Production transportation about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases emissions, and passenger vehicles account for more than half of that. As a result, nearly every future emissions-cutting plan includes some sort of move away from internal combustion vehicles — often to electric versions of the same vehicle. But some countries have managed an alternative route to reducing emissions: Denmark and the Netherlands are both focused on bicycles. transport that leaves many people out of the car altogether.
An international team of researchers decided to look at what factors helped these countries make that change and what might have happened. if more countries adopt the same traffic focus. There are two obvious conclusions: It is difficult to obtain reliable data on bicycleand bicycle-focused transport could eliminate emissions comparable to those of a moderately developed industrialized country.
How many bicycles are there?
We have very good data on motor vehicle usage through government-requested licensing and registration data. For bicycles, this almost never happens, so the researchers had to estimate the number of bicycles available in most countries. To do so, they took production, import and export data and combined them in a model with information on how long the bike typically lasts before being abandoned. The data is up to date to 2015, so it’s a bit out of date, as the pandemic has boosted cycling activity in many countries. But those countries they can estimate account for 95% of global GDP.
Vehicle usage data is not available in all countries. In some cases, it is estimated based on local data from within the country; in others, estimates are taken from countries with similar demographics.
In absolute numbers at least, bicycles are far more popular than cars, with more than 4.5 billion bicycles produced since the 1960s, about 2.4 times the number of cars. More than half of these are concentrated in just five countries: China, the US, India, Japan and Germany, of which China accounts for nearly a quarter of the global total. Per capita, however, the numbers are quite different, with smaller, richer countries having the highest bicycle-to-body ratio. Places like Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway all have more than one bike per person.
Overall, the researchers divided countries into five categories. One of these categories includes countries with low GDP that have few cars or bicycles. Another category, which includes China, Chile, and Brazil, has seen car ownership grow rapidly but from a low level, and bike ownership slowly or not at all. A similar category includes the same model but starts at a higher level of ownership for both types of vehicles. This includes places like Italy, Poland and Portugal.
The category includes countries like Australia, Canada and the US that have high levels of ownership in both bicycles and cars but tend to use cars much more often. The researchers attributed this in part to their “large tracts of land”. Finally, the group that includes industrialized European countries is characterized as having very high rates of bicycle ownership and stable levels of car ownership, but with citizens actually using their bicycles. Here, the authors suggest, “basic transportation needs have been met, and the pursuit of a healthier and more environmentally friendly life has fueled an increase in bicycle ownership. “
There are some odd cases. Some affluent societies, like Japan and Switzerland, have plenty of cars, but great public transport systems make their use less common. Some affluent European countries, like Norway, have weather and terrain that discourage cycling. And a host of countries with high rates of traffic deaths, such as Brazil, Russia and Thailand, also have low levels of cycling.
