Biking is life.
Biking is policy.
Global warming: systemic solutions for a systemic problem.
The question is simple. How do we help decrease the biggest threat to how we live today – global warming? The question alone can be debilitating, especially when you consider the size of the problem. Did you know that CO2 can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years? This fact alone should spur us to do everything in our power to get to carbon-negative, but our inaction has resulted in us being bystanders and witnessing the most extreme climate crises in the history of our planet. The time to act is now. We will only overcome individual and collective paralysis by developing innovative, actionable solutions to this growing systemic problem. While there will be many answers and approaches that arise to address this complex problem, one simple solution will always be true: people riding bicycles for transportation is an excellent solution to keeping carbon in the ground, creating jobs, and nurturing healthier, happier communities.
The 200 Year-Old Solution
The Simplicity of Innovation
Bikes have been a proven technology for over 200 years. Invented during a previous climate crisis, bikes provide an affordable, low-carbon, highly versatile mode of transportation for almost everyone. A person eating a burrito will get enough calories to bicycle about 16 miles, while a car will go less an 1/4 of a mile on the same energy. For electric vehicles and petroleum-fueled vehicles, most of the energy is used to move the vehicle, not the people in it. Whereas almost all of the energy put into the pedals of a bike move the bike and its rider forward. If we intend to get to zero emissions and, more importantly, carbon negative, the United States cannot wait for a new silver-bullet/technological fix for global warming. One fix is already here, and it’s a simple as riding a bike.
By investing in biking we can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) in the U.S. This investment will increase the number of people on bikes and reduce our dependency on petroleum-fueled vehicles. With our current fleet of petroleum fueled vehicles, the transportation sector is responsible for 29% of GHGE, making it the single largest contributor to global warming. When we look closer, light duty vehicles (autos & trucks) are responsible for 59% of that figure. In California alone, transportation accounts for an astronomical 41% of GHGE. These figures illustrate that the transportation sector is where the largest reductions in GHGE can be made. Currently, nationwide, biking is only 12% of transportation mode share. Increasing the number of people on bikes and the number of miles and trips they make to 49% of mode share will keep an additional 600 million metric tons of carbon out of our atmosphere per year, the equivalent of 4.1 million acres of U.S. forests kept from being converted to cropland per year. Using less gas will also reduce petroleum extraction for fuel production, which in turn will reduce methane emissions. This will significantly reduce our GHGE emissions and make us a model for other nations.
By investing in non-petroleum transportation options, the US can significantly reduce its current GHGE rates, a significant outcome as we address global warming. Biking is a safe, fast, convenient and normal transportation option.
Biking for Recreation and Transportation
Make It Better with Biking
When teaching I like to use the phrase, “look where you’re going, because you're going to go where you're looking.” Only when we seriously look at global warming as a systemic problem will we look for systemic solutions. As we move forward, the way we view, use and imagine transportation needs to change—and quickly. Global warming is already upon us, and the consequences are now much worse than had been predicted just a decade earlier. Adding to this are the social and economic impacts of the Covid-19 global pandemic. However, we can begin to quickly and effectively mitigate the social, health and economic impacts of both by implementing and cultivating a new biking culture.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our lives. Encouraging more people to feel the joy and empowerment of biking will bring agency into their lives as a positive and urgent solution to address many of the challenges we face. It is something we can do and be proud of, now and in the future. When people riding bikes equals 49% of mode share, that is the equivalent of nearly 3 million fewer round trips to the moon by car. This is another American moon shot! In today’s dollars that first trip to the moon cost about $162.5 billion—that succeeded because we had the will and we developed the way. This new American moon shot can succeed too!
Bikes have the versatility to meet the needs of people and families. E-bikes are especially good for families due to their flexibility of use and efficiency. For example, riders can carry larger and heavier loads farther than they can on a conventional bike. This is particularly useful when running errands or when carrying or pulling children in a trailer until they can ride a bike on their own.
Another plus for bike transportation is the minimal impact people on bikes have on the deterioration of roadbeds and surfaces, and the minimal use of resources. For example, when we look at auto usage, there are negative externalities (a cost that is suffered by a third party as a result of an economic transaction that does not benefit that party) which must be factored in to determine the true impact to the environment and people. Examples include the fuel they use, the resources used in their manufacture, their emissions of GHGE, NOx, SOx, particulates, and road wear. And this does not entirely change when the auto is electric. While electric vehicles do not emit NOx and SOx, they do consume a large amount of resources. The idea that the wholesale replacement of petroleum-fueled private vehicles with electric ones for combating global warming is a chimera. Unlike autos, a bicycle’s weight is negligible: it requires a mere fraction of the resources for production and needs minimal energy input to use. The choice is ours, to move forward with bold decisions to help drastically reduce GHGE or maintain the failing status quo.
Promoting bicycles as a main form of transportation is smart because bicycling:
aids in the reduction of GHGE
uses less resources to manufacture and to operate and takes up less road and storage space than autos
is healthier than sitting in a car, decreasing medical costs and negative health implications
increases wellbeing
provides minimal impact to infrastructure wear-and-tear
During almost the entire lifetime of fossil-fueled vehicles, no one has done an accurate cost-benefit analysis of their use, with economists and policy makers failing to place a value on things like health, communities and the environment. Likewise, we haven’t required companies to internalize their negative costs, allowing these costs to be externalized to the general public. This causes prices to artificially skew downward, making all items made with and transported via fossil-fueled vehicles appear cheaper than they really are. If the true costs were charged at the point of purchase, prices would be much higher. It’s not clear that we would have made the choice of private automobiles for most of our transportation needs if these costs were included in the building of roadways, vehicles, and petroleum extraction and refinement.
This is finally beginning to change. In 2014 the Dutch Ministry for Transport found that “for every kilometer that is cycled, the health effect for society in the form of prolonged lifetime and improved health condition can be measured to almost .9 euros (roughly $1.77 per mile.)” In line with this powerful finding, research also shows that people who bicycle to work self-report being happier, healthier and more productive.
Supporting the idea that things are beginning to change, there are thousands of people across the country working on bike advocacy, active mobility access, improving transportation choices and reducing GHGE at the state and local levels. But to accelerate this change, we need a national response to support state and local efforts and help municipalities accomplish their goals faster and more efficiently.
We must have the right information to make informed decisions. When all the negative externalities autos receive are included in the decision-making process, people will be better able to make truly informed and rational decisions about their transportation choices.
It’s Time to Elevate Biking for Transportation
Bicycling Administration within the DOT
The current U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) takes a minimal stance on bicycles relative to other forms of transportation. Despite the increase in biking the USDOT is not geared up to increase the numbers of people on bikes and bike infrastructure. To achieve maximum effectiveness and drive adoption and elevate biking for transportation in the public’s consciousness, a new bicycling administration is required within the DOT. This new administration would provide the required structure and a highly skilled staff of bicycling architects to administer policy on a national level, including multi-modal transportation recommendations and overseeing congressionally allocated funding for each state.
The U.S. already spends more in a single year
coping with the damages of climate change
than it would cost to create and fund a
Bicycling Administration within the USDOT.
The main tenets of the Bicycling Administration within the DOT would be to reduce the spatial, temporal, economic and social barriers currently present in biking and multi-modal transportation options. Solutions to these barriers will create sustainable jobs, reduce the spending associated with the negative effects of climate change, and contribute to reductions in GHGE.
A new Bicycle Administration within the USDOT would enable the following programs and innovations:
national bicycling safety and bicycling infrastructure guidelines
bicycling for transportation and health benefits publicity campaign
Administer rebates for bike and bicycle purchases
bicycle safety education for all road users
national learn-to-ride and ride-safely programs for all ages
The new administration will work to encourage the use of bicycling for transportation, educate all road users regarding their responsibilities and rights, coordinate with the other administrations within the USDOT, and integrate multiple modalities to better meet the needs of the public. Traditionally, the USDOT road design regulations have accepted road fatalities every year, which are currently upwards of 35,000. Only through improved road design, with an emphasis to minimize human error, will we create safer roadways that lead to fewer collisions, casualties and deaths for all road users.
Multi-Modal Engineers
Staffing the new bicycling administration with the appropriate staff, including multi-modal engineers with bicycling expertise, will be the key to success. This means staffing with engineers who ride regularly for transportation, with riding experience on streets with and without bicycle infrastructure. Traffic engineers and planners who do not ride bicycles may have only a theoretical grasp of the needs of people on bikes. Traditionally, their designs, driven by motorized vehicle-centric policy, focus on the movement of motorized vehicles. As a result, they create vehicle-centric ecosystems that are not designed for or focused on the safety of all road users, which includes pedestrians and cyclists. Cities such as San Francisco are actively working to incorporate bicycling and walking into the infrastructure to make it safer and encourage more people to bike. These efforts need to be expanded and replicated throughout the country.
Engineers with biking experience know that the most important selling point for cycling, despite all the benefits of cycling, is improved safety. When policy and design employ a people-centric approach, people on foot and bikes are given priority along with mass transit. Bike lanes, protected bike lanes, and paved trails are the most important factor in making people feel safe enough to cycle in metropolitan, suburban and highly-populated areas. Improving safety and the perception of safety will enable more people to bicycle for both transportation and recreation. The perception of safety occurs with the addition of new bike lines. Actual increased safety occurs with protected bike lanes.
In addition to safer cycling spaces, the new administration and engineers, working in conjunction with state and local bike advocates and governments, would be responsible for creating standardized safety regulations to drive improved bike safety. This would include such items as traffic/bike flow, integrated biking signals, and sufficient bike lane widths.
In San Francisco, there is a very high percentage of bike lanes that are of a substandard/unsafe width. This places people on bikes in the door zone of cars when they are in a dedicated bike lane, putting the bicyclists at a high risk of being doored. In the last few years, two of the people killed while riding bikes in San Francisco were riding in bike lanes of substandard width. Both were struck by people opening their car doors, throwing the bike riders into oncoming traffic. These types of tragedies are 100% preventable with improved biking infrastructure.
Bike Infrastructure
The national interstate highway system was conceived-of and built for our national defense and safety. We can do the same now for our national defense and safety regarding global warming and its impacts by creating safer infrastructure for people on bicycles. Currently the USDOT’s Complete Streets program provides grants to cities to study and improve infrastructure. , When funding is increased the number of staff will also need to increase in order to make the changes necessary for safer bicycling and cycling regulation. As we move forward, new road construction and repaired road infrastructure should be required to include protected bike lanes. Policy, improvements, and modernizations will make new bike infrastructure appealing, safe, and efficient. This will encourage bike use and foster the continued development of a biking culture, driving both public interest and public use.
Cultural Adoption
The cultural shift necessary to inspire more people to ride a bike for transportation instead of driving will not happen on its own. Imagine how great it would be to bicycle via a bike lane to a bus stop, light rail stop, train station or airport, make easy and efficient transfers, and arrive at your destination. Then imagine cycling to work, to your family’s or a friend’s house, to a local museum and shops. Better still, imagine the opportunities now available to marginalized or low-income communities with access to a low-cost, efficient, healthy and fun transportation option. Ideally, the above scenarios would be available to each of us. With social awareness, acceptance and desire we can get there. But social awareness doesn’t happen on its own. It must be cultivated. To drive acceptance and adoption, the new administration will promote bicycling and road safety at the national level to encourage people to bike, take advantage of biking rebates for bicycles and e-bikes, access biking incentives and safety training, and promote incorporating biking into their daily and social lives. When people can easily, quickly and efficiently transfer between modalities, especially for trips of longer distance, they are more likely to be drawn to choices other than their private cars. By focusing on the real benefits of bicycling to our national, community and personal health, we can begin to lay the groundwork for a more equitable society.
Bicycling is Normal. Yes. Normal.
Normalizing Bicycling as Transportation
We want to make biking the new normal by focusing on the following benefits: freedom, fun, mobility, and access. Our goal is to ensure that everyone can partake in these benefits, despite socio-economic barriers and physical barriers. There's ample documented evidence that bicycling makes you healthier and happier, and people who bicycle to work self-report that bicycling makes them more productive. In addition, articles have been published that show that bicycling also makes us more adaptable. All of these benefits add to the appeal of integrating bicycling into our transportation culture.
Long before sport utility vehicles (SUVs) became popular, there were comprehensive advertising campaigns specifically designed to convince people they could be their ideal selves when driving an SUV. It was through this targeted marketing effort that SUVs became a “normal” road vehicle to drive, even though they were originally designed for off-road use. Two decades later, SUVs are now the dominant vehicle in sales and size on U.S. roads. A similar approach can be used to address people’s attitudes about bicycling for transportation, with a focus on biking for shorter distances and by combining biking with the use of light rail and trains for longer distances so that people move fast, efficiently and seamlessly.
Suggestion
There are surprisingly few routine tasks in urban or suburban areas that can’t be carried out by bike. There is even a budding industry of pedal powered home and office movers! Institute Bike Buddy programs to encourage commuters. People are more likely to do the right thing for themselves when someone else is relying on them.
Businesses and government employers should also be encouraged to promote bicycling for commuting by providing showers and secure bike parking for people who use active personal transportation to commute to work. If cap and trade and/or carbon taxes are implemented, the carbon emissions from commuting and work-related travel for employees should be included in the carbon total for all companies over a certain size.
Rethinking Public Space
Since so much public land has been devoted to automobiles in the form of highways, freeways and parking spaces, it’s time to rethink how we use public space and who benefits. States and local governments can begin to understand what is required to create safe bike lanes and bike parking spaces. Street parking for cars can be transformed to provide enclosed secure bike parking, especially in areas with higher density housing that lack secure bike parking options. Depending on the manufacturer, five to seven bike lockers can fit in a standard car parking space. Providing enclosed, secure on street bike parking will help prevent bike theft and promote use by those who otherwise would not bike.
Reducing Induced Demand
Up until now, the prevailing consensus to alleviate congestion was to continuously widen highways and freeways and add more lanes to accommodate more cars. This solution is short-lived, because it encourages people to drive more. Referred to as induced demand, this leapfrog development effect lures more people to move and live farther and farther into previously open spaces and away from where they work, causing them to drive longer distances and emit more GHGs and other pollutants.
We should not be encouraging more people to move to rural areas with federal transportation policies that provide money for more road building and widening. With less aid from the Federal Highway Administration, local and state governments will need to rethink their cost benefit analysis for these kinds of transportation projects. Following old transportation planning and engineering practices will not get us out of our global warming emergency. We must break with old patterns of belief about what to do and how to do it and apply every plausible new strategy in order to reduce the production of GHGs.
With the necessity to preserve biodiversity, notably trees for carbon capture and the natural living environments, we need to cease promoting population movement into rural, undeveloped and farmland areas. Living plants that remove CO2 from the atmosphere should be kept in place, and arable land should not be paved over for more highways. For the health of all we need to keep plants growing in the ground.
While people living in rural areas tend to drive longer distances than people in urban and suburban places, they need transportation choices that meet their needs and don't produce large amounts of GHGE and other pollutants. Work needs to be done to help them reduce their GHGE.
Parity in Funding
There is a common misconception that people on bikes do not belong on roadways because they don’t contribute to road expenditures. The fact is that if you pay taxes, and ride a bike, you and every other person who pays taxes are directly responsible for road maintenance in the U.S. Since 2008, the Federal Highway Trust Fund, currently funded by gas, diesel and truck taxes, has received more than $149 billion in transfers of general revenue, e.g., income taxes. In 2016, 12.4% of Americans cycled on a regular basis, and from 2014 to 2017, there was a 10.5% increase in the number of bicyclists on U.S. roads1. To meet the growing demand, a proportional amount of this funding needs to be allocated to bicycle-specific infrastructure. Just as with public funding that is allocated for public schools, parks, and transportation subsidies, it is imperative that funding is extended to include bicycling as well.
With parity in funding also comes access. As social creatures of habit who look for cues for acceptance, we need to begin the work of positively influencing public perception to change attitudes, choices, and behaviors surrounding biking for transportation. For example, the current consensus among BIPOC in urban communities is that existing bike lines, usually single lanes that bisect their areas, are built as pass-through routes for non-resident commuters. What should exist instead is a network of safe infrastructure that promotes bicycling for transportation and leisure for the people of that community.
In addition to infrastructure access, we must also address economic access. The Bicycle Commuter Act (BCA) benefit program was part of the federal tax code section 132(f) that provided tax incentives to employees to encourage their use of mass transportation, with the goal of reducing traffic congestion and improving air quality. The law provides for monthly caps on the amount that can be excluded from gross income and is therefore not taxed. This act should be decoupled from employment and be made available to all people regardless of employment status: self-employed, part-time or full-time, contract workers or unemployed. (Unemployed peoples and those in search of work may be the most in need of a transportation deduction and are more likely to drive older, non-energy-efficient vehicles.) Opening up incentives to those most in need would not only help drive the cultural adoption of bicycling for transportation, but provide clean, safe transportation options to those most in need.
In addition to transportation deductions, the BCA should also offer rebates on bike and e-bikes. While most wish to extend rebates only to e-bikes, the current exorbitant cost of e-bikes, even with a 30% rebate, makes them financially unattainable for a majority of American families in our most underserved and marginalized communities. Additionally, the BCA should be extended to include ancillary biking assets such as helmets, locks, lights, racks, panniers, gloves, rain gear, etc. Not only are these equipment purchases job generators, but they are also vital for safety when commuting.
Advances in bike design have yielded a wide variety of bike models (such as e-cargo bikes designed to carry kids and cargo) to meet the needs of most persons/families. An e-bike transportation campaign paired with bike education for all ages, would further work to encourage acceptance. Simply put, parents who don’t ride can’t ride as a family and don’t encourage their kids to ride. Pairing access to biking with learn-to-ride education for children and adults will begin to drive a cultural shift in attitudes and behaviors as new bike riders begin to encourage and influence those within their communities, schools, and workplaces to become a part of a healthier, active transportation culture.
The Benefits of Cooperative Transportation Culture
There are many health benefits that come with cycling, including decreasing: the incidence and effects of Type II diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer, disability and healthcare costs, just to name a few. And while these are not under the purview of the USDOT, there is no doubting their direct and indirect impact on human lives. Because of these benefits, it’s our responsibility as a society to begin to understand, adopt, and support the policies and initiatives required to achieve a cooperative transportation culture.
Boosting Local Economies
There are approximately 7,000 local bike shops in the U.S. Due to the disruptions of Covid-19, this industry has experienced a recent boom in both sales and repairs. By normalizing bicycling we can stimulate our economy with the velocity of money and multiplier effects of this industry. This will in turn drive innovation in the field to meet the growing demand generated by people on bikes. Monies allocated to communities across America will flow into local bike shops, American manufacturers, and bike gear/ancillary equipment producers, evolving the cultural reaction to the global pandemic from trend to a sustainable transportation evolution. Relative to the investment needed to make bike riding a culturally-accepted mode of transportation, when you think about the impacts to the economy, job creation, and climate change, advocating in favor of this position just makes sense.
One Road, Many Modes to Travel
The right to use the road is a right conferred upon people, not the legal transportation option they may be in or on. While some believe that people who ride bikes do not share the same rights as those that drive vehicles, the fact remains that regardless of transportation device, we all share the same responsibilities and rights. This needs to be understood by everyone to ensure the safety of all who use our roads.
Educating road-users on how to use new and legacy infrastructure safely is a must to move towards a cooperative transportation culture. That’s because people of any transportation mode (e.g., people on foot, in wheelchairs, on bikes, in vehicles, with disabilities, and those who are older) can exhibit road territoriality when they aren't familiar with the laws and/or don't understand how the infrastructure is meant to be used. This can lead to anger, frustration, and road rage, putting all in danger. Education can be accomplished in a variety of ways: social media, Public Service Announcements, billboards, commercials, etc. In the effort to build awareness and acceptance for all road users, we must become adept at spreading the word about the benefits and impacts of cooperative transportation for individuals and the community.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Bicycling is a fun and great choice for all, but the experience may differ greatly based on one’s race, socio-economic status or sexual identity. For us to be successful, we must move beyond the public perception and image of bicycling as the activity of white men, and work to include all people. This means working to make bicycling safe and inclusive for all communities, with a focus on the obstacles and threats posed for Blacks, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), for the same threats these marginalized communities experience daily in our culture also exist in bicycling. Through investment in road infrastructure in neighborhoods of marginalized communities, access to funding in the form of rebates to promote and encourage bike use and direct input and collaboration with communities to ensure success, we can begin to address the impacts of systemic racism that exist even on our roads.
An additional consideration to include in equity is that of air quality. With access to more bikes/bike infrastructure and lessening the dependency on petroleum and petroleum production, we will improve the air quality in BIPOC communities, many of which are located near fuel refinery sites. And since highways and freeways are often intentionally built through BIPOC communities–examples being the construction of the I-94 in the Rondo community in St. Paul, Minnesota or the I-880 in Oakland, California–the reduction in fossil-fueled trips will help to decrease the pollution in these areas.
Lastly, as BIPOC and marginalized communities are often the most affected by income disparities, many living at or below the poverty line, we must seek creative and innovative ways to begin to decrease this gap. For example, include regular bikes in addition to e-bikes in any rebate program, providing those of limited means the opportunity to participate and experience the joys of biking as well.
Bicycling for Everyone
Conclusion
Riding bikes is not new. Easy to learn and fun to do, it’s one of the few solutions already available to help us get to carbon negative quickly. By making biking an integrated transportation option, with the proper infrastructure and safety training, the U.S. can usher in a new way of thinking about transportation, with a focus on people’s health, the environment and enjoyment. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity with a new Bicycling Administration in the USDOT to drive top-down policy and funding, to aid and expand the local and state biking programs, and aid advocates working to bring safe biking to all.
Bike more, drive less, it really is that simple.