EU statistics tell us that the average daily car journey is 7.5 km. Moreover, it’s important to note that 50% of car trips are less than 3 km, which is equivalent to a 10-minute bike ride.
In France, the use of bicycles has long been reserved for sports and leisure activities. Elsewhere, ironically more so in northern countries less favored climatically, bicycle mobility is much more common.
In recent years, the spread of electric-assist bicycles (e-bikes) has further facilitated their use. Technological advances in batteries have also contributed to this, as opposed to cars and motorcycles, which are polluting, noisy, dangerous, and bulky.
On the contrary, with e-bikes, one can therefore travel without much effort (even in city clothes and without sweating), make substantial energy and money savings, reduce one’s carbon footprint, and park for free. It can thus become a real tool for commuting over quite respectable distances.
We would then enter a new societal model where the car is no longer king, where it willingly gives its place to a “vehicle” of only 20 kg to transport a passenger, instead of a 4-wheeled vehicle over a ton, with a completely negligible energy cost*.
So why couldn’t Nice, which enjoys the considerable advantage of 300 days of sunshine a year, become the capital of this gentle mode of transport and instead prefers to tolerate a traffic situation like an Eastern city with the Promenade des Anglais transformed into an urban highway, motorcycles in gymkhana mode, chaotic parking, and slow public transport?
Lack of sensitivity? vision? political will? In any case, this lack of attention is strange coming from a Mayor who claims to be at the forefront of modernity with Vรฉlo Bleu and Auto-bleu…
So we remain in the realm of wishes: everyone on electric-assist bicycles in 10 years? A utopia, of course. This type of bicycle being in a price range from 1,000 to more than 3,000 euros (in many cities there is a purchase bonus of 300 to 400 euros)
In 2014, nearly 3 million bicycles were sold in France, including 78,000 electric-assist bicycles (only 2.7%). The market has grown by more than 30% year over year but remains at a very low volume.
By comparison, the sale of e-bikes in the Netherlands represents more than 20% of the bike market (over 220,000 units sold). There are nearly 3 times more e-bikes sold in this country for a population 4 times smaller.
