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We don’t just need electric cars, we need fewer cars - Greenpeace International (www.greenpeace.org)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently.

More and more young people are choosing bicycles, buses and trains over owning a car out of the sheer cost. In Berlin, it’s public transport, not cars, which is the coolest way of getting around.

In Copenhagen, a city that has a long held reputation for being bike-friendly, a whopping 62% of people choose to cycle their commute.

In the French city of Lyon, the number of cars entering the city has fallen by 20% compared to just a decade ago. As the city’s network of bike hire stations continues to grow, town planners are hoping for a further 20% decline.

In London, where cycle super-highways are becoming popular, the share of journeys made by car has fallen by a quarter since 1990.

Car free days are rising in popularity in many of the world’s largest cities, giving people a taste of what it’s like to live with less noise, traffic and pollution. Bogota was one of the first cities to introduce a car free day, and it’s now become so popular that it’s been extended to a full week.

Bogotá's Ciclovía is fantastic! I was there in the mid-nineties and they closed a major artery, the Carretera Séptima, on Sundays. Here some pictures.

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[-] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We need public transport.

And plenty of safe and comfortable bike paths - the cheapest, and often fastest option.

And, if you look at the transport capacity of bike paths in persons per hour passing, they are absolutely incredible. Far more than most large multi-lane streets for cars. Cykelslangen in Copenhagen has at rush hour times a vehicle frequency of 2 per second - that's 7200 vehicles per hour. Cars would need a motorway through the city to reach that capacity.

One of the many more good things about bikes is that they release expensive public transport resource for those which do really need them - people who are too ill, too old, incapacitated, or need to go too far distances to get there by bike. We should think of public transport in cities as an extension and supplement of a bike-centered system, not as the main option.

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

I would love it if the local light rail had a car to lock your bike up while you ride the train.

[-] then_three_more@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

Yes. And painting a white line along the side of the road doesn't cut it.

this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
498 points (100.0% liked)

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