If everyone bicycled like the Danes, we’d avoid a UK’s worth of emissions

Half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from passenger vehicles. Every plan for future emissions cuts includes at least one variant of getting people out of internal-combustion vehicles. The Netherlands and the Danes both have bicycle-focused transportation that gets a lot of people out of cars altogether.

An international team of researchers decided to look into what factors have enabled these countries to make that shift and what could happen if more countries adopted a similar transportation focus. It's difficult to get reliable data on bicycles, and bicycle focused transportation could eliminate emissions equivalent to that of a decent-sized industrialized country.

How many bikes are there?

There are good figures on the use of motor vehicles. The researchers had to estimate the number of bikes in most countries because this is almost never the case. They combined the manufacturing, import, and export figures with information on how long bicycles last to create a model. The data is out of date as the Pandemic has boosted cycling in many countries, but the countries they are able to make estimates for are not.

There isn't a lot of data on vehicle use in some countries. In some cases, it was estimated using local data from within the country, while in others it was derived from countries with similar demographic makeup.

Since the 1960s, over 4.5 billion bikes have been produced, more than twice the number of cars. China has a quarter of the global bike total, and it's one of five countries that have ended up with half of these. Smaller, wealthier countries have the highest bike-to-body ratios, while larger countries have the lowest. There are more than one bike per person in many places.

The countries were broken down into five categories. Low GDP countries have few cars or bikes. Car ownership that grew rapidly but from a low level and bicycle ownership that grew slowly or not at all are part of the category. The category started from a higher level of ownership of both types of vehicles. Italy, Poland, and Portugal were included.

Australia, Canada, and the US all had high levels of bike and car ownership, but used the cars more often. The researchers say this is due to their vast land areas. The category consisting of industrialized European countries was characterized as having high bicycle ownership and stable levels of car ownership but with citizens who actually use their bikes. The basic transport needs are met already, and the pursuit for a more eco-friendly and healthy life has driven the increase of bicycle ownership, according to the authors.

Some people are here. Japan and Switzerland have a lot of cars but a great public transit system. Norway has weather and terrain that discourages bicycle use. Some countries with high rates of traffic deaths have low levels of cycling.

The conclusion from the analysis of ownership and use is that both wealth and geography are necessary for a cycling focused culture. They aren't sure that one will develop. It seems that a societal-level choice is required to adopt this, along with a government willing to create the necessary infrastructure.