Be Cool on a Budget

How bicycle infrastructure is the cheapest way for cities to reduce their carbon footprint

Written by Copenhagenize Planning Analyst, Sam Gagnon-Smith

 
Photo: TRAVELBLOG

Photo: TRAVELBLOG

 

Here at Copenhagenize we like to talk about the countless benefits of designing and building good infrastructure for bicycles. First and foremost, well-designed intersections and bicycle paths keep vulnerable road users safe. When paired with accessible bike parking and effective connections to the public transport network, they give non-drivers awesome access to the city. And cities where you can get around without a car are simply more liveable than their gas-guzzling counterparts: safer, less noisy, cleaner, healthier and less congested. 

If, like us, you’re a fan of bicycle urbanism, you are probably already familiar with the long list of benefits a city reaps when it has good bicycle infrastructure and lots of safe, happy cyclists. But did you know that it is one of the most cost-effective ways to fight climate change and for cities in the developed world – maybe the most cost-effective way? 

Forward-thinking cities have recently fallen in love with bicycle infrastructure because they want clean air, healthy citizens and smooth and safe mobility on their street networks. But Barcelona, Montréal, Tokyo, Bogotá, Paris, Taipei are not only narrowly concerned with their own local realities but with the health of the whole planet. Rightfully so. According to C40 Cities – an alliance of almost a hundred cities dedicated to fighting climate change – cities are both the most vulnerable to, and the best-positioned to fight climate change. Indeed, more than half the world’s people live in cities, and carbon-generating activities are increasingly concentrated in cities, especially in the developed world. Cities in the developed world, then, have both the potential and the responsibility to fight climate change for the global community.

But money always seems to come up short for initiatives to fight climate change. Luckily for the cities that have been seduced by Danish and Dutch street design, they are already on the right track to reducing carbon emissions without breaking the bank. For those cities that have not yet taken the plunge into designing for bicycles, they can look forward to massively reducing their emissions at a comparatively low cost while enjoying higher quality of life, more efficient use of time and space, and all the other familiar benefits of cycling citizens.

It’s difficult to predict precisely how many tons of CO2 you can save if you build a kilometre of bicycle lanes - the precise answer is highly complex, and depends on many geographic, sociodemographic, economic, and engineering factors. That being said, for a given municipal government in the developed world, there is likely nothing - dollar for dollar, euro for euro - better than bicycle infrastructure for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 
Photo: Elina Sazonova

Photo: Elina Sazonova

 

Here’s why.

First of all, a large proportion of developed countries’ carbon emissions come from transportation, and there is great potential for emissions reduction in this sector. In the USA, the UK, Spain and France, transportation is the most carbon-heavy sector. In Canada, Germany, Japan and Russia, transport comes in second after energy production (due to the use of particularly polluting energy sources, like oil sands and coal). Furthermore, most of the carbon emissions from transport in the developed world come from passenger vehicles on the road – mostly cars and pickup trucks, but also motorbikes, buses and trains. This is the case in the USA, Canada, and for the European Union as a whole, among others. Clearly, countries like Canada, Germany, Japan and Russia could make real progress in reducing their carbon emissions by shifting to cleaner energy sources. Such initiatives are largely outside the purview of municipal governments and urban-level actors, however. If cities can find an effective way to get people out of their cars, there is huge potential for progress on carbon emissions across all developed countries.

According to the European Cyclists’ Federation, the production and maintenance of the average bicycle over its useful lifespan results in emissions of 5 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre travelled, or 6 grams for an e-bike. The production, maintenance and fuelling of a car driven in a mostly urban environment amounts to 271 grams per km. Getting someone to cycle instead of drive will therefore that individual’s commuting-related carbon emissions by up to 98%. This figure is even higher for North America, where cars are larger, with more emissions during production and driving. For commuters that face steep hills and long distances, the e-bike provides a very clean option, at only 6 grams of CO2 per kilometre per rider for production and maintenance (this does not include any emissions resulting from the production of the electricity in the e-bike’s battery, which vary by country). 

So getting people to cycle instead of drive clearly makes a big impact on individual carbon emissions. But how do you get people to cycle, and is it affordable? Here at Copenhagenize, we know that in developed countries the crucial factor in getting people to cycle is good infrastructure. The principal barriers to cycling in Canada and the United States are long distances and lack of safety on the roads: infrastructure is the most important factor for overcoming these obstacles and getting people to cycle. In many European cities, urban cyclists are less at risk, perhaps, but the lesson is the same: cities with lots of cyclists have good infrastructure, and improving infrastructure is the best way to increase cycling modal share. A good bicycle network will also connect cyclists with destinations and attract new users by making cycling a visible, physical reality on the streets. Good bike infrastructure can have an even greater impact when it is complemented by other kinds of policies - see for example Vienna’s hugely successful cycling promotion campaign. The bottom line, though, is cities that want cyclists need to keep cyclists safe, and the best way to do that is with good street-level design. 

 
Photo: Travelblog

Photo: TRAVELBLOG

 

Comparing costs

How expensive is it to keep people safe? Less than you might think. Let’s compare the cost of bike infrastructure to the cost of an electric bus. The electric bus has very low emissions - in some places, depending on how the bus’ electricity is produced, and how the extra food the cyclist needs to power their ride is produced - the electric bus may be the cleaner of the two. 

A fully electric bus costs around $US 650 000, including the infrastructure required to maintain and recharge it. A kilometre of protected bicycle lanes starts at around $US 200 000 for the basic but effective ‘paint and post’ model, but best practice protected lanes, with full concrete protection, cost around $US 1 million per km, depending on conditions. Roughly speaking, then, you get 3 fully electric buses for the same cost as 2 km of best practice bicycle lanes. Let’s look at a real-world case to better compare these two options.

Amsterdam is a good case study, with its world-class bus (and tram) network and its world-famous bicycle infrastructure. The city has about 500 km of best practice bike paths and 5,000 buses. Referring to the figures above, it would cost more than 6 times as much to build Amsterdam’s bus network (using only electric buses), as it would to build Amsterdam’s bicycle network. In other words, you could have a great electric bus fleet in one city, or Amsterdam’s bicycle network in 6 cities! And that comparison does not include the massive disparity in maintenance costs: an electric bus eats up about $US 25,000 in maintenance and servicing every year (not to mention the drivers’ salaries), whereas bike lanes only require cleaning and resurfacing, and less cleaning and resurfacing than the wider roads used by buses. 

 
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Another cost comparison: in 2016, a team of researchers at McGill University estimated that adding just 45 km of bicycle lanes to the network of Montréal would have roughly the same effect on greenhouse gas emissions as replacing every single diesel bus in the city’s fleet with hybrid buses and electrifying all the commuter railways. 45 km of safe bicycle tracks, designed for a mix of busy and calmer streets, would cost somewhere around 10 million dollars. Replacing all the buses and electrifying the trains would cost well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though it’s difficult to predict precisely how much carbon a bicycle infrastructure project will save, it is clear that building good bicycle infrastructure is one of the most, if not the most cost effective ways for cities in the developed world to reduce their emissions and fight climate change. There is huge potential for reduction in passenger vehicle emissions across all developed countries, and bicycles are the best alternative: their emissions are negligible, the cost of giving them a safe and equal place on the streets is low, especially compared to other clean alternatives to the car, and they carry with them a wide range of additional benefits that help to make cities more lively and liveable. 

Photo: Maria Orlova

Photo: Maria Orlova

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