In America, driving a fossil-fueled car dramatically increases air pollution resulting in poor air quality which impacts the entire ecosystem from humans to plants. The impact of cars on the environment and beyond has always been a concern since the first automobile was introduced in the early 1900s. The pollution from fossil-fueled cars in America however, has gotten much worse and they are now the biggest single contributor to global warming. Because of this, the American lifespan is reduced by almost 4 months (Sengupta). According to the EPA, cars collectively cause 75% of carbon monoxide pollution. So why do Americans predominantly use gasoline-powered cars over other forms of clean transportation? The two biggest reasons are that fossil-fueled cars are cheap and convenient. In order for there to be a massive societal shift toward using clean, renewable forms of transportation, the American people will need to collectively decide that cheap and convenient doesn’t take priority over the damage and destruction to our country, planet, and future generations.
America, more than any other country in the world is a car-dependent society. How did we become the number one gas-guzzling society in the first place? Back to cheap and convenient. Thanks to Henry Ford and the development of the production line, cars became affordable to the masses. This mass motorization meant that by the mid-1930s there was one registered car for every two U.S. households vs. car ownership in Europe being relegated to the wealthy (Buehler). It is also affordable to fuel our many cars, considering that even today a gallon of gas in the U.S. would cost at least double anywhere in Europe. Another contributing factor was the development of the interstate system. In 1956, President Eisenhower passed the Federal Aid Highway Act which led to the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways connecting the United States (Weingroff).
One difference between America and the rest of the world is that our focus is on advancing technology instead of correcting our behavior. “For example, responses to air pollution or traffic safety consisted of technological fixes — such as catalytic converters, reformulated cleaner fuels, seat belts, and airbags — that let people keep driving as usual. European countries implemented these technical requirements as well, but also more aggressively reduced speed limits in entire neighborhoods, created car-free zones, reduced car parking, and implemented other policies that encourage behavioral shifts”(Buehler).
Another effect of our car-dependent society is the lack of city planning to include pedestrian and bicyclist amenities. Unlike the U.S., Amsterdam and Copenhagen have entire networks of bike lanes and car-free city centers. In America, all new cities are planned around the automobile which “discourages the use of public transportation and encourages sprawl” (A Chance to) which makes the car a great transportation option. Overall, Americans gravitate towards the car because it is very accessible and government operations have made it very easy to travel from one place to another on a car-extensive highway system.
“The numbers show the need for change. In 2010, Americans drove for 85 percent of their daily trips, compared to car trip shares of 50 to 65 percent in Europe. Longer trip distances only partially explain the difference. Roughly 30 percent of daily trips are shorter than a mile on either side of the Atlantic. But of those under one-mile trips, Americans drove almost 70 percent of the time, while Europeans made 70 percent of their short trips by bicycle, foot, or public transportation” (Buehler). Our dependence on cars leads to air pollution and environmental problems that then cause health issues. “The American Lung Association reports that 30,000 people are killed by car emissions annually in the United States alone. Air pollution also causes numerous respiratory and cardiovascular problems and may exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as asthma. More than half of Americans live in areas that fail to meet federal air quality standards at least several days each year” (Jacobs). What solutions have been implemented to answer the call for a clean form of transportation?
Bike Share Systems
We need some kind of revolution! And bike sharing could be the alternative transport that finally takes on the car. We know the dangers of continuing as we are with cheap and convenient gas-powered cars. We know that most Americans will hop in their car for even short trips to drop off kids at school or run to the post office instead of walking or riding their bikes. But what if bike share systems were everywhere and offered a better option? Today, bike-share systems are very common in large cities. The public utilizes bike share systems in their everyday commutes to get to work or to cover the “last mile” (distance left to the final destination after taking public transport like the bus or the train). But what is a bike share system? “Bike-sharing is short-term bicycle access, which provides its users with an environmentally friendly form of public transportation. This flexible short-term use scheme targets daily mobility and allows users to access public bicycles at unattended bike stations” (Shaheen, Guzman, Zhang). Originally, bike share systems were not very popular with the public. The first bike share was a response to the problems caused by fossil-fueled cars, such as air pollution and health problems, but it had many issues and was created as more of a political statement than an alternative to cars.
The first ever bike share system was created by Provo, an infamous group of Dutch activists. It was very simple, all Provo did was paint a few bikes white and leave them around Amsterdam for the public to use. Provo created the bike share system in the 1960s as a solution to air pollution and climate change concerns (theguardian.com). The “white bicycle plan” didn’t really gain much traction with the locals, but it did introduce the idea of a bike share system to the rest of the world. Twenty years after “The Witte Fietsenplan”, the idea of bike shares was reintroduced by Wessung and Sadolin, two designers in Copenhagen, when they created a new bike share, called Copenhagen City Bikes. But the bike share still suffered vandalism and theft, just like “The Witte Fietsenplan” (Walker).
In recent times, bike share systems have popped up all over the world. The systems can be found in China, France, and Mexico. In the US, bike-share systems have been found in many cities since 2008. At the docking stations, bikes are checked out with usually a prepaid membership card or money. The fees keep the company funded for station expansions and bike maintenance. Bike-sharing programs typically cover bicycle purchases, maintenance costs, and storage of the bikes, but some bike shares have federal support.
Bike share systems are overall pretty successful. The systems are convenient because companies often have hundreds of stations to check out and dock a bike from spread out over a city. The bike share systems are also usually pretty cheap to use (the annual membership for Citi Bike is $169), much cheaper than the annual maintenance and fuel of a car. There is one huge downside to bike share systems though, the average person cannot ride a bike the same distance in the same amount of time as a car.
What does the future of bike share look like? And how will technology make it happen? The number of annual bike-share trips has steadily increased since bike shares were popularized, “According to a report just released by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, residents and tourists in US cities took 35 million bike-share trips in 2017, up a whopping 25 percent from the year previous” (Marshall). This is great, but the need to make bikes accessible everywhere still remains. Today there are dockless bikes (bikes that do not need a docking station and are parked on the sidewalk or on a bike rack), but fundamentally are they there when people need them? Bike-share systems have partially reduced air pollution in cities, but are still a long way from replacing cars.
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Electric Cars
When you think of alternatives to fossil-fueled cars, most people think of electric cars. What are electric cars? Electric cars are “cars [that] run at least partially on electricity. Unlike conventional vehicles that use a gasoline or diesel-powered engine, electric cars, and trucks use an electric motor powered by electricity from batteries or a fuel cell” (Union of Concerned Scientists). Electric cars were first created when the first fossil-fueled cars were created, in the 1800s, but didn’t gain much popularity because “...Henry Ford’s… Model T made gasoline-powered cars widely available and affordable. By 1912, the gasoline car costs only $650, while an electric roadster sold for $1,750” (Matulka). But, the electric car has since been reintroduced and adopted by some Americans as a cleaner alternative to gas-powered cars.
After the oil crisis of the 70s, there was interest again in electric cars. The government-funded research into electric alternatives to fossil fuel and automobile companies made electric car models, but the new electric cars just couldn’t perform like the fossil-fueled car, “... usually topping at speeds of 45 miles per hour -- and [electric car’s] typical range was limited to 40 miles before needing to be recharged” (Matulka). About 20 years after the boom of electric cars in the 1970s, interest in electric cars had mostly died down. But new federal laws and regulations such as the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment and the 1992 Energy Policy Act began to put pressure on the public to change their mindset to electric cars. Car companies once again began to make electric models, but fossil-fueled cars were still the vast majority of sales. The next big event to shape our mindset of electric cars was when Tesla Motors announced that they would begin to make “a luxury electric sports car that could go more than 200 miles on a single charge” (Matulka). Since then, Tesla has become the largest car manufacturer in the state of California and has had great success selling electric cars, and many other automakers have followed Tesla’s lead and begun to work on making better electric cars.
Electric cars run on- you guessed it, electricity. “Battery electric vehicles, or BEVs, use electricity stored in a battery pack to power an electric motor and turn the wheels. When depleted, the batteries are recharged using grid electricity, either from a wall socket or a dedicated charging unit. Since they don’t run on gasoline or diesel and are powered entirely by electricity, battery electric cars, and trucks are considered “all-electric” vehicles” (How to Do Battery).
There are pros and cons to electric cars. One huge pro of electric cars is the fact that they release significantly less air pollution than fossil-fueled cars. “In terms of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, electric cars and trucks are often cleaner than even the most efficient conventional vehicles”. Unfortunately, though, electric cars are overall more expensive to buy and less convenient to use than fossil-fueled cars and therefore are still less popular.
What will the future of electric cars look like? “If we transitioned all the light-duty vehicles in the U.S. to hybrids or plug-in electric vehicles using our current technology mix, we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 30-60 percent, while lowering the carbon pollution from the transportation sector by as much as 20 percent” (Matulka). To reach such a goal, President Obama started the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge, an initiative to make electric cars as affordable as today’s fossil-fueled cars by 2022.
Why Bike Share Systems are the Key to a Clean Future
Bike-share systems significantly reduce transportation-related emissions and help reduce traffic congestion and people’s dependence on fossil fuels. One reason bike share systems are so great is that bike share systems allow you to help the environment. “A survey of riders in Denver revealed 43 percent of B-Cycle riders replaced car trips, which avoids burning 15,868 gallons of gasoline and emitting 312,121 pounds of carbon” (Profita). Riding a bike does not create any pollution and cuts way down on the extraction of fossil fuels. Another reason bike share systems are a success is because it is much better for your health. Riding a bike does not produce air pollution that is more hazardous to a person’s health than a fossil-fueled car does. “The physical exercise of riding a bicycle should also be better for rider’s health than driving or taking public transport” (Is City Bike). All in all, bike sharing is beneficial to the environment and to the public’s health.
While bike-sharing systems have many upsides, they have downsides as well. One main reason bike share systems are not the perfect solution to fossil-fueled cars is that they are not entirely secure and safe.
The companies acknowledge that some users have figured out how to cheat their systems, such as using prepaid credit cards or taking bicycles that haven’t been properly locked by paying riders... In Seattle, where there are as many as 7,000 dockless bikes from three vendors, city officials say they have had incidents in which people have cut the wires of the bikes, not only destroying the bikes but also posing a safety hazard for riders unaware of the bike’s damaged condition. (Lazo)
Another main reason bike share systems are not the best solution to fossil-fueled cars is that they are not suitable for transporting goods like groceries or transporting small children. Transporting goods is a huge part of why we have cars in the first place and on a bike it’s impossible to transport all that a car can.
The effectiveness of bike share systems to help improve air pollution and health makes allowances for its problems. If we don’t change the mindset of the public from cheap and convenient transportation to being concerned for our environment and health then air pollution will worsen. “Cars, trucks, and buses powered by fossil fuels are major contributors to air pollution- transportation emits more than half of nitrogen oxides in our air, and is a major source of global warming emissions in the US. Studies have linked pollutants from vehicle exhaust to adverse impacts on nearly every organ system in the body” (Cars, Trucks, Buses, and Air Pollution). As a resident of the United States, it is your responsibility to make an effort to reduce your carbon footprint and pollution where you can. One way to make a difference is by choosing another clean form of transportation over a fossil-fueled car. Undoubtedly, there are many ways to travel without fossil fuels and if we can show Americans that there are ways to do so, then we will be on track to make a positive impact on climate change.
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