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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I’m not sure about tire wear, but fun fact: road wear and tear is proportional to vehicle mass raised to the fourth power. If road users were taxed fairly for that and cyclists with average-weight bikes were made to pay 1¢, drivers of average-sized sedans would need to pay millions of dollars.

    (That’s my go-to response when idiots start talking about bicycle license plates or “cyclists need to pay their fair share,” BTW.)

    Considering how thin bike tires are compared to car tires and how long they last nonetheless (unless you’re doing skid-stops all the time), it seems plausible that the same weight4 relationship might apply, which means tire-abrasion microplastics from bicycles would be relatively negligible, compared to ones from cars.

    Of course, rail is the real winner in this instance, since it doesn’t have this problem to begin with.