[lazyjones]

Bicycles compete with public transport, not cars.

Also: > The Vehicles per 1000 people of Denmark is similar to that of United Kingdom, Qatar, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Dominica, Barbados, Bermuda, Bulgaria, Slovak Republic with a respective Vehicles per 1000 people of 516, 514, 495, 494, 491, 470, 439, 422, 417, 382 (per 1,000 people) and a global rank of 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43.

http://mecometer.com/whats/denmark/vehicles-per-thousand-peo...

Therefore, this article is just the usual activism without substance.

[eesmith]

The underlying paper comments the Czech Republic has high car ownership but relatively low use because of good public transport:

> The few exceptions where car modal share remains low and car ownership is relatively high, such as Switzerland, Japan, and the Czech Republic, have well-developed and efficient public transportation systems (e.g., public buses and subways) to satisfy their main mobility demand.

Thus, a ranking of "Vehicles per 1000 people" isn't necessarily indicative of vehicle use, and it's the latter which generates CO2 (for IC engines) and other pollutants, not mere ownership.

The paper calculates the effect of changing the modal share of bike use world-wide to match that of Denmark, and presents the first ever (to the authors' knowledge) substance for that calculation.

[sokoloff]

Bicycles compete with other modes of transport in varying degrees.

Critically, bicycles have very close to the same random route ability as cars. They’re excluded from most limited-access highways but otherwise can go directly to a place 2 miles away by traveling approximately 2 miles and without significant waiting times for the user. Contrast that with public transit that might need to go 5+ miles and involve a transfer, multiple waits, and walking on both ends to cover that same 2 mile journey.

It was practically possible for me to cycle to my old office. It was comically impractical (though technically possible) to use a combination of multiple buses and multiple subway lines to get there. For that commute (and I think many other journeys), bikes are competing with cars not public transit.

[archi42]

I think "it depends". For someone living in the same city as you, but having both their apartment and place of work connected by a more feasible public transport route, a bike competes with public transport.

For me it augments it: Taking public transport is not pleasant (10 miles at 40m travel time), but I could go to the train station by bike, take the train and then cycle to work (<20m). Only reason I'm not doing that that I have to carry the bike up the stairs (10m height difference) and instead do wfh. By car it's 15 to 20m depending on traffic.