By Elektra A. Hanna, Class of ’26

The world’s temperatures continue to rise, and with this, the planet will only continue to grow increasingly warmer. Global warming is an important issue that must be addressed if the goal of sustaining human life will continue to be reached into the coming generations.

The threat that is Climate Change continues to grow, driven heavily by human activities such as driving, which emits carbon dioxide and contributes to the dense pollution in major cities, an example being Jersey City. As the urgency to address climate change continues to grow larger, cities have begun to seek out viable solutions to combat this crisis, including the adoption of eco-conscious vehicular alternatives such as e-bikes, which appears to be a promising method in reducing carbon emissions in major urban areas. 

Greenhouse gas include gasses such as Carbon Dioxide and Monoxide (CO2 & CO), Methane, (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O) etc., the accumulation of these gasses within the Earth’s atmosphere contributes to the warming of the planet’s temperature.¹ The gasses work to trap the sun’s heat and prevent it from escaping back out to space. Now this is a natural process called the Greenhouse Effect, and is essential in maintaining the Earth’s temperature, but with human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, this process is affected significantly. The growing levels of carbon emissions on Earth seem to inflate this Greenhouse Effect, causing more and more heat to be trapped within the atmosphere, causing Earth’s temperature to grow higher and higher. ²

The effects of this global warming can be seen in many different ways. Ranging from the melting of Antarctica’s polar ice caps, to ocean acidification, and all the way to the heightened levels of CO2 right here in Jersey City. According to the AQI calendar at AQI.in³, Jersey City has had hazardous levels of Carbon Monoxide (CO) for the past year and a half. This highly flammable and poisonous gas is a harmful byproduct of vehicles that burn fossil fuels to power themselves. Driving is a major everyday activity for most humans. The frequent usage of fossil fuel powered cars contributes quite largely to the CO(2) emissions in major urban areas like Jersey City.

Climate change isn’t an end-all-be-all though, there are a few possible solutions to help combat and counteract the harmful carbon emissions caused by fossil fuel dependent vehicles. There are many ways to lessen your own individual carbon footprint. The more people helping to minimize their own carbon emission means helping the environment by lessening the amount of every day pollution humans produce. Some ways in doing this can be recycling, being more mindful of energy usage, and switching to a more eco-friendly vehicle when you can. Such vehicles could be electric cars, but buying a new car, especially an electric one, can be expensive. A more feasible alternative to an electric car, that is still eco-conscious yet efficient, is the Electric bike—an E-Bike.

Electric bikes, E-Bikes, are powered by a battery. They work just the same as regular bicycles but feature a battery that helps to boost and propel a rider when going up hills or through rough terrain without having to exacerbate one’s own energy. Some E-bikes come with throttles that allow you to ride without having to necessarily pedal. What they all have in common is that they are eco-friendly alternatives to using traditional fossil fuel burning vehicles. They are especially useful in major urban areas.

Andrew J. Hawkins, the Transportation Editor at The Verge, brings to light the positives to using E-bikes in major cities, as well as their possible disadvantages.

“Electric bikes, I think, are also really exciting for the environment because they actively will replace car trips in a lot of ways…the majority of trips that people take every day using their cars are under 5 miles and that’s perfect, that’s a sweet spot for E-bikes.” 

In major cities, such as in the Jersey City/New York City area, most day to day places are within a 5 mile commute. This is the ideal distance of usage when it comes to E-bikes. When taking into account parking prices, less space for cars, and the excessive amount of carbon emissions cars bring to a city, e-bikes appear to be more beneficial not just for cities but for individuals as well in their everyday lives.

Hawkins highlights how these bikes can be more convenient than cars when taking short trips, such as to the grocery store, to the doctors office, etc., this is why Hawkings states that, “E-bikes are real exciting because they have such a high potential to replace car trips for a lot of people…”

Because of the convenience and efficiency of E-bikes, they possess great potential when it comes to replacing everyday car rides, and therefore possess great potential to lessen individual carbon footprints as well as CO2 levels within major cities like Jersey City. Having spoken on the positives of E-bikes, there are some possible future concerns that cities must hope to address if the usage of E-bikes is going to continue to grow. 

Most major cities like Jersey City, have infrastructure that is mainly built to support vehicles like cars. The roads are made wide for cars and there is more space built for car parking. All this car-centric infrastructure dominates major cities and so if the usage of E-bikes continues to grow, there will be a need for more space for bike lanes and parking. This space could possibly encroach upon all the car-centric infrastructure. This congestion of roads poses a concern that cities must solve in order to support bikers as the popularity and everyday usage of e-bikes continues to rise. A way to combat this could be the implementation of congestion pricing.

“If you make driving more expensive and more difficult for people, they will do less of it…I think congestion pricing is gonna be a huge win for public transit in New York and New Jersey area,” Hawkins states.

By charging higher prices to travel and park in certain areas of a city, traffic is reduced and therefore so is pollution. The hopes with Congestion pricing in places like New York City, is to effectively lessening car usage, and instead promote the usage of E-bike usage as well as other ways of public transportation, therefore decreasing carbon emissions in major urban areas.⁴

Along with E-bikes, another plausible alternative to driving cars can be taking public transportation instead. This form of transportation, such as trains, subways, light rails, and buses, have room to move a large amount of people from one place to another. This then limits the amount of individual people out on the road.

Hawkins believes this, as well, to be a reliable transportation method that can help the climate. On trains and subways, “each person that you’re seeing is one less car that’s out on the road…that’s always gonna be the best for the climate in terms of getting people around in an efficient and reliable manner.”

Source:

1. _{Nationalgrid https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-are-greenhouse-gases#:~:text=Greenhouse%20gases%20(also%20known%20as,heat%20back%20into%20the%20air.}  ↩︎
2.  _{United Nations https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change} ↩︎
3. _{AQI Calendar https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/united-states/new-jersey/jersey-city/jersey-city-fh} ↩︎
4. _{The City https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/08/10/how-does-congestion-pricing-work-toll-system-in-manhattan/#:~:text=The%20idea%3A%20You%20charge%20people,road%2C%20potentially%20reducing%20overall%20traffic.}  ↩︎