Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Talking Headways

Talking Headways Podcast: Measuring Emissions Reduction for Bike Commutes

Mark Kabbash on his new system for measuring and verifying bike commuting to obtain carbon avoidance credits.

Main Photo: NYC DOT with The Streetsblog Photoshop Desk

This week we’re joined by Mark Kabbash, founder of The Dandy Horse. He chats with us about a new system for measuring and verifying bike commuting to obtain carbon avoidance credits. We discuss how the system works and the funding it could generate. 

Scroll past the audio player below for a partial edited transcript of the episode — or click here for a full, AI-generated (and typo-ridden) readout.

Jeff Wood: How did you start to think about it as something that could be used in a broader sense?

Mark Kabbash: Bicycle infrastructure, bicycle theft — and those are the things that really bothered me. For instance, if you take Route 66, as an example, and you built that highway from Chicago to Barney’s Beanery in L.A. without hotels, gas stations or parking lots, cars wouldn’t be able travel on that highway very far. On top of that, there would be no ability to come up with a maintenance of the highway by taxing or creating commerce based off the usage of that pathway. So what’s happened in America’s bicycle infrastructure is the same thing. They’re creating money from taxation and grants to build a pathway, and then they’re burdening the local municipalities to create an income to maintain those pathways.

And it was shortsighted. I applaud their efforts, but I think they’ve not done as well as they could have. So what we’ve done is we’ve tethered our commuter, in this case, I refer to our process, a bicycle commuter carbon avoidance credit. It’s widely understood that bicycle is a bicycle, right? Bicycle as a mode of transportation still to date is the world’s most efficient mode of transportation. Nothing comes close. Even walking.

So what we had to do is to create the delta. How can we prove the avoidance of carbon emissions? First, you had to create a baseline, what you normally do in a mode of transportation. So our application was pretty clever, our team came up with the understanding that if you fill out the profile in our app, you’re gonna also have to put in the VIN number of your vehicle. We would ping the different agencies like the Department of Transportation, Department of Motor Vehicles and we’ll find out the name, make and model of your vehicle, which includes the emission rates.

So that would be the baseline. And then we look at the traffic pattern to your destination where you work, and we look at the traffic patterns of that journey. And at times, if you’re in traffic for an hour with your motor running at idle, you can emit as much as 4,000 grams of Co2 per hour at idle. Now a cyclist, they only produce 34 grams per mile as you bicycle commute.

So that carbon savings, we’ve come up with a methodology to have the international standards, the committees of which govern the protocols in which you could verify and collect data and then verify it. We meet the sweet spots, so we focus on the delta, the difference, and you create a carbon credit submitted to exchanges, of which then the carbon emitters that were trying to reduce their footprint can buy that carbon credit and reduce their exposure because at times, let’s say, a diesel truck manufacturer or a transportation company, they really can’t get around the emission rates.

So instead of being taxed, they fuel the bicycle commuter carbon ordinance market by buying — creating the demand on the supply of the bicycle, commute carbon credits, and we wanna create a methodology that local municipalities get the proceeds of which they pour back into the sustainable bicycle infrastructure.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Friday Video: Amtrak Is Way More Successful Than You Think

Why do so many people still treat Amtrak as a failure — and what would it take to deliver the rail investment that American riders deserve?

October 24, 2025

Friday’s Headlines Are Hanging Out Down the Street

The same old thing we did last week — until the neighbor wrote a letter to the editor.

October 24, 2025

Report: Lessons from California’s HSR Project

A new paper from the Mineta Institute looks at California's high-speed rail project—and how to do better moving forward.

October 23, 2025

Talking Headways Podcast: Life After Cars

Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon of The War on Cars podcast on their new book, opposing views, Turtle Jesus and potential off-ramps towards car-free cities.

October 23, 2025

Traffic Congestion Is a Housing and Transit Problem, Not a Highway Problem

To truly solve tangled traffic in California (and across the U.S.), we need to take the problem out of the hands of the road builders and address the root causes of congestion: building more affordable housing near jobs and improving public transportation options.

October 23, 2025

Truckers Back NYC Busway Plan That Trump Blocked

The federal government has obviously lost its trucking mind.

October 23, 2025
See all posts