are bloody expensive these days even accounting for inflation. There is a reason the university town I work in is full of bikes 30+ year old: back then you got good quality cheap. They're still rolling.
@WhyNotZoidberg It was a mid-range new commuter bike, ~800 USD. The cargo ebike is more expensive, sure, but it's from a bargain-basement brand within the electric bike space.
I think you need to really examine your priors here. Not everyone is a slim, single person living in flat area with good cycling infrastructure. For that matter, even a class-two isn't a scooter, no matter how much you might feel otherwise.
@prestontumber You are again adding things to the argument I've never brought up, in fact I have wholeheartedly agreed with everyone saying they're perfect for people who for some reason can't handle an "analog" bike.
Also I am far from skinny or fit but thanks for assuming so I guess?
(Also 9000 SEK for a bike? Yikes. That definitely strengthen my hunch that the main reason for a declining market for new bikes is the overpricing).
@WhyNotZoidberg That's an interesting assertion. How did you calculate your "several hundred times"?
I read a master's thesis 10 or so years ago that compared the carbon emissions of using an e-bike with using a regular bike and, for most diets considered, the emissions were lower for the e-bike. The emissions related to manufacture were taken into account.
@WhyNotZoidberg I'll post a link if and when I find the thesis. There's no guarantee that it is still online, though.
In the meantime, do you have evidence for the "several hundred times"?
@fix_it_bob I think I found an article referring to the paper you talk about and it is full of questions:
The paper claims e-bikes are more environmentally friendly than walking because you eat more when walking.
There is no information for the source for "average European diet"
The paper assume nobody loses weight by exercing.
There is no consideration to the fact that in order to make an e-bike have the lifespan of a regular bike at least one battery replacement is necessary.
@fix_it_bob in short the paper seems to be of the spherical chicken variety, a purely theoretical product.
(Plus it is fascinating to find a paper that seriously argue that humans should exercise as little as possible)
@WhyNotZoidberg Here is a Cycling UK article quoting 21 g/km for a "conventional bike" and 14.8 g/km for an "e-cycle":
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/how-much-carbon-can-you-save-cycling-work
The 21 g/km figure appears in the following publication, which may be the source for the above:
https://ecf.com/files/wp-content/uploads/ECF_BROCHURE_EN_planche.pdf
I can't find the 14.8g figure, though. However, there is a 22 g/km figure for "pedelecs".
Reducing our carbon footprint is something we should all be aiming for, and cycling short journeys is one of the best ways individuals can do this. Content officer Rebecca Armstrong looks at how cycling is the least carbon-intensive way to get to work
@WhyNotZoidberg this is like worrying over which vegan foods have a higher carbon impact. Technically true, but totally myopic.
https://tnmt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CO2-output-by-transport-type.png
Bikes at the top, everything else below. Just ride a bike and don’t sweat it.
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