Letting electric cars use bus lanes dangerous to cyclists says CTC

Quote:

Sam... told road.cc

Great speech but really, preaching to the choir. I'd rather read that he'd told the Sunday Times or Sky TV or someone and that they were reporting it.

burtthebike wrote:

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xla1/v/t1.0-9/12572982_1015... Tried to post this as an image, but failed dismally.

Use the img tag in square brackets:

And it's spot on, of course. On twitter at https://twitter.com/copenhagenize/status/645955710589779968

The discussion should be less about oil powered v electrically powered cars but about how we should use fewer cars, especially in cities.

burtthebike wrote:

The environmental case for electric vehicles is marginal at best

Well, there's the issue about how the electricity is generated but that can be addressed (and coal is to be phased out for a start). Beyond that, electricity seems to be the best hope for decarbonising car traffic. It helps with local pollutants, such as NOx too.

Duncann wrote:

burtthebike wrote:

The environmental case for electric vehicles is marginal at best

Well, there's the issue about how the electricity is generated but that can be addressed (and coal is to be phased out for a start). Beyond that, electricity seems to be the best hope for decarbonising car traffic. It helps with local pollutants, such as NOx too.

Suppose we can skip over  the hard questions about exactly how we plab5 to produce  all this low carbon electricity.

And the issue about manufacturing  the cars. And the isdse about disposal and recycling burdens. And the issue  about the social costs of replacing  the entire UK fleet of private cars.

But yes, if we are so obsessed by cars that we must keep privately owned ones in existence  then  electric vehicles probably are the least shit option. But quite why we'd  want  to is beyond  me.

Duncann wrote:

Well, there's the issue about how the electricity is generated but that can be addressed (and coal is to be phased out for a start). Beyond that, electricity seems to be the best hope for decarbonising car traffic. It helps with local pollutants, such as NOx too.

The point about pollution in our high streets is an important one. But saying that 'how the electricity is generated ... can be addressed' would make more sense if the Tories weren't hell bent on undermining all attempts to move to a low carbon economy. They have removed incentives for solar and wind power at short notice so businesses cannot plan and have no continuity, placing thousands of jobs in the sector at risk. They are seemingly committed to forcing through fracking against every shred of common sense. Not to mention doing dodgy deals with the Chinese to build more nuclear power stations, when we still do not know how to deal the waste and will be paying to do so for thousands of years.

burtthebike wrote:

This is a short term, short sighted, populist measure by a government which is environmentally illiterate.  Any space that the electric vehicles leave will be taken by more petrol or deisel powered cars, so the actual effect will be to increase pollution.  Allowing them in bus lanes will increase congestion and reduce the attraction of buses and cycling. 

The environmental case for electric vehicles is marginal at best, and if even a tiny proportion of cyclists are deterred, then the effect will be negative.

Does anyone remember the "greenest government ever" or the "cycling revolution"?  This government is  so bad, it has gone way past a joke and is deeply into ideological insanity.

The Tories are a joke and when it comes to the environment and their record is appalling.

However, the environmental case for EV's is far better than marginal when fuelled by renewable sources even when you factor in the full costs of manufacture. You also have to consider the reduction of particulates in urban centres, which is killing tens of thousands of people a year. This is a pretty definitive accredited paper on the subject: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18490.abstract

I actually think that allowing EV's to use bus lanes in the short term is a valid measure given their environmental credentials, however I have one big caveat; this should only be allowed if polluting private vehicles are removed from bus lanes - i.e. taxis. Given the numbers of taxis in London this would amount to a net reduction of traffic in bus lanes and not impact cyclist safety. 

As EV's become more popular the right to use bus lanes would have to be reversed but in the intervening years it would lead to an acceleration of uptake of EV's and as we increase renewables we would start to see a fall in emmissions and those particulates that are doing so much damage.

I think there is a case for rebranding bus lanes as low emissions lanes and as EV's become more popular and advanced the criteria for qualifying to use these lanes could become ever more strict, meaning that small less polluting EV's could continue to do so while an electric Range Rover or Ferrari would not. 

Hopefully by that time we might have some decent joined up cycle infrastructure as well.

jasecd wrote:

burtthebike wrote:

This is a short term, short sighted, populist measure by a government which is environmentally illiterate.  Any space that the electric vehicles leave will be taken by more petrol or deisel powered cars, so the actual effect will be to increase pollution.  Allowing them in bus lanes will increase congestion and reduce the attraction of buses and cycling. 

The environmental case for electric vehicles is marginal at best, and if even a tiny proportion of cyclists are deterred, then the effect will be negative.

Does anyone remember the "greenest government ever" or the "cycling revolution"?  This government is  so bad, it has gone way past a joke and is deeply into ideological insanity.

 

The Tories are a joke and when it comes to the environment and their record is appalling.

However, the environmental case for EV's is far better than marginal when fuelled by renewable sources even when you factor in the full costs of manufacture. You also have to consider the reduction of particulates in urban centres, which is killing tens of thousands of people a year. This is a pretty definitive accredited paper on the subject: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18490.abstract

 

Two things about that paper 

i) even though they are explicitly addressing 'light duty' transportation, they did not consider walking or bikes, electric or otherwise, as alternatives. So they almost certainly missed the biggest possible wins.

ii) their ''best' (in this restricted set) solution involves electricity generated from wave, wind and solar. You might like to consider how far we are from being able to generate enoigh power by these means to replace the energy used by internal combustion.

You might also like to consider the additional public health gains that would accrue from replacing cars by active transport, all of which should lead you to conclude that pushing EVs is a sub-optimal solution, driven by politics rather than thought or geneuine concern for the environment, public health and, indeed, the economy.

ragtag wrote:

I'm actually agreeing with the CTC..

I was thinking the same, CTC just echoed it for me and I was suprised in the other thread on Road.cc that this point wasn't raised. The point of 'bus' lanes is a queit lane that lets mass transit and non-congesting traffic to pass easily...and for cyclists, safely.

Sticking cars in it just because they don't emit gasses into the local environment makes no sense. What happens when the ownership of low emission vehicles rockets?

ragtag wrote:

I'm actually agreeing with the CTC.. 

Whadderyer mean 'actually' ?

Their internal  charity-turmoil shenanigans aside, which other cycling organisation has been doing push-back on changes to the highway code, for example ? British Cycling don't appear to have given a flying one about anything outside racing until the last few years.