Cycling reduces the number of cars on the road and delivers amazing personal health benefits

Reducing the number of car trips people take is important for reducing greenhouse tailpipe emissions from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles. And one way to do so is by replacing car trips with bike trips. As People for Bikes has reported,

“According to a study conducted in Europe, if 10% of the population were to replace one car trip a day with a bike ride, overall carbon emissions from transportation would drop an equal 10%. The same study showed that choosing to ride your bike instead of driving just once a day could reduce your personal transportation-related emissions by 67%.”

Creating new cycling infrastructure is critical to getting people onto bikes. Project Drawdown estimates substantial global reductions in carbon emissions with modest increases in bike transportation share while municipalities actually save money. Importantly, our Cycling Guide mobile app helps people discover cycling infrastructure to realize the full value of the infrastructure investment. And it provides the best available low-stress routes to do so.

It’s not just ICE emissions that pollute the air. As The Guardian reports, Car tyres produce vastly more particle pollution than exhausts, tests show. Electric vehicles (EVs) obviously also have tires, as well as heavy batteries, and “the increasing weight of cars means more particles are being thrown off by tyres as they wear on the road”. And it’s not just tires. The US National Institute of Health reports that “in urban environments, brake wear can contribute up to 55% by mass to total non-exhaust traffic-related [particulate] emissions.” As Yale Environment 360 puts it, “Researchers are only beginning to uncover the toxic cocktail of chemicals, microplastics, and heavy metals hidden in car and truck tires. But experts say these tire emissions are a significant source of air and water pollution and may be affecting humans as well as wildlife.”

So bike rides can help make for healthier places through pollutants reduction. But there also are major personal health benefits to replacing car trips with bike trips. According to the World Health Organization, 

“Walking and cycling are simple, cost-effective ways of being active. Walking is an essential part of all journeys. It is accessible and affordable, and socially equitable. Cycling is among the most efficient and sustainable means of transportation. Together, walking and cycling have economic, social, environmental and health benefits. “

And this study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) had this impressive set of findings:

In this cohort study of 7459 persons with diabetes, cycling was associated with at least a 24% lower all-cause mortality rate when compared with noncyclists, independent of other physical activity and putative confounders. Taking up cycling over a 5-year period was associated with at least a 35% lower risk of all-cause mortality when compared with consistent noncyclists.

There are also sound economic reasons for getting more people cycling to generate health benefits. Canadian Cycling Magazine, in reporting on a study out of Simon Fraser University, noted that the study

“examined the health-related cost-benefit ratios of planned cycling infrastructure investments between 2016 and 2020 in three Canadian cities. In all three cases the researchers found that the dollar value of health-related benefits exceeded the cost of planned infrastructure investments.”

Healthier people and healthier places. There’s a lot to like about those two outcomes.