How E-Bicycle policy and infrastructure challenge sustainable transportation: an ethical assessment

While new transportation technologies such as transportation network companies and electronic scooters showed promise for sustainable mobility, their initial impacts suggest otherwise in several instances. Electronic bicycles are no exception, resulting in an increasing number of injuries and deaths in many cities. Despite having environmental advantages, such outcomes challenge the view that they qualify as sustainable, bearing in mind that negative health impacts undermine sustainability’s social pillar. While this issue is of paramount importance, it is only one factor among many that could impact several stakeholder groups, including many human groups, nonhuman animals, ecosystems, future people, and urban artifacts. In turn, it will require an approach that can prioritize stakeholder groups’ competing interests. To make this case, this paper uses an applied-conceptual framework to show how the concepts of moral ordering and moral utility could play a significant role in carrying out such an undertaking, illustrating how e-bikes can support sustainable mobility.