Unsurprisingly, for-profit providers of shared e-bike services claim they reduce carbon emissions; but is this true? Qiumeng Li (et al.) of the University of Cambridge notes in the paper highlighted today there’s (until now?) no real consensus on this among the scientific community.
The problem is if they’re being used instead of a regular bike or just simply walking they’re not helping. If they’re substituting a journey on public transport it’s a maybe but if they’re taking the place of a journey by car it’s a win. So which is it?
The researchers were able to obtain granular data from two large cities in China, Chengdu and Kunming, and concluded in their study shared e-bikes do reduce carbon emissions; and by material amounts. In the study the amount of carbon un-emitted was between 80~150-grams per trip which translates at the city-level to a benefit of between 14~27-tonnes per day.
The big caveat is the greatest benefits accrued in non-central, low accessibility and low-income level areas; basically, the ‘burbs.
The paper ignores the safety aspects of this mode of transport which seems to be why it remains banned from a number of cities but the study suggests planners should reconsider blanket prohibition, especially in the case of a city’s non-core/non-central areas.
You’ll find the paper in full via the following link Do Shared E-Bikes Reduce Urban Carbon Emissions?
Happy Sunday.
