“Cycling can and must quickly become mass transport again”

Lsobriety, which few people had heard of barely a year ago, is still poorly distinguished from forced renunciations. However, it can correspond to the positive choice of a more efficient solution.

Thus, our daily mobility concerns, most of the time, the transport of a 70 kg person on a journey of less than twenty kilometres. A majority of this mobility is carried out in a motorized vehicle weighing one ton or more, most often occupied by a single person.

With a car, electric or not, 90% of the energy is used to move the vehicle, as demonstrated by the think tank The Shift Project in a 2017 report. With a bicycle, 85% of the energy is used to move the cyclist ! The explanation is simple: a bicycle is a hundred times lighter than a car! Ditto for its battery if it is electric. Its manufacture is therefore also significantly more economical in terms of materials and energy. The incarnation of sobriety in the movement of everyday life therefore has a name: the little queen!

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Its benefits are not limited to this: cycling provides exercise that increases healthy life expectancy, decreases local pollution, requires less floor space and is inexpensive. It is neither the effort – especially since the arrival of electric bicycles – nor the climate that deters cycling the most, but cohabitation with cars, where there are no cycle paths.

The same study by The Shift Project shows that, even outside highly populated areas, particularly in suburban areas, three-quarters of daily journeys would be possible by bicycle, if only suitable infrastructure existed.

The individual car has become the norm

In just a few decades, the bicycle has gone from a very popular mode of transport to almost marginal, the individual automobile having become the norm, even for a short trip, made alone.

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This shift is the result of political choices of the past, materialized by massive investments in favor of the car. This is hurting us today collectively. Galloping greenhouse gas emissions, tensions over raw materials, a sedentary lifestyle with alarming consequences: it is high time to call for collective mobilization in order to create a real supply shock, in quantity and quality, to put the bicycle back in the center of the game.

Over the past three years, bicycle use has increased by more than 30%. It’s encouraging, but it’s still a long way from the necessary change of gear.

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