Is our car-centric society ready to ditch automobiles for bicycles?

It is already happening in a number of cities, and it may be part of the solution to the climate crisis. This is the case made by Daniel Piatkowski in his new book, Bicycle City: Riding the Bike Boom to a Brighter Future. Piatkowski, a former New York City bike messenger, is now a professor of land use and transportation planning at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway.

Piatkowski says that e-bikes have revolutionized the way we think about bicycles. Increasing numbers of people commute on e-bikes, especially when cities provide incentives to reduce auto congestion. Cargo e-bikes are even replacing SUVs and delivery vehicles.

Piatkowski argues that what was once viewed as recreation is now the future of transportation.

“The bicycle is a bridge to help reduce that immediate reliance on a car every day,” asserted Piatkowksi. “Making places more bike friendly makes them more people friendly.

It makes them more transport friendly. “I look at bikes as the necessary first step, but certainly not the last step in that transition that we need to get away from not only driving our cars all the time, but building cities that have to accommodate cars,” Piatkowksi said.

Bikes “are the starting point to …revolutionary changes in how our cities can function.”