"Cars suck"

Cars suck more cash than most people imagine. On an average income, half of a working week goes on paying for the costs associated with running an automobile, calculated philosopher Ivan Illich in his 1974 book Energy and Equity.

“The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car,” wrote Illich.

“He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it.”

And working out the labor required to buy and fuel the car to travel 7,500 miles equated to an average speed of less than five miles per hour, said Illich.

"a typical American couple who commute to work in separate cars and who spend $19 per day in direct driving and car ownership costs would have paid $125,000 each after ten years.

Living closer to work and bicycling there would land the couple a cool $250,000."

Mass motoring’s social costs—known to transport wonks as negative externalities—include carbon emissions from burning petrol and diesel, congestion, noise, deaths and injuries from crashes, road damage, and costs to health systems from sloth.

We need to get cars off the road quickly and as painlessly as possible, and widespread adoption of e-bikes would curtail a lot of the following problems:

• Vehicles produce about a third of the air pollution in the United States.

• Cities spend billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money to repair roads.

• An estimated 6,721 pedestrians were hit and killed by vehicles in 2020.

• The building of roads and highways in America has usually come at the expense of poor, minority communities, who then have to deal with increased pollution, displacement and literal barriers that restrict their movement.

• The needs of drivers — for parking, wide streets, traffic enforcement — often take priority over other initiatives that might improve urban design and city planning.

Plus, it’s fun. You get some exercise, you can lug two small kids and a load of groceries up and down hills with minimal effort, and you can avoid the alienation that comes with sitting in your car.

Want to contribute to the solution. Ride a bike or ebike. Too wet? Buy some wet weather gear. Riding in the rain is not an impossibility. It’s a challenge but exhilarating!

“Cities are responsible for more than two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, which has increased by 5 to 10 per cent during 2015-2020 alone”

“Changing lifestyle doesn’t necessarily mean individual sacrifice. Research shows these measures also deliver high levels of health and wellbeing benefits. Cities can provide necessary structural conditions and cultural shifts to make individual choices easy.”

" Any pedestrian recently out and about in Newcastle might be familiar with the rush of wind that hits you when someone on an electric vehicle flies past. E-bikes, E-scooters and E-skateboards are nothing new, but bike sellers around town can tell you how they've advanced and increased in popularity. Locals love them"