The Madsen e-cargo bike is a great family-hauling ride with seats and seatbelts to accomodate up to four small kids, and it is rated at a 600 pounds hauling capacity. Their new DK2 electric model features some great upgrades to its frame and e-assist setup. (Madsen Cycles)

A Road Guide to Shifting Out of the 1950s and Toward Common Sense

Dave Cohen

“Hey, where is your bike?” That is a question frequently flung at me when I am walking around Brattleboro. Yes, many people know I work for the State of Vermont, helping people shift from cars to e-bikes and e-cargo bikes. I also ride an electric cargo bike for most of my transportation needs. But this bike question is weird, because I never ask people on the street about their cars.

However, there is something simply revealing here: One can be seen and recognized on a bike. Truly, if I had made all my trips in an automobile, hardly anyone would have noticed my presence. I would be just one of an anonymous horde of vehicles swarming around town.

What is even more curious about this inquiry is that I have heard it from a broad political spectrum: well-known liberals, middle-of-the-road moderates, off-road independents, super lefties, seemingly apolitical people, and even outspoken environmentalists and green energy people. Indeed, I have also heard a variation of the question from a secretive MAGA enthusiast. I suspect there is no political corner where this question would not show up.

So, in this era of political divisiveness and ideological fragmentation, one thing seems to hold us together practically more than anything else: “automobility.”

Automobility, as the word suggests, implies precisely what automobiles do for us; they are “self-mobile.” They move us around with great speed, power, and comfort but with minimal physical effort while disengaging our emotional and sensory awareness of the human and more-than-human world outside the car. That is explicitly what creates the perceived comfort and convenience.

Automobility is an age-old human aspiration in ancient mythologies, children’s stories, and even our dreams. Miraculously, in just a little more than a century, we have made this dream come true for just about everyone. Automobility is a blessing. I enjoy it and am thankful when I really need it.

However, when taken to absurd extremes and left unquestioned, the marvel and godsend of automobility has degenerated into something entirely different, and this isthe nightmare and curse of automobilism.

Automobilism, like alcoholism (or any substance addiction), includes a devastating loss of executive functioning that short-circuits our ability to recognize the damage we unleash upon ourselves and those around us.

But in the case of automobilism, the destructive powers are effectively unleashed globally upon the entirety of the human and other-than-human world. And right now, with the confluence between the state of our planet and this insane political moment, I believe it is time to challenge our deeply held foundational fantasies. So, questioning our avowedly secular relationship with the automobile should absolutely be a top priority.

Why? Automobilism, like the MAGA movement, is firmly rooted in a circa 1950s worldview. MAGA essentially wants to shift all of us in reverse to an era when we either did not know, did not want to know, or just did not care about a lot of things we know about today.

The sanctioned, uninhibited use of automobiles, or automobilism, neatly fits both the MAGA ethos and addiction behavior. It is about maintaining the same behaviors and policies even though they create untold harm.

Automobilism is implicated in the tragedies of climate change and the hottest years on record (LA is burning as I write this), resource wars for oil and now rare earth metals, and the heartbreaking effects of wildlife habitat fragmentation and roadkill. And then there are the profound social and health impacts of automobilism: sedentary lifestyles, toxic petro-masculinity, vehicular sonic terrorism, the defunding of other types of transit, the surge in toxic microplastics from tire wear, particulate matter from brake dust, pervasive noise pollution that affects the bodies of the young, old and everyone in between, and the land use absurdities of urban, suburban and rural sprawl (maybe it is time to call it “sprural” development).

That is just the tip of the melting iceberg of automobilism. And unfortunately, most of these issues will only worsen by embracing high-tech auto dependency—the “tailpipeless dream” of electric cars. They are the fantasy of an addict. It is the “virtually everything stays the same” response to a colossal problem. We have lost so much of our world to parking lots, strip malls, oversized roads, and endless, well “sprural” development. Electric cars will only accelerate automobilism.

It is time to stop fooling ourselves about the ecological and social footprint of our automotive insanity. Either we remain in cruise control along the same old dead-end highway inspired by an era of Wonder Bread and Mickey Mouse, or take this moment to change lanes toward the signpost pointing us to ecological and social well-being.

But how do we make a meaningful shift?

Well, you sort of guessed it: I am going to talk about bikes. But first, just one last dig at the automobile—the indiscriminate use of cars has dumbed down us and our landscape so much that we readily embrace a politics of impossibility: everything is impossible except for the car.

Thankfully, electric assist technology has become a game-changer for bicycle transportation and a much-needed move toward a politics of possibility. Electric bikes, e-cargo bikes and the entire space of micromobility enable commuters, families and even businesses to be mobile without bulking up in oversized metal boxes of wheels. We can now go further on our bikes, haul way more, ride in far greater comfort, climb hills with ease, bring the kids along, and enjoy life more.

A significant trend helping this along is the increasing number of bikes offering belt drive and internal gearing for super low-maintenance and quiet riding, which is a blessing for riding on the Northeast salted winter roadways. Lectric Bike’s One (only available online) is a relatively low-cost option at $2400 and features a rear hub motor and enclosed gearing in the bottom bracket made by the German company Pinion. Other popular models are the Gazelle’s C380 and the Specialized Turbo Como, which feature higher-end components than the Lectric One and can be purchased at bike shops carrying those brands. Buying from a shop is always best if you do not want to be on your own with any needed bike repairs, especially when it involves electrical components.

And cargo bikes are everywhere! The market selection has quadrupled from just ten years ago! In just over a period of a couple of years we have seen the big companies, Specialized, Cannondale, and Trek, introducing their line of e-cargo bikes. We have also seen new releases from Lectric and Aventon as well as Rad Power Bikes refining their RadWagon after some issues. In addition, large cargo bikes are being deployed in major European cities for commercial deliveries, and now, we see New York City and other municipalities taking this up.

Unfortunately, the miracle of the e-bike will not work for a large portion of our population because, sadly, they live in places almost entirely defined and built around the automobile. But that is far from everyone! We need a critical mass of people to shift to appropriate and active forms of mobility that return us back to our bodies and sensory engagement with the world.

And just to set the record straight, bikes and certainly e-bikes are not green! They are industrial products requiring mining, energy, and many other harmful resource-intensive practices to manufacture and deliver. They only become somewhat “green” when we get on them and use our bodies and connect to the world. Of course, that makes the notion of a “green” car absurd.

All this has little to do with “saving” the Earth, your “carbon footprint,” or even “fighting” climate change, which is not a problem but a symptom of a problem. It is about our dignity and mindful human relations with the very terrain we inhabit: the people, animals, biosphere, soundscapes, and beauty of our land. It is about inspiring and incorporating a human-scale quality into how we move and what we build. It is also about being in touch with the guidance of our emotional intelligence and imagination to move beyond the tired thing we already have and reach toward something genuinely worth having. This is basic common sense.

I believe we have the imaginative vision to differentiate between what an automobilized world has imposed upon us and our power to reclaim who we actually are. How we move in this world really matters, and this political and ecological moment is motioning to us to shift, and shift big.