Today we went to visit a solar cycle/foot-path in Groningen. Solar road surfaces are of course completely idiotic. Why ? Because solar cells work best when they're not in shade, when they're not covered in thick translucent plastic, when there are no pebbles, sand or cigarette butts on them, and when they are at an angle towards the sun which also allows the rain to wash them.
But anyway, it was an arbitrary local destination for us on today's 70 km round trip. @eevblog #velomobile#regel17#solarroad#solarcyclepath#groningen#cycling#scandalouswasteofresources
A few more photos. This thing only exists because they got a huge grant. It will never pay for itself by producing electricity. It's just a grant scam. Nothing more.
Normal solar cells on the buildings around here would have been a far better thing to have spent money on. Or perhaps use them to provide shelter for cyclists. That would also work.
Other photos from today's ride. For one reason or another we seemed to have to leave the cycle-path quite often today.
This happened either because someone was riding a horse on the cycle-path (which they're not supposed to do) or just because huge groups of grannies were going along very slowly and overtaking them wasn't realistic.
Through a woonerf (residential street which prioritises residents) and through the still fairly awesome cycle-parking at Groningen station.
It would, however, be much more awesome if the 20000 or so bikes here were being ridden rather than being stored in a huge concrete mausoleum while their owners are elsewhere...
@enobacon If they're there for more than 12 days they'll be removed, kept for a little while, and then scrapped. That's what many of the yellow posters are about.
Cycling adds a lot more to rail (a polluting powered mode) than rail does to cycling.
While half of all train passengers in NL arrive at the station by bike, only about 1% of cycle journeys also involve a train. As such, bicycle mausoleums at railway stations don't actually have all that much to do with cycling. They're really about getting people to leave their bicycle behind while they travel by a more polluting mode instead.
@hembrow@enobacon trains are not only more polluting, they're also much faster, and more comfortable, and allow for much greater distances of travel. Probably best to not forget that aspect 😉
@lennartnout@hembrow@enobacon yeah. Given the NL car ownership rates, I'd expect that a real alternative to bike mausoleum isn't more cycling at cycling distances but more driving...
@djasa It's not even close. About half of all journeys are by car in NL vs. 2% by rail. Those car journeys are of course also a huge problem. A much larger problem than rail is.
But even if we assumed that rail would solve the emissions problem it's not plausible to suggest that we can multiply the number of trains by a factor of 25 to move all the car journeys onto rail.
The real problem is hypermobility. People travel too much and all that travel results in significant emissions. Hypermobility is enabled by motorized modes. @lennartnout@enobacon
@hembrow@djasa@lennartnout how are these charts counting the bike-to-transit trips? Is that two journeys?
You're not wrong about #InducedDemand of train trips generating emissions, but shifting out of cars allows better land use, more bicycle trips, etc. Because geometry hates cars. Besides trains being plugged into the grid (though trolleybus fleets and overhead wires will be more effective than laying new rail in most urban/ suburban cases)
@enobacon It hardly matters how they count those. Given that only 2% of journeys are by train and half of those also involve a bicycle journey we would lose, at most, 1/27th of the cycling share to bike/transit if they counted it differently.
Trying to multiply the usage of our already busy railway station by 25 (i.e. let's go from the existing 3 platforms to 75 platforms !), and increasing the size of the already large bicycle parking at the station also by a factor of 25, both in order that bike/train could take over from car journeys would also cause significant land use problems !
This is why travel has to be reduced. We can't mode shift our way out of the problems caused by hypermobility. @djasa@lennartnout
@hembrow@djasa@lennartnout I don't think you can sell it as travel reduction though. No the train station isn't going to expand to carry 100% of those car miles, but many were already trips or functions that the train doesn't serve well (in the US it would be because bicycles are not viable at the other end.) For individuals, it's a question of shifting options, including choosing different destinations. Better to focus on reducing car trips, but yeah I'm not into train boondoggles either.
@enobacon I don't know how we sell this either. You can see that in this discussion where we have good people who are generally on the sensible side of things who nevertheless are here arguing for a very high level, and possibly increasing, amount of transport.
If we're struggling to convince those people, how do we get through to the people who are set completely against the idea of reducing their transport footprint ?
We have millions in our rich western nations who think they have a right to go on foreign holidays every year, or to drive ridiculously bloated cars on absurdly long journeys, or who think that going on a cruise is something to look forward to.
We've not even managed to persuade the majority of people that their commute is not actually a good thing even though many of them find it to be a source of stress and expense. @djasa@lennartnout
@hembrow@enobacon@djasa it's not like transport has no positive externalities. Eliminating or greatly reducing travel (by 50% or more) is utterly unnecessary. We need to move to a place with bikes, electric shared cars, busses and trains becoming the backbone of the transport system. So yes, double the train mode share, reduce car ownership and transition to shared bidirectionally charging evs. Telling people they can't travel is impossible.
@lennartnout@hembrow@enobacon@djasa Nevertheless, actively working to create proximity of everyday activities and necessities will substantially reduce the forced need to travel. And improve equity.
@lennartnout We've done some good stuff in the Netherlands, but we have little to celebrate really.
Unfortunately we also have the longest commutes in Europe right here in the Netherlands and we're number 39 out of 195 countries for car ownership. And car ownership is rising rapidly. @Marrekoo@enobacon@djasa
@hembrow@Marrekoo@enobacon@djasa hey I'm not saying we shouldn't reduce commute lengths. Paying people unlimited amounts for lease cars and travel reimbursement is silly. But bashing the train for being polluting when the incremental emissions for extra train passengers is about 0 is counterproductive.
@lennartnout I mostly agree with that, but the incremental emissions are not actually zero. For a start, when we have people suggesting that rail travel should be scaled up, that will bring higher emissions. And are the emissions that we have now sustainable ? I would say not.
The per km payment for commuting in this country has a lot to answer for. It has to go as it distorts the transport market in a very negative way. I think this policy was introduced with good intentions, allowing people more flexibility for work, but as with many things there was a hidden problem. @Marrekoo@enobacon@djasa
@hembrow@Marrekoo@enobacon@djasa the average rush hour occupancy on the train is 50% much less outside rush hour. So there's heaps of capacity there without any additional emissions
@lennartnout That's a fair point. If you could convince people to shift their time of work and convince them to bike to the station instead of using the train then we could perhaps move about 1% of current car commutes onto the train from the car without extra train emissions. I think that's about as much as you could achieve, though, and even convincing people to do that will be difficult. @Marrekoo@enobacon@djasa
@hembrow@lennartnout@Marrekoo@djasa it all comes down to the policy /social context in which you're trying to convince the individual. Limited imagination of how my individual situation could work limits what I'm willing to support for policy, in a feedback loop. If parents don't have to drive their kids to school, do they just drive to the mall for needless consumerism, or something with less negative impact?
Which step is bigger, a family not needing a 2nd car, vs not needing any car?
@enobacon I don't really see how car ownership is compatible with a livable planet so I'd have to pick the second.
But neither choice is actually the direction that we're heading in currently.
One of the things that's really nice about living here in the Netherlands is that it's relatively easy to live without a car. This is in large part due to the cycle-path network which means that everyday journeys by bike don't feel like taking part in an extreme sport. Children mostly go to school on their own by bike. They go to sports clubs by bike, hang around with their friends by bike. This gives parents freedom, which is also fab.
It's truly excellent and every country should have this. I spent decades trying to sell exactly that idea to English speaking countries, organising study tours, writing about it, doing presentations etc.
But unfortunately it's not been enough. Even in this policy and social context, where everyone has that experience, Dutch families increasingly have 2nd and 3rd cars and they increasingly drive their kids to school.
What has been done here is still really incredibly good, but it hasn't work out as we might have hoped.
@hembrow yeah we've definitely exhausted the low-hanging-carrots approach in Portland (planners puzzling at why "build it and they will come" hasn't worked to shift trips onto bikes when they largely have not built it though 🤪) the permissive wide smooth road that induces demand for senseless driving is the same one required for deliveries/ access/ trash collection. Without congestion pricing and/or 20x increase to gas tax, the driver's decision/habit is unfazed.
@hembrow though it looks like NL has given some priority to bikes and transit, it seems like cars still get more than they deserve (are the car taxes paying for the bikeways and sidewalks, transit, in addition to public health costs, environmental and housing impacts? Or are cars still subsidized?) Even in Portland, many still see biking to the store as beneath them, yet their driving is done on the backs of the poor and future generations. Leadership failure.
@enobacon NL has the best cycling infrastructure in the world by some margin, and this infrastructure covers the entire country so you can make journeys of any length in comfort. But it's a bargain. This best in the world infrastructure is still actually very inexpensive compared with everything else.
The country spends more on the 2% of people who travel by public transport (transit) than it does on the 27% who are cycling. It also spends far more on building infrastructure which encourages car ownership (50% of journeys) and a huge amount is spent on subsidizing air travel, on which little if any tax revenue is earned.
Car commuters (and to a lesser extent public transport commuters) are also the biggest recipients by far of a per km free subsidy for long commutes. This is one of the factors which has led to the Netherlands having very long commutes on average for a European nation.
Taxation on cars and their fuel is not at anywhere near the level it would have to be for drivers to cover the costs to society as a whole of driving cars. So no, car drivers do not subsidize cycling or transit, or even cover their own costs.
@enobacon In addition, anyone cycling isn't using the much more expensive infrastructure built for cars, so we don't need as much of it and it doesn't wear out so quickly. With 27% of journeys made by bike that's a significant saving.
But we have too many carrots for drivers. Driving here is incredibly easy. The roads are magnificent. There are no holes because of the absurdly high level of maintenance, the signage is excellent, junctions are well designed etc.
At this point I just don't think there are any nudges at all which make drivers think about cycling. So they drive more and more every year, and they buy more and bigger cars to make those journeys.
It's quite sad to see, as I did this morning, someone drive a Ford F150 to a local shopping centre to buy a loaf of bread. This was not an out of town shop but one built in the middle of a housing development with a catchment area of no more than 2 km because every housing development has something similar.
But there's nothing to stop people from doing that.
Those cars weren't seen at all in NL ten years ago. They seem to have grown enormously in popularity since Trump's brain fart about Europeans not buying enough American cars. So that's another reason to dislike the criminal ex-president. @lennartnout@Marrekoo@djasa
It's also too wide for the parking space. And of course you can see how it's much larger than other cars. These things present a serious danger and really should be banned or taxed out of existence. For some reason these #wankpanzers always seem to be fitted with undersized number plates in the American style. Clearly something to do with the vanity of their owners as there's obviously space there for a normally sized number plate. These small number plates must surely be illegal.
@hembrow why is there a parking space for this truck, and do the other shoppers pay as the same amount as the driver for their groceries? @lennartnout@Marrekoo@djasa
And when talking about carrots a very big one is company cars for private use.
In many companies and types of jobs they're on all levels and the system is setup for unlimited driving at a fixed cost (a very low one via tax, and usually a 50 or 100 euro/month fee to the company) for the employee.
This naturally goes against the popular Dutch narrative that "cars are super expensive in NL" (they're not)
@Pepijn Indeed. Cars really are not expensive here and the company car dodge is one of several ridiculous ways in which the Dutch tax system encourages people to drive as much as possible.
Cars are FAR too cheap in NL. We wouldn't have one of the highest car ownership rates in the world if they were not so easily affordable.
@hembrow@Pepijn@enobacon@lennartnout@Marrekoo
And it has downstream effects, after 1-10 years, these cars move to the east where many of mitigation systems get disabled when they break (because of dysfunctional emission controls at state level) and they're continuing to pollute. Getting regulation and incentives right in wealthy countries (or for wealthy corporations) thus has as much indirect effects as direct ones.
company car as a benefit as you mentioned. Possible fix would be per-km tax/fee that would have to be deducted from employee's wage
people really are willing to spend on gas. Minimum consumption tax on gas in EU is €0.36/l which is €156/tCO₂ - and the total cost of gas fuel is say €1.7/l which in CO₂ would be whopping €740/t. Stick this price on any other fossil fuel >
@hembrow@Pepijn@enobacon@lennartnout@Marrekoo
and the result would be energy poverty and industry bankruptcies (likely followed by move to countries with less stringent rules; even CO₂ allowance costing 2/3 of gas tax have this effect)
And when govts try to address this discrepancy somehow, result is often some perverse incentive such as U.S. fuel standards favoring large pickup trucks over anything smaller.
@hembrow@Pepijn@enobacon@lennartnout@Marrekoo
Third big problem with cars is that most of them operate as somehow "prepaid" - large part of their overall cost is paid upfront or regularly so when people who already have them decide how to travel, they only consider the rather low and diminishing marginal cost (which will further diminish with transition to electrics, esp. those that could be charged throughout the day from photovoltaic).
@djasa there's also the #InducedDemand of a redundant network of free car streets and 3-5 free parking spots for every car, which the city spends millions per day to subsidize and jumps into action to fix in the middle of the night when some driver makes an oopsie out of a traffic signal pole or some other infrastructure. In that context, if all you get on a bike is told to "share", well it would be silly not to drive.
@lennartnout@hembrow@Marrekoo@djasa
Personally, living in a former streetcar suburban Portland neighborhood, an electric (xtracycle edgerunner) cargo bike replaced our second car but only does 1/3rd of the miles. Some of that is trips to closer destinations where car parking is difficult, replacing trips to sprawling malls, some is ridden on the other bikes without odometers. Very little was replaced with transit because the bus/max/Amtrak is politically hobbled by anti-bike planning/graft
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