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We don’t just need electric cars, we need fewer cars - Greenpeace International (www.greenpeace.org)
submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours 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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[-] julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 8 hours ago

I hate this sentiment so much, because it implies that everyone can just wait for change: "Just go buy another gas powered car until that rail road line is built".

If you can afford an electric car (instead of your current gas powered car) today please buy one or you are part of the problem. If you don‘t need it anymore, because of that rail road line, sell it. Electric cars are much better for the climate & the surroundings. They can also be important for electric grid stability.

Additionally since Copenhagen was mentioned: In the last ten years car ownership in Copenhagen actually increased (https://kk.statistikbank.dk/statbank5a/SelectVarVal/saveselections.asp). Just because people take the bike every day doesn‘t mean that they don‘t own a car.

PS: I live in the city center and don‘t own a car. Never have.

[-] OnASnowyEvening@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I hate this sentiment so much, because it implies that everyone can just wait for change:

Also: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good [enough]."

Societal Progress is an exercise in iterative steps. Electric cars today, something even better tomorrow (and by tomorrow I mean in fifty to a hundred years because lord knows people refuse to fund mass transit in some countries).

[-] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Did you miss the word "just" in the title?

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

There is not going to be a one size fits all solution for all countries and regions.

In cities you need public transport and walking/biking facilities. Car infrastructure is too expensive.

In suburbia, getting households to go from dual car to single car, you need public transport and bike facilities.

For rural, public transport is not really cost effective, so you are going to need to incentivise self power generation and home charging. Popularizing from high speed ebikes might be a good option though.

[-] DillDough@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

We really have to do something about tires though, their usage is one of if not the biggest sources of micro plastic pollution. Everybody is usually so focused on emissions and social/infrastructure aspects that they miss a lot of the other problems with cars.

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago

I think much like with CFCs, this can be addressed by regulating tires to have longer life and not rely on the materials that generate micro plastics.

I also think cars should come with a 25 year warranty. To force manufacturers to make them to last. Japanese cars from the 90s are doing 30-35 year lifespans when maintained.

[-] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 2 points 8 hours ago

For rural, public transport is not really cost effective, so you are going to need to incentivise self power generation and home charging.

So, how do you think does the rest of world's rural population outside of the US and Europe move?

[-] beanburger@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I grew up in a developing country and if people there could afford cars they'd immediately drive away from the rural neighborhood lol. This person you are replying to has never been outside the US/EU so has no idea what they are talking about.

The village I grew up in was essentially walkable because all the dwellings were close to each other where the well was and the electric lines came in. The fields spread out radially from there. There was a van that would drive around to the different villages and take people to the city that circled in and out of the area a few times a week that was paid for by the central government. We also had busses that would take us to school. It would be the perfect spot to build a train station to go in and out of the closest city.

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago

Actually, I am in Africa, so I am very aware of the situation. Outside of cities and Major towns, people are often trapped with little access to transport. They can only afford to travel to local towns, once or twice a month to access services like healthcare and professional services. For goods they usually have to coordinate as a community to get a goods truck to bring them items.

The problem with rural areas is that the tax base is too low to warrant the cost of infrastructure investment. Its cheaper for those people to move to larger towns and cities. In the "old world" they at least have the advantage of dense and walkable towns.

The US as the problem that their small towns are build car centric, and subsidized by taxes from urban tax payers. They will need reabilitate their towns to build over the top of roads and radically rework their power, electricity and sewage infrastructure.

[-] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 hours ago

They don't move very much. They go as far as they can afford private transport to take them. Hopefully to a town where public transport to other towns are available.

[-] 13igTyme@piefed.social 4 points 10 hours ago

But what about the quarterly profits? We need more each quarter, not less.

[-] CaptainKoerk@startrek.website 52 points 18 hours ago

We need public transport. Electric cars are like methadon for carbrain, it's better, but not really.

[-] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 29 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours 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.

[-] then_three_more@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

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

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[-] Nangijala@feddit.dk 16 points 19 hours ago

It's all fine and dandy that they only think about the big cities, but the problem is that the focus on public transport seem to be exclusively focused on big cities while those of us who live in rural areas are starved for public transport options.

I see they pick Copenhsgen among the places to praise public transport. Psh. Cool. I live in Jutland and my household was literally forced to buy a car after they cut the public transport budget in our city - again - and as a result, my boyfriend was forced to get up at 3 in the morning to be at work at 8. So, we bought a car because it was literally killing him and the limited time we had as a couple already, was pretty much eradicated.

Getting a car not only did wonders for his health, it also gave us our relationship a much needed boost because now he had the energy to actually be awake and do things with me, when he got home from work.

There are zero signs that public transport is a priority where we live and we aren't going back now. We did everything to depend on public transport and save the expense of having a car until we were in our 30s and the only reason we ended up buckling was because public transport was cut from our area. It wasn't only his bus route that was fucked with, btw. When I wanted to go see friends and family, the busses I used to take had been cut too and I suddenly had to take three trains and two busses to go see people who lived two to three hours away by car took me something around 6 hours to go on a 2 hours ride anywhere. One time they flat out canceled my bus home and I was stuck on a train station in Aarhus at midnight Nad would have to wait until 4 in the morning to get home. My boyfriend came and picked me up in the car and told me that from now on he'd drive me when I went because the last few trips I had taken had been disasters and this one had been the worst one yet. I had left for home, btw, at around 5 in the afternoon and wasn't home until 2 in the morning. That trio would have taken me 3 hours by car. Public transport forced me to be on the go for 9 hours and that is only because my boyfriend picked me up. If he hadn't done that, it would have been 13 hours.

That is unacceptable. And from what I have been told recently, public transport has only gotten worse in Denmark since. But I'm so happy for people in Copenhagen that they get to have busses, trains and metro that arrive every two minutes and take them anywhere they need to go. Must be nice.

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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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