My dad loves driving a car. He finds an opportunity to drive a car whenever he can, even in Hong Kong where there is serious land scarcity. Ever since he got a car 10 years ago, he gained about 20 pounds in weight.
I love my dad, but I can’t agree that this is a sustainable way of commuting or traveling. Commuting using automobiles is probably one of the most inefficient ways of traveling or commuting in terms of energy consumption. Not only is it environmentally harmful, it also creates health hazards due to the lack of exercise caused by continuous driving and point to point destinations, not to mention the mental outrage caused by stucking in a traffic jam.
I like traveling, and with the chance of going abroad for a year, to a continent I have rarely step foot on, I would definitely take the chance to explore whatever is in this charming yet mysterious continent of Europe. However, I am aware that traveling causes carbon emissions, especially by plane and automobiles.
To avoid this, I plan to travel by bike, I plan to buy a second hand bike in my destination city: Bristol, and use my physical labour as an engine, to go on the wilderness lands that I have never step foot on. I am free to go to wherever I want, just like my dad is when he is in his car in the middle of a mountainous road in Hong Kong. The difference is that I am exercising while I am doing so, while not generating any carbon emissions throughout the journey.
A car-centric city is an outdated city. To build sustainable cities and roads, bicycles has to be taken into consideration. A net zero city can only be achieved when bikes are the main way of transportation, and where citizens have the capacity of transporting smoothly using bikes. And it is this vision that I seek to have my travels mainly by bike for my upcoming trip to Bristol.
