As the world population becomes more accustomed to living in urban areas, the need for greener transportation other than an electric automobil will increase. The waste of time, stress, and pollution are just some of the factors that are driving European cities to follow the example of metropolis like Amsterdam, where the use of bicycles is just one of the easy ways to combat pollution. Policies such as Paris’s reduction of the maximum speed, Copenhagen’s lack of cars and abundance of bikes, free public transport in Luxembourg, and Pontevedra, where there are no cars: show the commitment of European metropolises to reduce car pollution.
Paris, “the city of 15 minutes”. This is the name of the project that drives the new goal of Paris: becoming a place where every essential service is reachable on foot or by bike. The lockdown was paradoxically helpful, allowing the city to transform 50 km of roads into permanent cycle paths. Even the maximum speed for cars has decreased from 50 to 30 km per hour in most of the city.
1.44 million km. That’s 35 times around the world. That is, how much the citizens of Copenhagen pedal every day. To favor the increase of this percentage is the conformation of the city: 350 km of main roads in Copenhagen are made up of cycle paths, the infrastructure is huge and investments aimed at increasing these figures. Copenhagen will thus become carbon-neutral by 2025, an aim that the city will achieve by transforming 0 of surface in routes that you can be travelled by bike, foot or public vehicles.
676 per thousand inhabitants is the share of cars that made Luxembourg the country with the record in the continent. This has motivated the implementation of free transport throughout the territory of the state.
Whether you are a Luxembourgian, a tourist or a border tourist, the state will offer you free transport throughout the country, thanks to the more than 200 thousand people who every day from France, Belgium and Germany enter the country, which that favored the state to make the decision to invest 4 billion in the railways by 2027.
Now imagine your hometown, industrialized, but safe. And now imagine that you can walk or pedal freely without having worries about vehicles exceeding 40 km/h. That’s what happens in Pontevedra, the city without a car.
20 years ago, in 2001, the city of Pontevedra was pedestrian for 90%, cars can only move in a restricted area whose maximum limit is 30 km/h. CO2 emissions have thus decreased by 70% by improving quality of life, local trade and reducing road fatalities.
Referring to the italian average, a country where there are 663 cars per 1,000 inhabitants, you lose an average of over 10 working days every year, days that you could spend in every other way: on the beach? Reading? Hanging out? Everywhere, but not stuck in the traffic, cursing the yourself of half an hour before for deciding to go down that road.
So, what about you? Would you rather spend 40 minutes in the car with paperwork reminiscent of the office you have just left, or recuperate your energy with clean air after a day of work stress? The choice is up to you.