Introducing the e-bike city: Sustainable mobility through urban design?

Abstract

This think piece deals with challenges of urban transport related to decarbonization, population growth and equity issues. We argue that present transport policy, largely building on technical and incremental developments, seems unable to address these challenges sufficiently within the available time frame: Electric cars, autonomous driving, carpooling, working from home, or similar developments can help reduce the carbon footprint but will likely fail to deliver climate neutrality quickly enough under prevailing conditions of population growth and induced demand effects. Instead, some scholars argue that the required results are only possible if more substantial behavior changes are also part of the solution. In this paper, we touch on the possibilities of urban design in rapidly encouraging shifts toward more sustainable travel behavior and discuss the possible consequences of such an approach. We introduce the E-Bike City, a hypothetical transformation reallocating large part of existing road space from cars to cycling, while utilizing the potentials of e-bikes for making cycling widely viable. Undoubtfully, such transformation has far-reaching effects on mode choice and emissions but also on travel speeds, accessibility, and social equity. In an open-ended discussion, we elaborate possible consequences of such intervention and how they could affect the overall desirability. Finally, we invite other researchers to openly discuss about further overall visions of achieving sustainable transport through urban transformations.