Six months ago I sold my car and bought an e-bike. These days I get around using the bike, on foot or by public transport. And so far, I don’t regret it one bit.
Even in Ireland, it’s easier to go car-free than you might imagine. I live in Waterford, which has a decent bus and intercity rail service. My e-bike - which cost €2,000 and was bought with part of the proceeds of the sale of my car - means that distances up to about 10km are manageable in almost any weather. Rain is not a concern, as I have the appropriate clothing. While I wouldn’t describe myself as “fit” from cycling, I get plenty of exercise and fresh air every day.
And I’ve saved money. I estimate I’m saving roughly €5,000 per year on fuel, maintenance, car insurance and other costs. When I’ve needed a car, I hire one, either for a day or by the hour, using the various short-term rental services at a cost of about €50 per day or €15 an hour for short trips.
[ I’m finally ready to ditch my car. Here’s how I’ll manage itOpens in new window ]
While I always loved cycling, now that I don’t have a car, it is my default mode of transport. It took a couple of months to fully adapt to this lifestyle change, but it has been worth it so far. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, coined the idea of habit stacking: identifying a daily habit and then stacking a new behaviour on top. The idea is to reduce the mental effort of instilling a new habit by integrating it into something you’re already doing. Having taken away the option of driving, I have nudged myself towards healthier habits. If the car was sitting outside, I would use it whenever I didn’t feel like walking or cycling. Having an e-bike means the prospect of wind and hills do not put me off.
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Nevertheless, I have had to adapt to the reality of slow travel when taking a longer journey, or when using public transport. This is where lifestyle rubs up against our social customs and expectations. Accustomed to travelling by car from a young age, we expect public transport to offer the same door-to-door reliability and convenience. That is rarely possible (especially in a country that prioritises cars).
Cycling is often the fastest and most reliable way of making an urban trip. However, we won’t convince people to take up cycling as long as driving is viewed as a proxy for freedom, convenience and safety. Researchers who study low-carbon behaviours recommend that instead of looking to individual, rationalised behaviour changes that result in lower carbon emissions, transport planners should consider habit as belonging to “body-mind-world assemblages” that are heavily influenced by social norms. That’s a way of saying we need cultural change to encourage and reinforce individual habit changes. Instead of a car being seen as a status symbol or necessity, it needs to be viewed as a space-gobbling hazard, and a polluting obstacle to health and freedom.
By managing traffic and allocating road space to give priority to cycling and walking, transport planners can do much of the “habit stacking” work for us and eliminate the many small obstacles to cycling. This will make it safer by lowering traffic speed limits and providing secure bike parking facilities. Policymakers can reinforce the cultural shift by - ideally - banning all car advertising and sponsorship, insisting that local authorities provide safe cycling infrastructure, and embedding active travel as the default mode in transport planning for towns and cities.
On paper, that is what our national transport policy is supposed to achieve. But our lived reality is that the car is still king of the road.
By way of contrast, take the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, where more than 50 per cent of the city’s population cycles on a daily basis. Utrecht has excellent cycling infrastructure, including the world’s largest underground bike parking garage, accommodating 13,500 bicycles. What makes cycling in the Netherlands so enjoyable is the fact that it is the normal way of getting about. Studies have shown that the benefits of cycling go far beyond light exercise and fresh air. Cycling, in a different sense to walking, makes us feel good because it engages all our senses and motor skills at once, and is inherently sociable. No surprise then, that Dutch children are reportedly the happiest in the world, Unicef surveys have shown.
I’m not suggesting that what I did would work for everyone. There are still times when a car would be handy. But let’s face it, our cities and towns are choked with traffic. Our health and especially that of our children is being impaired as a result of our car-dependency. Cars are clogging our streets and contributing to air pollution, congestion and noise. They are expensive to run. Possibly the best investment we can make for a sustainable and healthy future is one that normalises cycling.
Sadhbh O’ Neill is an environmentalist and researcher in climate policy
