DHis bicycle market is booming.Total about five million cycle and electric bicycle Compared with the previous year, sales increased by about 17%, and sales increased by 61%. This was reported by industry associations in two rounds. What use does the cycling boom do for our environment and society? The answer can be found by converting the consequences of choosing a vehicle into money.
A report issued by the Federal Environment Agency in March 2021 showed that bicycles are a more cost-effective alternative to cars for society. According to 2017 data, this tests how much society needs to pay for driving a car. To this end, the report converts car energy consumption, greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions, and noise emissions into money. Nadja Richter from the Federal Environment Agency explained how it works: the impact of driving on the environment has a negative impact on health, because, for example, noise can cause residents to feel stressed or tinnitus. In addition, emissions can damage buildings and materials, crop failures, and biodiversity loss. However, if the climate changes, measures must be taken to adapt the infrastructure to the changing weather.
But that’s not all: the cost from production to maintenance and disposal of the car is also included. Since cars cannot drive on their own, they must also calculate fuel and electricity and their output. In addition, drivers need to drive on the road, where to stop, and signs that tell them where to go.
So if you put all these together, you will get a sum of 5.66 cents. According to calculations by the Federal Environment Agency, this is the cost that society pays per kilometer for driving. By comparison: It only costs 0.36 cents to ride a bicycle for a kilometer. This amount mainly comes from the manufacture of bicycles.
Need bicycle funding
The demand for more bike-friendly cities is not new. The Federal Bicycle Future Association, the Bicycle Association Changing the City, and the Service and Bicycle Association recently expressed their views in a report. They hope that more people will be able to ride on saddles through a traffic structure suitable for bicycles. These organizations not only see the benefits to the environment, but also see the benefits of health and society as a whole. They are based on a study by Stefan Gössling, Professor of Tourism and Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden.
In the 2018 paper, he also calculated environmental costs. However, unlike the Federal Environment Agency, it also includes the health effects of vehicle use and the cost of accidents. Gössling calculates the latter by looking at the likelihood of injury or even death while riding a bicycle or driving. He then linked this percentage to the value set for human life. How much is this, he explained in a telephone interview: Economists’ income is slightly less than 2 million euros, mainly composed of insurance and wage costs. “However, you must remember that emotional value and secondary factors such as the cost of psychotherapy that may be performed after sadness or accidental trauma are excluded. Therefore, the value is more likely to be underestimated than overestimated,” the professor pointed out.
