Ode to the Bicycle: Pedalling to the Rescue in the Climate Emergency

Ode to the Bicycle

Pedalling to the Rescue in the Climate Emergency

by Noel Keough

Has there ever been a more perfect and joyous transportation technology than the bicycle? In Ode to Bicycles Pablo Neruda described bicycles as “silent, swift, translucent, they barely stirred the air.”[i] I’ve been a bike commuter in Calgary for over 35 years. The popularity of cycling has transformed over that time. My bike commute remains the most enjoyable part of my day and apparently, I am not alone in this experience. A 2017 study by Dr. Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota, Humphrey School of Public Policy found bicycling to be the happiest mode of transportation.[ii] As we focus our attention to the climate emergency, the humble bicycle just might be the gateway to a sustainable future.

Calgary has made positive but plodding progress in active transportation. In 2011 the city introduced its Cycling Strategy. In 2016 the city finally introduced Step Forward, its pedestrian strategy, which the Institute of Transportation Engineers recognized with its 2017 Best Project Award.[iii] As with so many planning policies the challenge has been putting policy into action.

The downtown cycle track network was a godsend for cyclists. The trip through downtown was no longer a stressful excursion of hyper-vigilance as you try to safely navigate downtown auto and bus traffic, sharing lanes wherein car drivers treated you as illegal impediments to their efficient navigation of the city. But the political capital expended in the debate and defense of the meagre 10 million dollars spent on the modest 5.5 km of cycle track was epic and exhausting, while hundreds of millions of dollars in road construction is routinely rubber stamped by city council with hardly a word spoken.

In 2020 we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic. In Calgary we see first hand how active transportation infrastructure has become indispensable to a resilient city. Only active transport modes have seen an increase this year. And cycle shops are finding it hard to keep bikes in stock and sales go through the roof as many Calgarians are discovering the joy of cycling for the first time. 

The trend is being repeated worldwide. Paris has just re-elected its progressive Mayor Anne Hidalgo who has inspired the imaginations of urbanists around the world with her intention to make Paris a 15-minute city. The core of the plan is that Paris will be a city where all streets will be bike-friendly by 2024.[iv] Even now, Paris has been transformed with hundreds of streets converted to bike lanes as a response to the Pandemic. Paris, THE global city of the past 300 years, is set to once again transform the nature of cities with this bold initiative.

Paris seems intent on eclipsing Amsterdam and Copenhagen as Europe’s most bike-friendly city. In 2016 Copenhagen achieved a milestone – there were more bike trips counted in Copenhagen’s city centre than car trips.[v] In 1970 car trips had outnumbered bike trips 3.5 to 1. By 2018, an impressive 49% of all trips were by bicycle.[vi] How did they make it happen? They elected a lord-mayor who dedicated himself to making Copenhagen a bike city. The National government invested heavily in bike infrastructure. With the Cykelslangen (Snake Bridge) and the Kissing Bridge and the Superkilin, Copenhagen now has some of the most beautiful and functional bike infrastructure in the world. Copenhagen officials have a goal to make central Copenhagen car free by 2025. A November 2016 article in The Guardian reported that the cost of 12 years (2004 to 2016) of bike infrastructure in Copenhagen was half that of just one single vehicle bypass to the north of the city.[vii]  And as if that were not enough, this transformation has made Copenhagen one of the most rapidly decarbonizing cities in the world with a 42% reduction in emissions from 2005 to 2019.[viii]

In Amsterdam, long synonymous with the bicycle, over half of all city-centre trips are by bicycle. In the Dutch city of Groningen the number is over 60%.[ix] The first image of the city as you emerge from Amsterdam’s central train station is a sea of parked bicycles and an impressive bikes only roadway. With newly instituted policies to reduce air pollution and congestion Transport for London is expecting bike commuters to soon out number car commuters in the heart of that city.[x] Oslo, Norway has a goal to make its city centre car free[xi] and is investing much of its oil-generated wealth in new bike superhighways.[xii] In response to the Pandemic Barcelona has added 25 kilometres of cycle lanes and continues to transform the core of its neighbourhood superblocks into car free zones.[xiii]

Tune in to any debate at City Hall these days and you are sure to hear councilors of all political stripes lamenting the cost of running our city. Likewise Albertans are more conscious than ever of our own bank accounts and our Provincial government makes no bones about the need to tighten our belts in what will undoubtedly be a long road to weaning ourselves off fossil fuel generated wealth and balancing the books. Well, bicycles to the rescue. A Vancouver study from 2015 compared various transportation options using a full cost accounting methodology.[xiv] A car commute was calculated to cost $2.78 per kilometre to society and $6.47 in personal costs. Biking was calculated to incur 3.70 per kilometre in personal costs and to actually deliver 75 cents in societal savings for every kilometer pedaled.

Much of the savings from biking and walking are in avoided health care costs. For example, one study conducted in the UK and reported in the British Medical Journal in 2017 estimated that a regular bike commute cut the risk of cancer by 45% and of heart disease by 46%.[xv]

Calgary Economic Development has just launched its ActiveCity Playbook[xvi] designed to make Calgary North Americans most active city by 2030 – a core element of its diversification strategy. Bikes, bike infrastructure and bike riders will be indispensable in that quest.

So whether it is saving the planet, saving your money or safeguarding your health, the bicycle is the answer. As Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote “ When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin’[xvii]

[i] Pablo Neruda and Ilan Stavans (ed.), All the Odes: A Bilingual Edition (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2017).

[ii] Jing Zhu, and Yingling Fan (2017) “Daily Travel Behavior and Emotional Well-Being: A comprehensive assessment of travel-related emotions and the associated trip and personal factors” in Happy Cities: Role of Transportation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, digital conservancy, 2017), http://hdl.handle.net/11299/185433.

[iii] “Calgary wins international award for pedestrian strategy,” Canadian Consulting Engineer Magazine, September 14, 2107,https://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/transportation/calgary-wins-international-award-pedestrian-strategy/1003406086/.

[iv] Kim Willsher, “Paris mayor unveils ’15-minute city’ plan in re-election campaign,” The Guardian, February 7, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/paris-mayor-unveils-15-minute-city-plan-in-re-election-campaign.

[v] Athlyn Cathcart-Keays, “Two-wheel takeover/ bikes outnumber cars for the first time in Copenhagen. Cities,”The Guardian, November 30, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/nov/30/cycling-revolution-bikes-outnumber-cars-first-time-copenhagen-denmark.

[vi] Philippe Descamps, «Copenhagen, cycle city,» Le Monde diplomatique, March 2020, https://mondediplo.com/2020/03/13copenhagen-bikes.

[vii] Cathcart-Keays, “Two-wheel takeover,”.

[viii] “What's Copenhagen's magic formula to reduce CO2 levels?,” Euronews, October 10, 2019,https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/10/what-s-copenhagen-s-magic-formula-to-reduce-co2-levels.

[ix] Renate Van der Zee, “How Amsterdam became the bicycle capital of the world,” The Guardian, May 5, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord.

[x] “London Bike commuters Will Outnumber Cars By 2018,” The Energy Mix, May 9, 2016,  https://theenergymix.com/2016/05/09/london-bike-commuters-will-outnumber-cars-by-2018/.

[xi] Adele Peters, “What happened when Oslo decided to make its downtown basically car-free?,” Fast Company, January 24, 2019, https://www.fastcompany.com/90294948/what-happened-when-oslo-decided-to-make-its-downtown-basically-car-free.

[xii] Feargus O’Sullivan, “Norway Will Spend Almost $1 Billion on New Bike Highways,” Bloomberg CityLab, March 3, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/norway-s-national-transit-plan-will-spend-almost-1-billion-on-new-bike-highways.

[xiii] Laura Millan Lombrana, “An Urban Planner’s Trick to Making Bike-able Cities,” Bloomberg News. August 5, 2020.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/an-urban-planner-s-trick-to-making-bike-able-cities and Marta Bausells, “Superblocks to the rescue: Barcelona’s plan to give streets back to residents,” The Guardian, May 17, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents.

[xiv] Tanvi Misra. “The Social Costs of Driving in Vancouver in 1 Chart,” Bloomberg CityLab, April 7, 2015, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-07/an-interactive-tool-measures-the-social-costs-of-driving-and-transit-in-vancouver.

[xv] Carlos A Celis-Morales, Donald M Lyall, Paul Welsh, et al (2017) “Association between active commuting and incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: prospective cohort study,” 

BMJ 2017;357:j1456 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j1456

[xvi] Active City Collective: Powering Calgary’s Active Economy (Active City Calgary, 2020), https://www.activecityproject.org.

[xvii] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Cycling Notes,” Scientific American, January 18, 1896. http://wheelbike.blogspot.com/2011/04/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-on-benefits-of.html.