And as a result, the Ecologist party at the initiative of the project got obliterated during the last election 🙃
Hills and distance are secondary, it’s the infrastructure that allows this beatiful stat.
And e-bikes, which is probably the main factor that changed in the last 5 years.
The most scientifically rigorous and trustable carbon credit market possible is a system where people are bribed to bicycle to work instead of driving their car.
Would it still be a market full of people bullshitting and taking the bribe while still driving to work? Probably. Would people end up enjoying the benefits of bicycling so much they don’t even need to be bribed? Probably but is that actually technically even a fail state of a carbon credit system? Even considered in the worst light a Carbon Credit Bicycle Bribing System would still be an order of magnitude less full of bullshit and fraud than in the currently existing carbon credit markets so I think it would it be a net benefit to the earth to abandon current fantasies and refocus entirely on bribing people to bicycle to work.
I live in Belgium. We have that system. For some reason, VRT didn’t think it was “important enough” to say, but I guess it is pretty ubiquitous here. This + electric bikes are the real reason so many bike to work.
We do get paid per km for biking to work. Tax-free to a maximum of something like 0.37€/km or so. 3690€ per year. Some people live an hour away from work and will buy one of those 8-10k€ strömer 45km/hr speed bikes and can hit that max if they live farther from work. Often you can also lease a bike or speedpedelec tax-free through your work.
15€/day biking every day to hit that max is biking 41km/day, or around a half hour each way at an average of 40km/hr.
I only live 5km from work (we get 0.26/km I think, so around 2.60€/day) so I bike to work every day on my normal electric bike. I used to live 16km from work and that was less doable if it was pouring rain or icy.
You can do it in other ways too. You can get great tax credits here every 5/7 years or whatever to buy a bike to get to work. And having a good bike ready to go motivates (gasp). It’s still a bribe, just not a carbon credit.
Up to 10k with a hill or two is fine to cycle every day.
I did 16km each way (32km) per day for a few years. Decent low-intensity exercise with an electric bike, but losing 1h40 per day in addition to work was not as nice.
Fietsvergoeding is awesome though.
I do 16k with 1.5 hill - still definitely doable!
I do 12Km with a lot of hills, but I have an e-bike so it’s pretty easy
Typical commute 20k, 500m ele, MTB, my doctor was asking if I take statines when he saw my blood tests…
