British company e-Motive has launched a range of electric scooters in the UK and, at prices starting from just £1399 ($2300), is hoping to kickstart a zero-emission revolution.

The e1, e3 and e5 debut models are powered by the latest electric motor and battery technology, are road tax exempt, and cost as little as one pence per mile to run.

Speaking about the launch, e-Motive Managing Director, Paul Williams, gushed, “The reliability, rideability and all-round consumer package that comes with these scooters finally makes owning and running a zero-emissions vehicle affordable, supremely practical and desirable.”

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Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

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And they’re in luck.

At this year’s Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach, scooters get their own section, the Scooter Pavilion.

One electric vehicle company, Vectrix, is debuting their 2009 model of the Vx-1 this weekend, a highway-capable scooter with tons of style. The Vx-1 has a top speed of 62 mph, and a 35 to 55 mile range.

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Launched on August 20th, potential entrants have until October 15th to make a video (15 seconds - 2 minutes in length) that highlights "Vespanomics," or the facts about scooters’ contributions to reducing gas consumption, carbon emissions and traffic congestion. A few claims made by Vespa:

• Did you know that if Americans were to switch just 10% of their total mileage to scooters, they would save roughly $42 million on gas and consume 14 million gallons less fuel PER DAY (based on $3/gal average).
• If Americans were to switch just 10% of their total mileage to
  scooters, carbon dioxide emissions could also be reduced by 324 million
  pounds per day.
• By shifting the daytime vehicle mix to 80 percent cars / 20 percent
  scooters in the Manhattan (New York City) Central Business District
  (stretching from 60th Street to the lower tip of Manhattan), there
  would be a total decrease in delay of more than 4.6 million hours per
  year - which translates to time savings of nearly 100 working hours per
  person annually.

The prizes for winners are, as you might guess, Vespa scooters. The grand prize winner takes home a GTS, second place scores an LX150, and third place a LX50. Official contest rules are available here.

Apparently, Vespa also has hybrid scooters in the prototype stage… we’ll keep an eye on this.

Bicycle & Pedestrian Bridges

Normally, bikes can go over the main bridge with cars — notice the colored roadway signifying that cars need to watch out for bicyclists and let them take the road as they enter from their lanes. However, when the bridge is up due to boats passing underneath, there are higher bridges on both sides for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Image Credits 1 & 2: Zachary Shahan

Bike Intersections

Bike Boxes

There are colored boxes at several intersections for bicyclists, giving them priority, keeping them safe, and giving them greater prestige — 1st class.

Roundabouts

The Netherlands has A LOT of roundabouts, and in Gronigen they also contain lanes for bicyclists.

All Bikes Go On Green

Instead of giving green lights to bicyclists and cars going in the same direction at the same time, all the bike lights are green at the same time (while all the automobile lights are red). It works quite well and I never saw a crash while I was living there (approximately 5 months).

This one below is in the center of the city center (downtown) — essentially, the main intersection in the city. Here you can see one delivery truck, about ten bicyclists and a few pedestrians, quite a normal situation. At rush hour, you really have to sit there and wait sometimes for an opening in the bike traffic. With cars instead of bikes, though, the wait would probably be ten times longer.

Bike Speed Bumps Before Dangerous Intersections & Driveways

Bike Only Entrances

Well, bikes and small scooters.

Bike Buttons to Trigger the Lights

Image Credits 1-16: Zachary Shahan

Bike Only Roads or Off-Road Paths

Out towards the suburbs.

Going under busy roads.

This one with speed bumps and a guy in a wheel chair as well (not uncommon, actually).

The path in the background of this picture used to be a road for cars, but was transformed into a bicycle/pedestrian path going through a fairly large and beautiful park. It gives a more direct connection between a main university area of the city and the city center to bicyclists and pedestrians rather than cars.

This is at the entrance to a bicycle path.

If the bike paths aren’t completely separate from the road, they are often separated by large medians, planters or parked cars.

Sometimes they are even above the level of the road.

Going through (or, actually, on the edge of) more parkland between the university and the city center.

As far as you need to go…

In the Country

There are great bike paths out into the country. Even many people living out in the country or at the edge of the city near the country use bicycles.

This is on the edge of a small bedroom community sort of out in the country. Many people still biked into the city from here, and you can see they still have the colored bike lanes!

Image Credits 1-6, 8-14, 16-19: Zachary Shahan
Image Credit 7: Janis Andins
Image Credit 15: Ladd Schiess

Bike Parking

Endless Bike Parking at the Train Station & Double-Decker Parking

You can’t capture this on camera at all because much further than you can see there are more bicycles. But here is a small glimpse.

Bike Parking or Bike Suicide?

Not sure what’s going on here. It looks like some people parked their bikes in a strange way or a cleaning person needed to move them to clean the ground or the bikes are hanging themselves.

Secure Bike Parking

Image Credits 1-2, 7-8, 10-12, 14, 16-17: Zachary Shahan
Image Credits 3-6: Janis Andins
Image Credit 9: VirtualErn via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 13: Harry-Harms via flickr under a CC license
Image Credit 15: Harry-Harms via flickr under a CC license

Babies & Kids on Bikes

Image Credits 1-3, 6-8: Zachary Shahan
Image Credits 4-5: Jennifer Lee

Learning to Bike

There is a lot of public art in the city, and a handful of it is of bicyclists. This is a great piece of a child learning to ride a bicycle.

Image Credit: Ladd Schiess

Student City

This is not just one long line of student bicyclists going to school that I luckily caught one morning. There was line after line like this for ages during the “rush hour” to school every morning. I actually lived right above the main (only) road going between the city and the main part of the university (on a corner edge of the city) and it hit me one day that it was such a quiet road (with just the sounds of broken bikes — many are in the Netherlands — going ‘click click’ or bike bells going ‘ding ding’ as bicyclists passed each other). It was such a nice street to live on, but if that were car traffic it would be horrible because of the noise and air pollution. It made me realize the great importance of how bicycling reduces noise pollution as well as more well-known environmental pollution.

bikes may end up on the bottom of the canal after a long night at the pub

bikes may turn into birds

Image Credit 1: Zachary Shahan
Image Credit 2: Akbar Simonse via flickr under a Creative Commons license
Image Credit 3: Margriet PR via flickr under a CC license

City Center

Image Credits 1-5: Zachary Shahan

Bike Lanes Nearly as Big as the Road

Image Credit: Zachary Shahan

Freight Bicycles

Image Credit: jurjen_nl via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Bikes & Sheep

Hope you enjoyed this great bicycle city photo tour. To keep yourself updated on the next five photo tours, keep your eye on EcoWorldly or even subscribe to its feed or email list. Have something extra to add? Comment below!

Image Credit: janGlas via flickr under a Creative Commons license