I've seen a couple cops (RCMP) on bikes in my city. They definitely didn't seem to be really comfortable on the bikes. Would definitely be easier to lose them in a bike chase than a car chase.
I haven't seen RCMP on bikes, but the locals on bikes have a season and only seem to be around large events. I'm not sure their skill level but, I'm pretty sure they aren't ready to chase a cyclist.
So for people criticising with rain, wind, snow, and groceries - none of these are nearly the issues you think they are, and there are a wide variety of bike configurations and gear that address these challenges.
The real issue is having to share the road with cars. I've just had too many close calls, and the growth of self-driving vehicles makes me more nervous to be on the road than ever.
Because of cars I hate being on the road whether in a car or on a bike, and every car that passes by automatically makes me tense up these days. I hope a new Carrington event makes all of them useless.
Yes, weather is just a matter of gear, and these days the wet and cold weather gear is amazing. The best bike gear isn't cheap, but it's much cheaper than the typical repair on a car when something breaks. Panniers are an easy way to carry a lot of groceries with minimal effort. If someone has a huge family there are also cargo bike options. But, of course, with modern American cities, there might not be a grocery store in a reasonable biking range. There used to be mom-and pop grocery stores all over the place. And, in Europe it's pretty common for there to be a small grocery store within a 5 minute walk of your house.
But, North American roads are designed only for cars. Bicyclists and commuters pay taxes to maintain roads, but the roads are built for cars and trucks. To really feel safe on a bike, you need separated bike lanes. You build those, and people will use them.
In many places in North America, a bike lane is merely a thin strip of pavement that's centimetres from passing cars, and in the door zone of parked cars. Even in good weather that's dangerous. In bad weather it's truly awful. But, people still use those bike lanes. In fact, some people even bike and share the road with cars where the bike lanes don't exist. That should be a clue that people are dedicated to cycling, and if you built actual good bicycle infrastructure, a lot of people would use it.
I've made bike commutes in those temperatures, and yeah, I would say it's dangerous and most people shouldn't do that unless they've got some kind of fully enclosed, motorized bike with active heating.
It is worth noting that with proper winter gear, since biking is more physically demanding than driving, it is possible and likely that most winter bike rides will cause you to generate enough of your own body heat that you might actually feel the need to remove your jacket. At negative 40? Absolutely not. But I've done so at temperatures as low as zero.
And to be fair, you shouldn't be expected to drive at temps as low as negative 40 either. If you've got a long car commute and your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you are dead. At least with a bike-centric lifestyle it pressures you to prefer jobs that are closer to home, so it might actually be less dangerous.
I don't share the road, I take the road. You will overtake me like you would overtake a car, plus it gives me the space I need to swerve around the craters in the road. Some roads are bumpier than Paschendale.
I love the deluge of people trying to convince you to use a bike anyway. I’m getting old and live where it can hit -20° or worse, with snow and ice. Cold is almost half the year. There’s no fucking way I’d ride a bike for almost two hours each way in the cold when I have to go into the office, over a nice heated 18 minute car ride. Plus every day I bring a bag to and from the office, and some days 2-3 bags of stuff I pick up to bring home. I keto on that here or when I was on Reddit and some asshole will inevitably be like “YOU CAN HANDLE THE COLD AND ICE AND FOUR HOURS OUT KF YOUR DAY UR JUST WEAK” and those people are bad people I don’t like.
Telling Grandma/grandpa to use an ebike in the snow or in lethal wet bulb temperatures isn't a real solution. It's great that it worked for your folks but it cannot work for mine.
You don't even have to be old. Ebikes are car replacements and can tow children, groceries, and furniture with ease. They flatten hills, get you to work on time and without sweat, and significantly extend the realistic travel radius around your home/work/last transit stop. Expect to pay pennies to recharge it, rather than two or three figures for a full tank of gas.
Any fitness benefits you get are just a cherry on top. Ebikes just make it so much easier to skip the car trips in your village or city.
I wouldn't ask my 9YO on a bike at 7:30 am on winter to go to school everyday. Also no family trips. The place we go to the most is on the other side of mountains 3 hours away by car.
Groceries would have to be more regular. I currently fill the car and go like once a month or month and a half
I know this might sound pedantic but I will try to write with love. 90% of the world population buy groceries weekly or more often. Many European countries buy fresh food on the daily. Yes, from the grocery downstairs, or across the road. Car centric urban design fucked you up. It's built for the car, not for human beings. Your perception and expectations are completely out of wack with normal human existence.
For example, Costco style mega stores are not a thing in almost all of the world. No, no one needs a 3 year supply of mustard for a family of 4. Most businesses don't need a heavy duty truck, why would a middle class family need one just to get to the school and office. You don't need a 4x4 for the two trips a year you take to the mountains, on an asphalt road.
It's all bizarre, it is all out of proportion. But it is not a personal failure, oil corporations and car manufacturers created this weird mar on the planet that is suburban sprawl and car dependent infrastructure. We just live with the consequences.
You're aware that families in europe go on family trips by taking the train across the mountains?
That's part of the problem, you americans don't like to think far beyond your horizon (cars). Or maybe you just can't imagine what a city would look like that is built for pedestrians and public transportation.
I'm from Latin america. There is a single train that goes through my city and has only a few stops. I'd love to take the train. It just doesn't take me where I need to go. Heck I've been looking for an excuse to take one for months
I wouldn't ask my 9YO on a bike at 7:30 am on winter to go to school everyday
Why not? In a lot of the world that's pretty normal.
When I was a kid I walked 30-40 minutes to and from school in the winter. I would have preferred to bike, but they didn't clear the bike lanes. In places in Europe they make plowing the bike lanes a priority, so everybody can count on being able to commute by bike.
The place we go to the most is on the other side of mountains 3 hours away by car.
You shouldn't have to rely on a car to get somewhere that's that far away. It's more reasonable to take a train to get that kind of distance.
Groceries would have to be more regular. I currently fill the car and go like once a month or month and a half
Do you not like fresh food? Do you ever eat fruit or vegetables? Or meat that hasn't been frozen?
I used my car today to go about 2km away. I picked up a couple heavy packs of drinks, a box of litter, and and five bags of groceries. The travel maybe cost me 1USD. There is no fucking way I could lug all of that home for my family with something that isn’t a car.
I am not disappointed in myself. I just have to play with the cards I’m dealt.
Wheels with spikes work pretty well if it comes to hard packed snow and ice.
Normal mointainbike wheels work well enough for me in the snow though, I was always just a bit careful and nothing ever happened so far.
That's... What you have trains for. If you have proper public transit, that need is covered. Oh, and you can get shit done while you're on the train. Or sleep. Or relax.
I really wish most places had better public transit.
A major city near me ends public transit at midnight, despite most late night venues being open much later than that.... And their transit system is "good" by comparison to what's in cities nearby me, and I'm still a 15 minute drive from any of them (at least). It would take me most of the day to commute to the nearest major city by bike/public transit.
Because you lived in a car centric shit hole with no backbone rail.
Fucking car brain infrastructure blindness is so reliable. Like you can't see the massive constant costs of car infra, you think the roads never need repair and fuel just fucking appears, engine repairs aren't orders of magnitude more expensive than anything else, and there's no opportunity cost to other modes of transit, but laying an inch of track or cutting bike trails is just so fucking expensive. You are the problem with the world. You are why we have climate change. You are why everything is so fucking shit and everything everyone owns spies on all of us.
Please stop. Please just fucking stop. You can't see shit, your experiences are not valid, your instincts are the products of ad campaigns, and you are reliably aggressively spectacularly incorrect in harmful ways. Please stop having opinions, stop voting, stop speaking on any topic you are hostile to the concept of understanding.
If you're determined to never think or observe, please defer in matters of reality to those who at least try.
You know how LLMs have a context window and use it to predict the next word? This guy’s brain works like that, but with a context of emotion instead of words, and it can only store 3 tokens.
The words tracked. You just seemed to have gotten stuck in a feedback loop of emotion where your rage reminded you you were angry, which made you more angry.
It's the symbol of freedom because kids in north America are locked up until they start to drive.
Since you can't walk or cycle without risking your life, parents have to drive their kids everywhere until they are old enough to drive. This then is perceived as liberation.
Of course car centric infrastructure is the reason you need to be driven in order to be safe. It's the product of decade long lobbying by the car industry.
I guess cars must feel like parole to kids who have been locked up.
I grew up in a place that was not even big on cycling, just not a hellscape like the US. We would go on crazy bike trips and barely find our way back home at like 14.
Some are. But unless they are in a truly rural area, that is just not true. According to recent numbers 80% of people in America live in urban areas.
Those urban areas, while often not designed for bicycles are a lot more frindly to bicycles then true rural areas. Saying kids are trapped untill they have a car wrong most of the time. Yeah they may have to bike or walk a few miles to get anywhere but that's not a big deal.
The people living in true rural America truly do not have the ability to do so. But again, that's less then a quarter of the populations and likely far less then a quarter of all kids.
We have a culture that prioritizes physical comfort above most other things. A car is more comfortable so that is what most people what to do.
The people living in true rural America truly do not have the ability to do so. But again, that’s less then a quarter of the populations and likely far less then a quarter of all kids.
Counterpoint: I lived in an extremely remote part of Vermont (population 400) for a couple years without a car, and I got around fine on my bike. The trick was living close to my work, which was easy since housing was dirt cheap. That said, getting out of town was difficult, as the buses (Greyhound) were notoriously unreliable. I also got random people buzzing me in pickups screaming at me for existing once in a while.
I have lived in urban, suburban, and very rural places. Rural is my favorite and most comfortable to commute on bike even if some things are a long ride away. The concept of what's "too far away" is very different depending on whether you ask someone who is afraid to get on a bike, vs someone who actually rides.
I miss cycling. I live in the middle of goddamned nowhere, so driving in mandatory to get anywhere relevant. I hate that this is the case, but there's just about fuck all I can do about it.
I will comment that I take issue with bikes being "cheap". If you ride a bike even remotely seriously, your bike is not cheap..... It might not be expensive, but you quickly realize why cheap bikes are cheap.
If you ride a bike even remotely seriously, your bike is not cheap… It might not be expensive, but you quickly realize why cheap bikes are cheap.
Spot on. I've got about $3k into my bike, but it's not a fancy race bike (it's a steel fixed gear), so I invested in bombproof parts that could end up outliving me. Once a year I'll replace the tires/chain/brake pads, service the bearings, and strip/regrease a few parts, so the running cost is maybe $15/month. If you've got a road bike with a 2x drivetrain, or if you're paying people to service your bike that might go up to $30/month, but still negligible compared to a car.
It's less disability-friendly than a car, can't carry cargo, and can't transport passengers. You try to have a suburban family with just bicycles - especially if one of the kids has balance issues from early childhood onward. It's not possible. The automobile is viewed as the ultimate symbol of freedom because it can serve multiple roles and has a massive variability in speed.
What kind of handicap can allow you to drive but not bike ? Bike are extremely adaptable to any kind of handicap, to the point that they can basically be turned into an electric wheelchair.
can't carry cargo
I disagree again, it does carry way less cargo but can still carry cargo.
can't transport passengers
Why do we need to carry passagers ? Because a lot of people (child, elderly people, people without license) cannot drive and because car are expensive. If everyone can use a bike and the bike are so cheap that you can have a few aroumd for guests it greatly reduces the need for carrying assengers.
And you can still carry passagers on a bike, the best example is longtails bike that can carry an adult or several kids as passagers.
kid with balance issue
Longtail and tricycles.
Cars are amazing pieces of technology, they do have unique capabilities like doing unscheduled, flexible long distance drive, or carry a lot of cargo at once.
But for a lot of the daily living a bike (and proper bike infrastructure) would be way better suited to the situation.
I'm disabled, on a good day I just get tired pretty fast.
On a bad day even walking hurt and I need to rest every 15 min or so.
I can't drive because I have narcolepsia.
You would think that I would love getting around car but I don't.
When everything is made for car I need to walk a lot more even if someone drives me because parkings tend to not have a lot of benches and everything is farther because parking take space.
It also makes crossing street horrible because I have to wait a long time for cars to stop.
If everything is bike friendly dedicated transport is faster and can afford to stop exactly where I need it and when I need it.
I can take the bus, tram or train if something is too far, and I can stop when I need because bus stop have benches.
On top of that everything is closser together since there little or no parking so a 15 min walk get me to more places.
If i need to take a lot of grocerie I can just take a chariot, the only downside is sometimes there is noisy kids in the bus but this is solved by noise canceling headphones.
I know this is my experience ( which is obviously not universal ) and public transit / bikes are not a silver bullet that fixes everything mobility wise but earing the "bike centric infrastructure is ableist" rant feels downright insulting when it's the thing that allow me to not depend on friends driving me.
E-bikes are great for people with disabilities who can balance and the elderly. I see old people zipping along on e-bikes a lot here in LA. For everyone else, public transit or para transit is often a better option than a car. A car that can accommodate a wheelchair or disabled driver is usually expensive.
The main reason wheelchair-accessible vehicles (usually a minivan) are so expensive is because no major manufacturers construct them in the factory. So you're paying for the original vehicle, plus a third party to remove the middle seats (what happens to them, I'd like to know!) cut the sides and lower the floor, adding sections to the doors and rerouting the wiring, install a ramp and "kneeling" capabilities, plus tiedowns and in some cases special controls for driving. Also the driver's and front passenger seats are set into removable raised platforms. The automatic doors have become standard but used to also be part of the conversion. If the body were constructed with these differences from the start, perhaps in a dedicated factory, the savings would be considerable.
The savings are even greater if you take public transit, which is much roomier than any van and has no associated fuel/repair costs that you’re responsible for. It sucks everywhere doesn’t have such options.
Even places with otherwise-decent public transportation often don't have adequate disability-accessible public transportation. In fact it's often the longest-established systems that are the worst for disabilities.
That’s part of why I’m so thrilled with LA transit! I’ve literally never seen anywhere better for people with disabilities on the general public transit (as opposed to paratransit). In other cities I know bus drivers will tend to skip stops with a wheelchair user waiting because it slows them down. Here in LA the driver will get up, make sure they’re secured if they need it, and double check what stop they’re getting off on so they don’t get stranded. And I see a lot more wheelchair users just out going about their day here than I did in other cities, which I don’t think is a coincidence.
It was a huge deal for us the first time we flew back into LAX and there were accessible taxis at the taxi stand. In the old days there were like 2 vans for the whole city and we'd wait hours. Of course LAX is fucked right now but it's temporary and there's still lots of the cabs, because they've realized they're also great for hauling luggage. The Metro stations also seem pretty accessible although we haven't had much occasion to use them. Maybe once they finish the Westwood station.
Not everywhere has public transit. Also, the people with families can't spend 2 hours each way getting to work. I'm for bikes and public transit, it's just not the answer to everything. You're comments are being naive about this.
Thanks for emphasizing the last part of my comment: it sucks everywhere doesn’t have such options. Good public transit isn’t going to take 2 hours each way, and it sucks transit isn’t decent everywhere.
Seattle's transit is getting better, but it's still a long haul. If you live in a suburb and your work is in Seattle, but not close to the transit, you're in for a slog.
My parents have mobility issues so we modified some Schwinn tricycles with 1200W motors and they can zip around our city on those all day long with no issues.
As far as kids go, I have 4 and we cycle everywhere we need within our city. I manage this by using bicycle trailers and having my kids ride their own bikes when they wish to. A cargo bike and trailer combination would allow me to tow 4 kids without issue though that gets limited as the kids get bigger.
On the topic of bike trailers, my cargo trailer has always ensured I can carry plenty of cargo with my bike when needed. It was actually instrumental when we moved earlier this year as the move was around 2-3 miles and even towing crates to the new house I could beat our vans while giving whichever van I would've ridden in the ability to carry two more crates itself.
The biggest limitation with bike trailers (at least the type I use) is how the weight affects the bicycle. Too much weight over the hitch and the front wheel of the bicycle becomes unweighted. I think a seat post mounted hitch would be able to handle more weight without this issue.
The barriers to mobility are the giant, dangerous roads and parking lots between everything that car dependency requires. Cycleable/walkable places with good public transit are easier to get around for everyone with or without a car, regardless of disabilities.
Also, disabilities exclude more people from being able to drive than from walking/cycleing/using public transit. Not to mention people excluded from driving due to age. Or finances. Or not being able to get a license due to lack of English literacy. Or not having a permanent address. Or people that just would prefer to not drive. All these people deserve the right to be able to get around, and car dependency denies them that right.
Trikes exist, and some even have a bench seat and storage behind the driver
can’t carry cargo
The humble milk crate begs to differ. Also you can buy a cargo trailer if you need to haul more than a panier's or a milk crate's worth of stuff
can’t transport passengers
Hook up a trailer. They start at just $100 on Amazon or get one from a garage sale or local buy/sell listings or even the local bike shop might have used ones. The one I use for all of the kids school pickups and dropoffs I got at a garage sale for $20 and it's also got space for cargo as well as children
You try to have a suburban family with just bicycles - especially if one of the kids has balance issues from early childhood onward
Mom and dad each ride a normal grownup bike, then each kid rides what's appropriate for their age, needs and abilities, whether that's a trailercycle, riding in a trailer, their own bike or even a trike
The automobile is viewed as the ultimate symbol of freedom because it can serve multiple roles and has a massive variability in speed.
Ehhh. Cars are great at what they do, but they're expensive as fuck to own and completely suck when too many people want to drive to/from/through the same place.
Honestly in the car dependant hellscape that is America I think the best possible balance is one car and a family of bikes for every family. You can usually take bikes on the bus, bikes don't require any meaningful amount of fuel (ebikes take like one laptop's worth of energy to charge) and they're freaking fun to ride as well as being good for fitness and mental health. But you also have the car for longer trips or trips on roads that you can't safely/legally bike on. Bikes are freaking awesome, and you can throw so many attachments onto them to make them carry just about anything
Nonsense, you can absolutely have standard cargo bikes like this:
Or cargo bikes with gunner seats mounted in them
And there are recumbent and adaptive ebikes and normal bikes too, for people with disabilities or balance issues. Heck, you can even attach trailers to virtually any standard bike, and many different trailer options exist, from pet carriers to cargo, to food service to fully adult men.
Bikes shouldn't be going above 28mph anyways. We have high speed rail if someone wants to do 150mph through a city.
Cars are definitely the present, but they absolutely don't need to be the future.
My unfortunate blend of disabilities means that I can neither drive nor bike. I'm at my best in places with good taxis/rideshares supported by buses. Trains, light rail, and the like are nice ideas, but I have to take a cab or a bus from the station anyway, so I might as well go door-to-door in the cab. So I do want car dependence, because as we become less car dependent, we lose mobility.
Suppose it depends on where you live and disability, someone I went to school with couldn't drive but could walk, bike or bus for free. Had to pay for the train like everyone else though.
Everything is ableist if you think about it enough. "Just get a car rhetoric" is ableist against blind people. Even "just take public transit" is ableist against immunocompromised people.
A society should make accommodations for those with special needs, but we don't have to give those accommodations to everyone who asks. Some people will need a car, that doesn't mean your average able bodied person should be driving one, and most of the "just take a bike" rehtoric is directed towards those people.
I live in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I can't park anywhere, my bike will be removed if not stalled in a bike parking spot. I do need insurance, my bike was 4k. There are bike traffic jams sometimes. The rest is all true. No parking fees, no road tax, etc. Just a bit wet sometimes. But my city has one of the best, if not the best bike infrastructure in the world. It's stupid it's not standard everywhere.
"Probably one of the most fuel efficient vehicles in existence" is one of the dumbest takes I've ever seen. The human body is a ridiculously inefficient machine.
I am not a chemical engineer so I am not sure how equivalent these two measurements are... I mean for starters I can eat 1000 calories... but I think if I tried to get 1000 calories by consuming gasoline; I would die.
And generating heat. I believe motorcycles fail to beat bicycles with rereads to efficiency. Though there are significantly better than cars EVs included
Keep in mind how much CO2 gets emitted for the food you eat during it's production. Being vegan helps.
Of course it's still much between than driving a car, but an ebike would be even better. Even if you charged it with electricity from a coal power plant the CO2 emissions would be way lower
Fuel efficiency is measured in litres per distance travelled, which is basically energy used per distance travelled.
I have a power meter on my bike, so I can get pretty accurate numbers for calories burned, by measuring the total kilojoules of energy used. On my road bike it takes roughly 1700kcal to travel 100km on a mostly flat course. According to Google there are approximately 8000kcal in a litre of petrol and a Smart Fortwo (a very small car) burns 6 litres per 100km on the highway. That's 48000kcal to travel 100km, being generous.
Now let's consider that the human body can convert roughly 20% of the energy consumed as food into useful work. That's still only 8500kcal worth of food to travel 100km. So even with a full car with 5 people in it, 5 people on bikes are still going to need less fuel to travel 100km. Not to mention that producing the food will release much less carbon into the atmosphere (but that's another topic).
In addition, the fuel that goes into a car is this ultra-refined blend of chemicals that is produced in a refinery. You have to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, use heat and various additives to transform it into automobile fuel, then ship it to a service station. I would imagine that the process of refining oil into gasoline is probably not 20% efficient.
Your body works on stuff that literally grows on trees. If you have a back yard, or even a decently sunny balcony, you can grow a tomato plant. Then, you eat that tomato, and voila, bike fuel. So, even if the calorie efficiency of a human body converting food into fuel isn't great, the human body is the refinery. It can theoretically even be fuelled by foraging, no crops necessary.
Well, per traveled distance with moderate speed it is not completely untrue.
But still outclassed by a similar, but electrically powered (or assisted) vehicle.
Something a lot of people have a hard time coming to accept...
Part of it is due to thermodynamics. A diesel engine works at a high temperature difference, with peak gas temperatures going somewhere in the >1000°C range.
High temperature differences lead to high efficiency >40%.
A human body can't use high temperature processes, so has to stick to chemical workarounds which lead to additional losses.
A diesel car will typically run 20 km per liter. One liter of diesel is about 10 kWh. so if you put four people in the car, that's 2.5 kWh per person. 2.5 kWh should allow you to walk for eight hours, or about 40 km. *quick edit: this is walking, cycling will get you further on 2.5 kWh!
Another thing is, diesel engines are water cooled, the heat is shed to the environment. This is about two thirds (varies 60-70%) of the energy produced, the > 40% efficiency you mention is only achieved by the highest performing engines around today.
Ok, lets assume an efficiency of 35%.
That means 3500Wh usable energy per liter of diesel.
A complete 500Wh charge of my ebike gets me ~70km at 20km/h without any pedaling (tried that out).
So the usable energy delivered by one liter of diesel would be sufficient to drive me and my bike a distance of 7*70km = 490km.
A person won't be able to sustain 20km/h on a bike with the same low effort as walking at 5km/h, but even if that was the case, in 8h this would only get him 160km far.
============
Edit:
Looked up some numbers for bicycling.
Driving 20km at ~20km/h burned energy is generally given in the range ~500kcal, meaning 580Wh.
That is better than I expected, as the 10kWh primary energy would get you ~350km far, so almost as good as the diesel engine.
(To be fair: this doesn't yet take into account the CO2 footprint of food production, which is really abysmal. But that's a different topic.)
Bikes are cool and all, but no AC. And no good for a 40 mile highway commute. I also enjoy comfy seats and being able to easily and comfortably transport multiple people with a nice sound system etc…
You’re not wrong, but am trapped here. 🧐 Bikes will still never be as comfortable or have entertainment like a car unfortunately. There’s just something different about driving and playing music.
I feel like you're arguing with someone that's actually on your (our) side here... Trust me, this doesn't sound like the guy that agrees with an extra lane replacing a sidewalk, or the guy that hates the tram line that takes up a lane..
We should consider not being this aggressive in our speak with someone that's actually a friend...
Just dodge the screaming homeless people, tweakers and the occasional pile of vomit.
Transit quality is region dependent. If you're not fortunate enough to live in an area where transit is well looked after it is not "categorically better."
This is true but it only shows that transit is seriously underfunded and treated as the bad step child in many areas, something which could theoretically be changed easily.
I do my best to vote for better parties man, but I am out-numbered by the stupids who think the answer to fixing problems caused by conservative governments is to elect more conservatives.
During a year where there was a transit stabbing every other week, our mayor took a trip on transit to "combat the perception that transit is unsafe." She had a full police escort... They're more concerned with optics than with actually solving problems.
Headphones are nowhere near equivalent to good stereo. I don’t hate bikes, I just think cars are better and more enjoyable to use in general. I’m a bit lazy, also, to be honest. I don’t want to have to exercise to get wherever I’m going all the time.
What's even better is sitting in an even-more-comfy chair, listening to a better stereo system... at home.
What's interesting is that when everybody went to remote work during the pandemic, lots of bike commuters would start their day with a ride to the office and back, because the ride itself was fun. I didn't hear of car commuters doing that, or people at any time enjoying the process of commute driving. We have to add plush lounge chairs and entertainment systems and sensory-friendly interiors to cars to make the experience somewhat palatable, and even then, the distraction of a phone is irresistible for many drivers. Hell, the tech bros promise that they can even automate away the actual driving part, and people are excited by the prospect.
Sounds to me like a car will never hold a candle to a simple bike as far as enjoyment.
Yeah im sure all the trams and busses go exactly where I need them to.
Also, you cant carry anything with a bike outside of a few grocery bags.
Im all for bikes. But cars are insanely useful . what needs to happen is banning of anything larger than a Ford focus, special license required for a pickup (unless its a tacoma size) and better infrastructure supporting bikes and cars together.
Me driving around in my 99 miata is the least of our car problems. Its soccer moms in 100,000 pickups that they are almost always driving alone and never hauling a thing.
My town is 200k, and there's no way you could bike around it, there's no shoulders or sidewalks on most roads. Thats a problem of city planners being absolute dumb shits.
Cars are obviously good for long distances but maybe cars could be banned from city centres (perhaps with exceptions for disabled people who rely on cars, and goods vehicles should probably be allowed). For getting around a city, people can use public transport, or bicycles, or their feet to walk.
Also in cases where cars are used, electric cars are probably a good idea because it results in cleaner air.
My wife and I find bikes for free all the time, especially kid's bikes. People just leave them by their trash cans for pickup. Can't even sell them they're so common. Guy at the flea market gave her a nice purple adult bike last Saturday.
I got my bike used under 100euro - less than a 5th of it's original price ant it is a very good bike. Used usually is not so expensive. Unless you are going e-bike, cargo bike, family bike, trailer for a bike, or any specific type. These shits can go pretty much expensive even used. Not as expensive as a car, but still bit cost-y.
If you're low on money just borrow one of the bikes that are meant for sharing. The ones without a lock at a station. Then leave it unlocked for the next person.
I wish I could still ride a bike. I walk for most of my errands and just enjoying the local nature trails, but bike seats are agony after both a bike accident 40 years ago (thrown 10 feet after an RV sideswiped me) and catastrophic car accident 11 years ago. Both made my existing lower back issues far more urgent and exceptionally painful before getting on a bike.
Is sitting on seats hard as well? I imagine it probably is so some kind of recumbent trike, besides being very expensive, wouldn’t be a way to get you back riding…
In which case I’m glad you’re able to enjoy those trails even in spite of the tragedies!
I had to get a recumbent due to pain issues with a regular upright bicycle seat. I've owned a couple of them over the past 20 years or so, and they're great.
I've had scoliosis since before those accidents, so it's a whole host of back issues. Sitting sucks, but is ameliorated by a quality cushion (a very thick memory foam pad I've had for a while now). I can't sit on benches or hard seats for any length of time at this point.
I honestly love walking, despite my screwed up back and panoply of other issues. I can mostly manage without a car for anything but large shopping at this point. And since kids and grandkids moved out, most shopping is reasonable and amenable to backpack or cart.
Is there any kind of rehab you can do? One thing I've found with modern medicine is that they focus on getting someone healed until they can do basic things like sit and walk, which allows them to sit in an office, and sit in a car. But, they don't address the other needs someone might have, like if they're a dancer, or a martial artist, or a cyclist.
I've had some severe injuries over the years, and they basically called my rehab done when I could sit, stand and walk. But, on my own I've worked on my range of motion and strength to do more than just those basics.
Part of the problem is that I've learned to accept and work around so much chronic pain that I just realize there are activities I can't engage in. I really need to do something as this has gotten markedly worse in the past couple years despite being quite active (I walk at a very brisk place for 5-8 miles per day).
With an appropriate seat, this is not a problem, even in regular clothes. For longer rides, bicycle shorts are recommended, which are padded to avoid saddle discomfort.
The only way this will even get started is if there's a push for motorcycles over cars. Thats a good middle ground.
People in every city between LA and New York will laugh at you for trying to use a bike for daily activities. Shit is just too far apart. Which is fine with me, I dont like neighbors, im loud and dont like people watching me in my yard. Probably autistic.
However I cant think of a single person in my life who would choose public transit even if it was available more. Im sorry but the ugly truth is, it's dirty, smells, loud, and the people on it are often on drugs (notice im not saying we need to deport and kill homeless people, some people think im saying this but I am just speaking from experience here). Public transport is not the utopia people think it is. Unless you have security and 24/7 cleaning, humans will ruin it (like everything).
If you're not actively trying to push for designs that promote more walkability and bikability; and instead contributing more to our motor-centric nightmare, then please do everyone a favor and quit your job.
That's exactly how I arrived at this theory. Went on a particularly nice bike ride last summer and suddenly remembered that feeling of freedom I got from owning my first bike.
Take a train. Even if trains are not available, those trips are rare enough, for average people, that renting a car for them is cheaper than buying.
haul a couch.
Unless you're a professional furniture mover, you're going to do this so rarely that it would be cheaper to just hire a professional furniture mover, than to buy a truck.
It helps if you have an old car that doesn't cost a lot of money. In terms of cost vs renting. And a trailer hitch so you can just rent a trailer for furniture and stuff. I've used mine a lot. Doesn't need to be a truck for that, even a small car can do a normal sized trailer.
I don't live anywhere near an airport so no rental cars available to me either, it'd take at least 2-3 hours to get to one via public transit
I live in a major German city, have a car, bicycle and a public transport subscription. I use public transit daily, ride bycicle 2-3 times a week and drive car 2-3 times a month. I do transport heavy loads when driving car. I use bike in my area to get to shops. I go with public transit to and from work.
Inter-city trains are fast, but fuck schedules and interruptions. I'd rather wake up, pack my backpack and hit the Autobahn for 4-5 hours and be there rather than go though a hellhole of trying to reach central station on time in the middle of the night just to save me 20-40 euros one way cause later time tickets are more expensive.
I don't want to rely on a tram in the night that not supposed to be there, but schedule says it will, and then it still doesn't arrive just to run quick to a nearby parking lot and try to pickup a Carshare and drive to central station under time pressure and spend shit ton of time trying to find a parking spot in the night.
I don't want to get a ticket with a connection train just to have my or connection train to be late for the connection schedule and then wait god knows how much for the next train and pray that won't happen during cold weather.
One time I took Flixtrain to save some money and that shit was extremely noisy even my noise cancelling headphones didn't help much.
One time I took bus that would go 15h one way. I will never take a bus in my entire life again for this much time. I value my painless back much more over money.
I still would fight for much more better public transportation in any city of the world. But that is bullshit to think that bike of all things gives much more freedom than a car.
Should refrigerators be transported like this? (This isn't even in the top 5 most loaded bikes I've seen, washing machine+dryer in the paniers, then a refrigerator on top isn't that uncommon)
Have 3 friends help you out with a sofa, or, listen to me for a sec, have a vehicle that can do that by design.
Fuck cars, and all. Ofc they are not good for environment and are a cause of millions of deaths but you cant be saying bicycle is superior to a car while having a straight face. Apples to oranges ffs.
Not sure what car you drive but 99.9% of cars normal people drive (at least here in Europe) don’t fit a sofa, so it’s a complete non-argument. Even if you did have one that does, are you saying you can load a sofa into your car by yourself?
If you buy a new sofa, you have it delivered. The delivery guys will deliver it to your living room. No hassle at all. They don’t use a car either, they use a truck (not one of those surrogate penisses americans call trucks but an actual truck).
Most people in the US, if they don't have a truck, they have an SUV or crossover with a hatchback and seats that build down. I drive a Subaru Crosstrek, their smallest US crossover, and I have loaded/moved/unloaded a couch by myself with it.
Yeah it hangs out the back a little but you click a mini carabiner into the door mechanism at the upper part of the hatch and tie some rope to that and down to the metal bar it normally closes onto. That keeps the couch from falling out, and keeps the hatch down at the couch level so the hatch door isn't sticking up extra tall.
Here, most places will deliver said sofa to you cheap or even free, and even bring it up to the umpteenth floor your apartment is on.
Buying a car in cities here would be an insane money drain for literally no benefit. Even if you want or need to drive, you can rent an almost-new German car for single trips for super cheap.
I've lived a couple of years in Germany and the Netherlands and I know the options you have, it's very nice. I'm on the outskirts of a good size city. There are bikeable places when you get more urban closer to downtown, but there are no options other than car in the area I live in. Even most homeless people have a car here, or they have someone they rely on with a car who is willing to help them out.
This is why it's nice to split a car and hitch with friends and neighbours (and other lending library stuffs while you're at it). Just like the lawn mower you might share, no one (well no one with access to quarter-decent infra) needs a car every day, but it's handy to have access for hauling big stuff.
I can't believe more people have figured this out yet. The simple answer is: money. The REAL answer is that money itself is the dominant life form on our planet. Humans are powerless against anything that allows money to congregate and reproduce. Billionaires are quite literally the reproductive organs of the money demon that rules us. Politicians are the brain. We (the tax paying citizens) are the food.
So why do we drive cars instead of riding bikes? Money wills it so.
Let me hop on my bike for the 12-mile round trip to the nearest grocery store. No idea how I'm getting anything home though.
It's a quick trip out to our camp in the swamp, only 52-miles out and back, 3 miles of which are impassable on a bike. I'll just carry it over my head.
Then I'll make the quick 625-mile round trip to pick up my kids 4 times a year. Hope they got their own bikes!
"But if we all lived packed in like rats in arcologies, we wouldn't need cars!"
It's one of those things where people imagine they're going to go on a big road trip... someday. Some may have done this when they were younger and imagine they'll do it again because they aren't too old for that yet.
But the reality is having to plan to go places in specific routes at specific times to avoid traffic, sitting bumper to bumper in gridlock cursing out all of the idiot drivers all around you, while constantly being stressed one of the most expensive things you own might get damaged. Then voting for someone to fix the problem of all of the other idiots on the road because you're the only one that isn't an idiot... but you definitely are one of the idiot drivers.
But maybe this weekend you'll take a road trip and enjoy the freedom. Well not this weekend, you're too exhausted from commuting 15 hours this week to be able to get up before sunrise to beat the cottage country traffic. But next weekend you'll enjoy that freedom for sure!
I've only seen someone try to cycle on the roads around me twice in almost 20 yrs living here, and both times there was a line of cars a mile long waiting their turn to get around him. He was lucky he didn't die.
I also know several people who live in actually-bikable areas not too far from me who have taken out loans to buy bikes. It's not difficult to spend $3k, you can well upwards of $10k if you want high end. But yeah you can still buy a piece of garbage from Walmart for $250.
I cycle in the middle of the road any time there isn't a suitable bike lane, cars will have to wait their turn and then I overtake all of them at the next set of traffic lights.
Well yeah they have to ride in the lane, there's nowhere else to ride. But no one does because our roads are narrow and curvy with relatively high speed limits and a lot of large truck traffic that can't stop quickly. I actually see bikes on my commute every day, they are on the side of the road as a memorial to people who died on them right there. Tons of deer get hit on those roads too. If you're not traveling in the direction of traffic at least close to the speed limit, you are seriously risking your life.
Being highly visible helps a lot, also in the UK we don't have high speed traffic in urban areas. Outside of urban areas there is usually some kind of bike path you can use unless you are using country lanes but in that case you get people walking in the road too.
I've lived a couple of years in Europe and spent time in the UK. I know what your reality is, you have probably never experienced mine. Visibility doesn't help when a large dump truck carrying 25 tons of gravel comes around the bend and physically can't stop in time, and there's incoming traffic in the other lane. I'm on the outskirts of a good size city. There are zero bike lanes outside the urban inner city. Absolutely no one walks or bikes these roads out where I am.
I live in an area that is completely un-bikable so the only bike shop near me only sells to enthusiasts who are driving their bike somewhere to ride it. It's also in a nicer neighborhood than I live in, so much of their clientele are middle class or upper middle class. They don't sell a bike under $2k. I know a few people with 300k cars, they're very wealthy. I know a dozen people with 5k-12k bikes, they're middle class enthusiasts.
The affect is widespread. My kids didn't even learn how to ride a bike because there is nowhere to ride them. Nobody owns bikes, so they aren't many on marketplace nearby. The ones that do go on marketplace are either worn out or rusty or still very expensive because they started their lives as $5k bikes. Even the thrift shops around here only sell nicer bikes and they're at least $200.
You need a 50 EUR bike, and for deterring theft, a can of cheap pink spraypaint and go wild with it. At least, that was the strategy of several of my coworkers, and all of them had six figure salaries.
I can take the tram to my job, why don't you get a tram then? /s
People here don't understand that people in general do what makes sense for them, and you can't ask someone in a place with no bike infrastructure to "just buy a bike bro".
Did inflation hit bicycles? I put some miles on this for 550USD before I left the US, and I had no complaints, maybe an aluminum frame would have been lighter.
It shows $749 as the base price now. Almost everything has gone up 50-100% since 2020. At least my mortgage is fixed rate. My property taxes doubled though.
You should visit one of the university cities in the Netherlands, and then tell me if you're still fine with cities designed around bike traffic.
Edit: this one's on me for getting down voted. In my experience, if you go to the university cities, you have to have eyes in the back of your head as a pedestrian. There's alway some cyclist coming from a random direction at high speed, ringing the bell and expecting you to give way (even in pedestrian zones). So as a cyclist it's probably nice, as a pedestrian not so much.
Plus, as we’ve seen, it is much easier to escape the secret police on a bike
Unless the secret police have bikes as well!
The American ones don’t
Cops dont like work, moving, being away from car.
I've seen a couple cops (RCMP) on bikes in my city. They definitely didn't seem to be really comfortable on the bikes. Would definitely be easier to lose them in a bike chase than a car chase.
I haven't seen RCMP on bikes, but the locals on bikes have a season and only seem to be around large events. I'm not sure their skill level but, I'm pretty sure they aren't ready to chase a cyclist.
So for people criticising with rain, wind, snow, and groceries - none of these are nearly the issues you think they are, and there are a wide variety of bike configurations and gear that address these challenges.
The real issue is having to share the road with cars. I've just had too many close calls, and the growth of self-driving vehicles makes me more nervous to be on the road than ever.
Because of cars I hate being on the road whether in a car or on a bike, and every car that passes by automatically makes me tense up these days. I hope a new Carrington event makes all of them useless.
Yes, weather is just a matter of gear, and these days the wet and cold weather gear is amazing. The best bike gear isn't cheap, but it's much cheaper than the typical repair on a car when something breaks. Panniers are an easy way to carry a lot of groceries with minimal effort. If someone has a huge family there are also cargo bike options. But, of course, with modern American cities, there might not be a grocery store in a reasonable biking range. There used to be mom-and pop grocery stores all over the place. And, in Europe it's pretty common for there to be a small grocery store within a 5 minute walk of your house.
But, North American roads are designed only for cars. Bicyclists and commuters pay taxes to maintain roads, but the roads are built for cars and trucks. To really feel safe on a bike, you need separated bike lanes. You build those, and people will use them.
In many places in North America, a bike lane is merely a thin strip of pavement that's centimetres from passing cars, and in the door zone of parked cars. Even in good weather that's dangerous. In bad weather it's truly awful. But, people still use those bike lanes. In fact, some people even bike and share the road with cars where the bike lanes don't exist. That should be a clue that people are dedicated to cycling, and if you built actual good bicycle infrastructure, a lot of people would use it.
Bitch it’s negative 40 I’m not taking a bike. I’m not walking. That’s insane.
Well just keep on burning your fossil fuels, and you won't have to worry about it getting that cold again :3
Most people aren't driving in that weather either. Temperatures like that happen very rarely even in very cold places.
I've made bike commutes in those temperatures, and yeah, I would say it's dangerous and most people shouldn't do that unless they've got some kind of fully enclosed, motorized bike with active heating.
It is worth noting that with proper winter gear, since biking is more physically demanding than driving, it is possible and likely that most winter bike rides will cause you to generate enough of your own body heat that you might actually feel the need to remove your jacket. At negative 40? Absolutely not. But I've done so at temperatures as low as zero.
And to be fair, you shouldn't be expected to drive at temps as low as negative 40 either. If you've got a long car commute and your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you are dead. At least with a bike-centric lifestyle it pressures you to prefer jobs that are closer to home, so it might actually be less dangerous.
You are part of the less than 1% and probably not the target audience.
Where the fuck do you live that it gets -40?? Antarctica??
Negative 40 (yay, I don't have to clarify whether it's Celsius or Fahrenheit!) is navigable. Take proper clothing!
Source: living and walking in a northern city
until it’s not, i wouldn't want to be out in that at all
anything past like -10 is crazy cold
I don't share the road, I take the road. You will overtake me like you would overtake a car, plus it gives me the space I need to swerve around the craters in the road. Some roads are bumpier than Paschendale.
I used to do that, then a car flew by and damn near killed me.
People generally don't like losing their license here
Could have fooled me, given how utterly stupid motorists routinely get every time they drive around bicyclists.
Traffic accidents happen so frequently it is one of the top causes of yearly deaths. Humans are not responsible enough to deserve to drive.
Vehicular cycling is a bad meme
Snow and rain, but mostly snow.
Hills. I'm 60, and not getting younger, my knees are going.
Some people just can't. But, when I could, I did.
I love the deluge of people trying to convince you to use a bike anyway. I’m getting old and live where it can hit -20° or worse, with snow and ice. Cold is almost half the year. There’s no fucking way I’d ride a bike for almost two hours each way in the cold when I have to go into the office, over a nice heated 18 minute car ride. Plus every day I bring a bag to and from the office, and some days 2-3 bags of stuff I pick up to bring home. I keto on that here or when I was on Reddit and some asshole will inevitably be like “YOU CAN HANDLE THE COLD AND ICE AND FOUR HOURS OUT KF YOUR DAY UR JUST WEAK” and those people are bad people I don’t like.
That's the problem we want to fix.
I am SOOOOO with you when it comes to that sentiment. I shouldn’t have a 18 minute car ride that’s also a two hour bike ride. That’s fucked up.
Have you thought about getting an ebike instead? My old folks got a pair and it completely changed the game for them
Telling Grandma/grandpa to use an ebike in the snow or in lethal wet bulb temperatures isn't a real solution. It's great that it worked for your folks but it cannot work for mine.
It's not uncommon for population centers in the US to be basically uninhabitable without AC/climate control.
The air can be so saturated with water that you cannot evaporate sweat which is the primary way your body sheds heat.
It is unsafe for anyone, let alone the elderly, to travel in these conditions unless you have a vehicle with climate control.
Yes when that happens don't leave the building, whatever reason. Transportation is inadvisable. But that happens rarely.
You don't even have to be old. Ebikes are car replacements and can tow children, groceries, and furniture with ease. They flatten hills, get you to work on time and without sweat, and significantly extend the realistic travel radius around your home/work/last transit stop. Expect to pay pennies to recharge it, rather than two or three figures for a full tank of gas.
Any fitness benefits you get are just a cherry on top. Ebikes just make it so much easier to skip the car trips in your village or city.
"tow furniture with ease" is complete bullshit lmao
Have you seen the new electric motors coming out? 120 nm of torque is a lot.
My ebike has 80nm of torque, and that's enough to hit 21% grade hills at 9mph. On flats, that's enough to lift 235 lbs and do a wheelie, haha.
It doesn't necessarily mean fast, but it does mean it can haul gear.
tow a couch with a bike and tell me its easy, e bike or no
also i have a couple decent e bikes and theyre sick but i straight up would never move furniture with them lol
Depends a bit on the furniture, a couch wouldn't even fit in my car. But a futon or some leather barstools? Absolutely.
https://youtu.be/BXDP9WQe0io
Also family and groceries.
I wouldn't ask my 9YO on a bike at 7:30 am on winter to go to school everyday. Also no family trips. The place we go to the most is on the other side of mountains 3 hours away by car.
Groceries would have to be more regular. I currently fill the car and go like once a month or month and a half
I know this might sound pedantic but I will try to write with love. 90% of the world population buy groceries weekly or more often. Many European countries buy fresh food on the daily. Yes, from the grocery downstairs, or across the road. Car centric urban design fucked you up. It's built for the car, not for human beings. Your perception and expectations are completely out of wack with normal human existence.
For example, Costco style mega stores are not a thing in almost all of the world. No, no one needs a 3 year supply of mustard for a family of 4. Most businesses don't need a heavy duty truck, why would a middle class family need one just to get to the school and office. You don't need a 4x4 for the two trips a year you take to the mountains, on an asphalt road.
It's all bizarre, it is all out of proportion. But it is not a personal failure, oil corporations and car manufacturers created this weird mar on the planet that is suburban sprawl and car dependent infrastructure. We just live with the consequences.
You're aware that families in europe go on family trips by taking the train across the mountains? That's part of the problem, you americans don't like to think far beyond your horizon (cars). Or maybe you just can't imagine what a city would look like that is built for pedestrians and public transportation.
I'm from Latin america. There is a single train that goes through my city and has only a few stops. I'd love to take the train. It just doesn't take me where I need to go. Heck I've been looking for an excuse to take one for months
Ah sorry, maybe my restriction to the US of A was wrong, I apologize for expluding central/south america that seems to have the same problem.
Why not? In a lot of the world that's pretty normal.
When I was a kid I walked 30-40 minutes to and from school in the winter. I would have preferred to bike, but they didn't clear the bike lanes. In places in Europe they make plowing the bike lanes a priority, so everybody can count on being able to commute by bike.
You shouldn't have to rely on a car to get somewhere that's that far away. It's more reasonable to take a train to get that kind of distance.
Do you not like fresh food? Do you ever eat fruit or vegetables? Or meat that hasn't been frozen?
You can just take some other transportation for long trips.
Cars and bikes take you wherever you want, whenever you want. Cars are just faster.
Other transportation methods don't go whenever nor whenever.
Cars are not perfect. And for short trips don't make sense. But they are the most useful.
The only level head in this thread lol.
Im convinced most people on here live in a closet sized apartment and buy 1 bag of groceries a week. Its sad.
I just used my car to go 3 blocks away and I'm so disappointed in myself.
Also the way back was like 10 blocks
I used my car today to go about 2km away. I picked up a couple heavy packs of drinks, a box of litter, and and five bags of groceries. The travel maybe cost me 1USD. There is no fucking way I could lug all of that home for my family with something that isn’t a car.
I am not disappointed in myself. I just have to play with the cards I’m dealt.
If you measure in blocks and not miles, youre already likely in bike country! Im at least a 15 min drive from any grocery. So an hour bike.
I don't measure in miles because I live in a metric country. So I used blocks that we all understand.
I have a lot of options for gfocieries nearby. They are just more expensive than the large sellers. ( 3 in a 2 block radius)
Cars are also a major contributor to the climate crisis and exacerbates social issues like increased anxiety via noise pollution and social isolation.
Wheels with spikes work pretty well if it comes to hard packed snow and ice. Normal mointainbike wheels work well enough for me in the snow though, I was always just a bit careful and nothing ever happened so far.
This doesn't work if you have any distance to go. I spent 8 years without a car, and I'll never do that again. I love my bike, but no.
That's... What you have trains for. If you have proper public transit, that need is covered. Oh, and you can get shit done while you're on the train. Or sleep. Or relax.
I really wish most places had better public transit.
A major city near me ends public transit at midnight, despite most late night venues being open much later than that.... And their transit system is "good" by comparison to what's in cities nearby me, and I'm still a 15 minute drive from any of them (at least). It would take me most of the day to commute to the nearest major city by bike/public transit.
Still... I wish.
Motorbike.
Vroom
Because you lived in a car centric shit hole with no backbone rail.
Fucking car brain infrastructure blindness is so reliable. Like you can't see the massive constant costs of car infra, you think the roads never need repair and fuel just fucking appears, engine repairs aren't orders of magnitude more expensive than anything else, and there's no opportunity cost to other modes of transit, but laying an inch of track or cutting bike trails is just so fucking expensive. You are the problem with the world. You are why we have climate change. You are why everything is so fucking shit and everything everyone owns spies on all of us.
Please stop. Please just fucking stop. You can't see shit, your experiences are not valid, your instincts are the products of ad campaigns, and you are reliably aggressively spectacularly incorrect in harmful ways. Please stop having opinions, stop voting, stop speaking on any topic you are hostile to the concept of understanding.
If you're determined to never think or observe, please defer in matters of reality to those who at least try.
This is some high tier deranged posting.
Nice.
You know how LLMs have a context window and use it to predict the next word? This guy’s brain works like that, but with a context of emotion instead of words, and it can only store 3 tokens.
Oh? What doesnt track?
The words tracked. You just seemed to have gotten stuck in a feedback loop of emotion where your rage reminded you you were angry, which made you more angry.
Their mod log really says a lot lol
Oh I would love to read that—is there an easy way for me to see that? I only use Voyager, so I’m a bit of a noob here.
Found this through Google: https://lemmy.world/modlog
Seems to only show a few of the actions though. Might be because .world gets defederated more often.
Yeah, mostly without citing the text or attributing anythibgvto an author, but what's that got to do with what I'm saying here?
They have 5,297 comments within the last 5 months.
That's 35 comments a day for like the past half year.
I browse at work and am chronically online but shit, that's still a crazy amount.
That’s… really something. Their posts are unhinged.
What are your faves?
Cool. Tell me what I'm wrong about and how.
Dude that is some insane response there.
How so?
Edit: oh shit, you got nothing, do you?
It's the symbol of freedom because kids in north America are locked up until they start to drive. Since you can't walk or cycle without risking your life, parents have to drive their kids everywhere until they are old enough to drive. This then is perceived as liberation.
Of course car centric infrastructure is the reason you need to be driven in order to be safe. It's the product of decade long lobbying by the car industry.
Freedom is not having to use cars. Having the choice to use cars or other methods of transportation.
I guess cars must feel like parole to kids who have been locked up.
I grew up in a place that was not even big on cycling, just not a hellscape like the US. We would go on crazy bike trips and barely find our way back home at like 14.
Plus a car takes a bullet much better than a bike
Well I guess that's another problem Europeans don't have, but we're not here to take your guns away!
Plus a car takes a bullet much better than a bike
Some are. But unless they are in a truly rural area, that is just not true. According to recent numbers 80% of people in America live in urban areas.
Those urban areas, while often not designed for bicycles are a lot more frindly to bicycles then true rural areas. Saying kids are trapped untill they have a car wrong most of the time. Yeah they may have to bike or walk a few miles to get anywhere but that's not a big deal.
The people living in true rural America truly do not have the ability to do so. But again, that's less then a quarter of the populations and likely far less then a quarter of all kids.
We have a culture that prioritizes physical comfort above most other things. A car is more comfortable so that is what most people what to do.
Counterpoint: I lived in an extremely remote part of Vermont (population 400) for a couple years without a car, and I got around fine on my bike. The trick was living close to my work, which was easy since housing was dirt cheap. That said, getting out of town was difficult, as the buses (Greyhound) were notoriously unreliable. I also got random people buzzing me in pickups screaming at me for existing once in a while.
I have lived in urban, suburban, and very rural places. Rural is my favorite and most comfortable to commute on bike even if some things are a long ride away. The concept of what's "too far away" is very different depending on whether you ask someone who is afraid to get on a bike, vs someone who actually rides.
I miss cycling. I live in the middle of goddamned nowhere, so driving in mandatory to get anywhere relevant. I hate that this is the case, but there's just about fuck all I can do about it.
I will comment that I take issue with bikes being "cheap". If you ride a bike even remotely seriously, your bike is not cheap..... It might not be expensive, but you quickly realize why cheap bikes are cheap.
Spot on. I've got about $3k into my bike, but it's not a fancy race bike (it's a steel fixed gear), so I invested in bombproof parts that could end up outliving me. Once a year I'll replace the tires/chain/brake pads, service the bearings, and strip/regrease a few parts, so the running cost is maybe $15/month. If you've got a road bike with a 2x drivetrain, or if you're paying people to service your bike that might go up to $30/month, but still negligible compared to a car.
It's less disability-friendly than a car, can't carry cargo, and can't transport passengers. You try to have a suburban family with just bicycles - especially if one of the kids has balance issues from early childhood onward. It's not possible. The automobile is viewed as the ultimate symbol of freedom because it can serve multiple roles and has a massive variability in speed.
Almost like those suburbs were designed around cars at the exclusion of all other transport
Absolutely true, but it's still where we are.
With this mentality that's also where you'll be in 20 years.
Change starts small.
"Less disability friendly than a car"
I completely disagree but it's debatable.
What kind of handicap can allow you to drive but not bike ? Bike are extremely adaptable to any kind of handicap, to the point that they can basically be turned into an electric wheelchair.
can't carry cargo
I disagree again, it does carry way less cargo but can still carry cargo.
can't transport passengers
Why do we need to carry passagers ? Because a lot of people (child, elderly people, people without license) cannot drive and because car are expensive. If everyone can use a bike and the bike are so cheap that you can have a few aroumd for guests it greatly reduces the need for carrying assengers.
And you can still carry passagers on a bike, the best example is longtails bike that can carry an adult or several kids as passagers.
kid with balance issue
Longtail and tricycles.
Cars are amazing pieces of technology, they do have unique capabilities like doing unscheduled, flexible long distance drive, or carry a lot of cargo at once.
But for a lot of the daily living a bike (and proper bike infrastructure) would be way better suited to the situation.
I want to add my experience to this :
I'm disabled, on a good day I just get tired pretty fast. On a bad day even walking hurt and I need to rest every 15 min or so. I can't drive because I have narcolepsia.
You would think that I would love getting around car but I don't. When everything is made for car I need to walk a lot more even if someone drives me because parkings tend to not have a lot of benches and everything is farther because parking take space. It also makes crossing street horrible because I have to wait a long time for cars to stop.
If everything is bike friendly dedicated transport is faster and can afford to stop exactly where I need it and when I need it. I can take the bus, tram or train if something is too far, and I can stop when I need because bus stop have benches. On top of that everything is closser together since there little or no parking so a 15 min walk get me to more places. If i need to take a lot of grocerie I can just take a chariot, the only downside is sometimes there is noisy kids in the bus but this is solved by noise canceling headphones.
I know this is my experience ( which is obviously not universal ) and public transit / bikes are not a silver bullet that fixes everything mobility wise but earing the "bike centric infrastructure is ableist" rant feels downright insulting when it's the thing that allow me to not depend on friends driving me.
E-bikes are great for people with disabilities who can balance and the elderly. I see old people zipping along on e-bikes a lot here in LA. For everyone else, public transit or para transit is often a better option than a car. A car that can accommodate a wheelchair or disabled driver is usually expensive.
Adult tricycles are great for people with balance issues.
The main reason wheelchair-accessible vehicles (usually a minivan) are so expensive is because no major manufacturers construct them in the factory. So you're paying for the original vehicle, plus a third party to remove the middle seats (what happens to them, I'd like to know!) cut the sides and lower the floor, adding sections to the doors and rerouting the wiring, install a ramp and "kneeling" capabilities, plus tiedowns and in some cases special controls for driving. Also the driver's and front passenger seats are set into removable raised platforms. The automatic doors have become standard but used to also be part of the conversion. If the body were constructed with these differences from the start, perhaps in a dedicated factory, the savings would be considerable.
The savings are even greater if you take public transit, which is much roomier than any van and has no associated fuel/repair costs that you’re responsible for. It sucks everywhere doesn’t have such options.
Even places with otherwise-decent public transportation often don't have adequate disability-accessible public transportation. In fact it's often the longest-established systems that are the worst for disabilities.
That’s part of why I’m so thrilled with LA transit! I’ve literally never seen anywhere better for people with disabilities on the general public transit (as opposed to paratransit). In other cities I know bus drivers will tend to skip stops with a wheelchair user waiting because it slows them down. Here in LA the driver will get up, make sure they’re secured if they need it, and double check what stop they’re getting off on so they don’t get stranded. And I see a lot more wheelchair users just out going about their day here than I did in other cities, which I don’t think is a coincidence.
It was a huge deal for us the first time we flew back into LAX and there were accessible taxis at the taxi stand. In the old days there were like 2 vans for the whole city and we'd wait hours. Of course LAX is fucked right now but it's temporary and there's still lots of the cabs, because they've realized they're also great for hauling luggage. The Metro stations also seem pretty accessible although we haven't had much occasion to use them. Maybe once they finish the Westwood station.
Not everywhere has public transit. Also, the people with families can't spend 2 hours each way getting to work. I'm for bikes and public transit, it's just not the answer to everything. You're comments are being naive about this.
Thanks for emphasizing the last part of my comment: it sucks everywhere doesn’t have such options. Good public transit isn’t going to take 2 hours each way, and it sucks transit isn’t decent everywhere.
Seattle's transit is getting better, but it's still a long haul. If you live in a suburb and your work is in Seattle, but not close to the transit, you're in for a slog.
Ebike trikes are a thing too.
This is true but not entirely.
My parents have mobility issues so we modified some Schwinn tricycles with 1200W motors and they can zip around our city on those all day long with no issues.
As far as kids go, I have 4 and we cycle everywhere we need within our city. I manage this by using bicycle trailers and having my kids ride their own bikes when they wish to. A cargo bike and trailer combination would allow me to tow 4 kids without issue though that gets limited as the kids get bigger.
On the topic of bike trailers, my cargo trailer has always ensured I can carry plenty of cargo with my bike when needed. It was actually instrumental when we moved earlier this year as the move was around 2-3 miles and even towing crates to the new house I could beat our vans while giving whichever van I would've ridden in the ability to carry two more crates itself.
The biggest limitation with bike trailers (at least the type I use) is how the weight affects the bicycle. Too much weight over the hitch and the front wheel of the bicycle becomes unweighted. I think a seat post mounted hitch would be able to handle more weight without this issue.
The barriers to mobility are the giant, dangerous roads and parking lots between everything that car dependency requires. Cycleable/walkable places with good public transit are easier to get around for everyone with or without a car, regardless of disabilities.
Also, disabilities exclude more people from being able to drive than from walking/cycleing/using public transit. Not to mention people excluded from driving due to age. Or finances. Or not being able to get a license due to lack of English literacy. Or not having a permanent address. Or people that just would prefer to not drive. All these people deserve the right to be able to get around, and car dependency denies them that right.
Trikes exist, and some even have a bench seat and storage behind the driver
The humble milk crate begs to differ. Also you can buy a cargo trailer if you need to haul more than a panier's or a milk crate's worth of stuff
Hook up a trailer. They start at just $100 on Amazon or get one from a garage sale or local buy/sell listings or even the local bike shop might have used ones. The one I use for all of the kids school pickups and dropoffs I got at a garage sale for $20 and it's also got space for cargo as well as children
Mom and dad each ride a normal grownup bike, then each kid rides what's appropriate for their age, needs and abilities, whether that's a trailercycle, riding in a trailer, their own bike or even a trike
Ehhh. Cars are great at what they do, but they're expensive as fuck to own and completely suck when too many people want to drive to/from/through the same place.
Honestly in the car dependant hellscape that is America I think the best possible balance is one car and a family of bikes for every family. You can usually take bikes on the bus, bikes don't require any meaningful amount of fuel (ebikes take like one laptop's worth of energy to charge) and they're freaking fun to ride as well as being good for fitness and mental health. But you also have the car for longer trips or trips on roads that you can't safely/legally bike on. Bikes are freaking awesome, and you can throw so many attachments onto them to make them carry just about anything
Nonsense, you can absolutely have standard cargo bikes like this:
Or cargo bikes with gunner seats mounted in them
And there are recumbent and adaptive ebikes and normal bikes too, for people with disabilities or balance issues. Heck, you can even attach trailers to virtually any standard bike, and many different trailer options exist, from pet carriers to cargo, to food service to fully adult men.
Bikes shouldn't be going above 28mph anyways. We have high speed rail if someone wants to do 150mph through a city.
Cars are definitely the present, but they absolutely don't need to be the future.
Get your lazy ass on a bike, ya bum!
If I even look sideways at it, I end up with at least broken nose, probably broken knees.
Try having a disability that prevents you from driving and you may see just how shit car dependency is.
My unfortunate blend of disabilities means that I can neither drive nor bike. I'm at my best in places with good taxis/rideshares supported by buses. Trains, light rail, and the like are nice ideas, but I have to take a cab or a bus from the station anyway, so I might as well go door-to-door in the cab. So I do want car dependence, because as we become less car dependent, we lose mobility.
Suppose it depends on where you live and disability, someone I went to school with couldn't drive but could walk, bike or bus for free. Had to pay for the train like everyone else though.
Yeah, honestly the "just get a bike" rhetoric is general pretty ablist.
Everything is ableist if you think about it enough. "Just get a car rhetoric" is ableist against blind people. Even "just take public transit" is ableist against immunocompromised people.
A society should make accommodations for those with special needs, but we don't have to give those accommodations to everyone who asks. Some people will need a car, that doesn't mean your average able bodied person should be driving one, and most of the "just take a bike" rehtoric is directed towards those people.
If everyone except for those with disabilities switched to public transport, bikes, it'd be a massive improvement.
I don't think anyone wants to outlaw motor transport, especially for those without other options.
I live in Utrecht, The Netherlands. I can't park anywhere, my bike will be removed if not stalled in a bike parking spot. I do need insurance, my bike was 4k. There are bike traffic jams sometimes. The rest is all true. No parking fees, no road tax, etc. Just a bit wet sometimes. But my city has one of the best, if not the best bike infrastructure in the world. It's stupid it's not standard everywhere.
real freedom is heelys
I don't miss falling on my face... that would probably hurt a lot more now than it did two decades ago.
Ivan Illich on the bicycle. Energy & Equity
Out of curiosity:
What's that "note" a bike doesn't need?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_note
Shorthand for a loan I imagine.
Thanks, didn't know that.
Leases are often referred to as car notes in slang.
Thanks, never heard that before...
"Probably one of the most fuel efficient vehicles in existence" is one of the dumbest takes I've ever seen. The human body is a ridiculously inefficient machine.
my BODY is a MACHINE that turns PIZZA into WHEEL ROTATION
sort of the human body is pretty inefficient but a 20 mile bicycle ride can burn around 1000 calories while a gallon of fuel contains 31,000 calories.
http://berkscountynature.org/calories_in_gallon.html
I am not a chemical engineer so I am not sure how equivalent these two measurements are... I mean for starters I can eat 1000 calories... but I think if I tried to get 1000 calories by consuming gasoline; I would die.
It's almost as if you burn all that fuel to move the car, the content of the car (people) is almost a rounding error.
And generating heat. I believe motorcycles fail to beat bicycles with rereads to efficiency. Though there are significantly better than cars EVs included
That really would be efficient!
But I guess you actually meant to say kilo calories ;-)
This odd shortening of kilocalories to calories drives me mad every time. Like, we just ignore three orders of magnitude, adding massive confusion?
Keep in mind how much CO2 gets emitted for the food you eat during it's production. Being vegan helps.
Of course it's still much between than driving a car, but an ebike would be even better. Even if you charged it with electricity from a coal power plant the CO2 emissions would be way lower
I don't eat more on days I cycle to work than on days that I take the bus or work from home.
The calories still have to come from somewhere, even if you may not eat them specifically on the days you cycle
Most people eat more calouries than they need, anyway.
It's called sport, exercise, or do you want to ban that in the name of saving the climate?
being vegan would help if it effected production
A moped would be the closest equivalent ~100mpg so 3,000 calories per mile, vs a bike at 50.
I think it's more that the moped /ICE engines are very inefficient then bikes are efficient, as an electric scooter would be lower then both.
Fuel efficiency is measured in litres per distance travelled, which is basically energy used per distance travelled.
I have a power meter on my bike, so I can get pretty accurate numbers for calories burned, by measuring the total kilojoules of energy used. On my road bike it takes roughly 1700kcal to travel 100km on a mostly flat course. According to Google there are approximately 8000kcal in a litre of petrol and a Smart Fortwo (a very small car) burns 6 litres per 100km on the highway. That's 48000kcal to travel 100km, being generous.
Now let's consider that the human body can convert roughly 20% of the energy consumed as food into useful work. That's still only 8500kcal worth of food to travel 100km. So even with a full car with 5 people in it, 5 people on bikes are still going to need less fuel to travel 100km. Not to mention that producing the food will release much less carbon into the atmosphere (but that's another topic).
In addition, the fuel that goes into a car is this ultra-refined blend of chemicals that is produced in a refinery. You have to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, use heat and various additives to transform it into automobile fuel, then ship it to a service station. I would imagine that the process of refining oil into gasoline is probably not 20% efficient.
Your body works on stuff that literally grows on trees. If you have a back yard, or even a decently sunny balcony, you can grow a tomato plant. Then, you eat that tomato, and voila, bike fuel. So, even if the calorie efficiency of a human body converting food into fuel isn't great, the human body is the refinery. It can theoretically even be fuelled by foraging, no crops necessary.
Well, per traveled distance with moderate speed it is not completely untrue.
But still outclassed by a similar, but electrically powered (or assisted) vehicle.
Something a lot of people have a hard time coming to accept...
I'm really curious here, how so? I would expect energy inefficiency to be an evolutionary disadvantage.
Part of it is due to thermodynamics. A diesel engine works at a high temperature difference, with peak gas temperatures going somewhere in the >1000°C range.
High temperature differences lead to high efficiency >40%.
A human body can't use high temperature processes, so has to stick to chemical workarounds which lead to additional losses.
A diesel car will typically run 20 km per liter. One liter of diesel is about 10 kWh. so if you put four people in the car, that's 2.5 kWh per person. 2.5 kWh should allow you to walk for eight hours, or about 40 km. *quick edit: this is walking, cycling will get you further on 2.5 kWh!
Another thing is, diesel engines are water cooled, the heat is shed to the environment. This is about two thirds (varies 60-70%) of the energy produced, the > 40% efficiency you mention is only achieved by the highest performing engines around today.
Ok, lets assume an efficiency of 35%.
That means 3500Wh usable energy per liter of diesel.
A complete 500Wh charge of my ebike gets me ~70km at 20km/h without any pedaling (tried that out).
So the usable energy delivered by one liter of diesel would be sufficient to drive me and my bike a distance of 7*70km = 490km.
A person won't be able to sustain 20km/h on a bike with the same low effort as walking at 5km/h, but even if that was the case, in 8h this would only get him 160km far.
============
Edit:
Looked up some numbers for bicycling.
Driving 20km at ~20km/h burned energy is generally given in the range ~500kcal, meaning 580Wh.
That is better than I expected, as the 10kWh primary energy would get you ~350km far, so almost as good as the diesel engine.
(To be fair: this doesn't yet take into account the CO2 footprint of food production, which is really abysmal. But that's a different topic.)
Bikes are cool and all, but no AC. And no good for a 40 mile highway commute. I also enjoy comfy seats and being able to easily and comfortably transport multiple people with a nice sound system etc…
Your infrastructure sucks.
You’re not wrong, but am trapped here. 🧐 Bikes will still never be as comfortable or have entertainment like a car unfortunately. There’s just something different about driving and playing music.
Headphones exist.
And confort of trains will always be categorically better because you literally only have to get in and do nothing until you're there.
I feel like you're arguing with someone that's actually on your (our) side here... Trust me, this doesn't sound like the guy that agrees with an extra lane replacing a sidewalk, or the guy that hates the tram line that takes up a lane..
We should consider not being this aggressive in our speak with someone that's actually a friend...
Cars do have the advantage of seats being comfier. I say this as a person without a drivers license that enters a car maybe twice a year.
Having to concentrate on driving does seem worse than just being able to sleep though
Just dodge the screaming homeless people, tweakers and the occasional pile of vomit.
Transit quality is region dependent. If you're not fortunate enough to live in an area where transit is well looked after it is not "categorically better."
This is true but it only shows that transit is seriously underfunded and treated as the bad step child in many areas, something which could theoretically be changed easily.
You are absolutely correct there.
I do my best to vote for better parties man, but I am out-numbered by the stupids who think the answer to fixing problems caused by conservative governments is to elect more conservatives.
During a year where there was a transit stabbing every other week, our mayor took a trip on transit to "combat the perception that transit is unsafe." She had a full police escort... They're more concerned with optics than with actually solving problems.
Headphones are nowhere near equivalent to good stereo. I don’t hate bikes, I just think cars are better and more enjoyable to use in general. I’m a bit lazy, also, to be honest. I don’t want to have to exercise to get wherever I’m going all the time.
What's even better is sitting in an even-more-comfy chair, listening to a better stereo system... at home.
What's interesting is that when everybody went to remote work during the pandemic, lots of bike commuters would start their day with a ride to the office and back, because the ride itself was fun. I didn't hear of car commuters doing that, or people at any time enjoying the process of commute driving. We have to add plush lounge chairs and entertainment systems and sensory-friendly interiors to cars to make the experience somewhat palatable, and even then, the distraction of a phone is irresistible for many drivers. Hell, the tech bros promise that they can even automate away the actual driving part, and people are excited by the prospect.
Sounds to me like a car will never hold a candle to a simple bike as far as enjoyment.
There are bone conducting or open ear headphones if you need music.
A car is comfortable, yes, but a bike is too. If it's not it's the wrong bike for you - or your bikefit sucks.
Yeah im sure all the trams and busses go exactly where I need them to.
Also, you cant carry anything with a bike outside of a few grocery bags.
Im all for bikes. But cars are insanely useful . what needs to happen is banning of anything larger than a Ford focus, special license required for a pickup (unless its a tacoma size) and better infrastructure supporting bikes and cars together.
Me driving around in my 99 miata is the least of our car problems. Its soccer moms in 100,000 pickups that they are almost always driving alone and never hauling a thing.
My town is 200k, and there's no way you could bike around it, there's no shoulders or sidewalks on most roads. Thats a problem of city planners being absolute dumb shits.
By those metrics, a tram wins.
Cars are obviously good for long distances but maybe cars could be banned from city centres (perhaps with exceptions for disabled people who rely on cars, and goods vehicles should probably be allowed). For getting around a city, people can use public transport, or bicycles, or their feet to walk.
Also in cases where cars are used, electric cars are probably a good idea because it results in cleaner air.
I wish our downtown banned them. They take up the whole damn downtown and are way too big now for the original main street.
My town is too spread out to not use any vehicles, and we have 2 huge interstates going through it. Not bikeable.
Okay... fine argument.
But... inexpensive?
Really?
They can be. Don't need to be expensive, and anyone with hands can work on them, even on the go. Parts readily available.
I spent 100 euros on my current bike
50 for a second-hand bike at the bike shop 50 for a cargo rack
My wife and I find bikes for free all the time, especially kid's bikes. People just leave them by their trash cans for pickup. Can't even sell them they're so common. Guy at the flea market gave her a nice purple adult bike last Saturday.
Same bikes from Walmart? Oh hell no.
I got my bike used under 100euro - less than a 5th of it's original price ant it is a very good bike. Used usually is not so expensive. Unless you are going e-bike, cargo bike, family bike, trailer for a bike, or any specific type. These shits can go pretty much expensive even used. Not as expensive as a car, but still bit cost-y.
If you're low on money just borrow one of the bikes that are meant for sharing. The ones without a lock at a station. Then leave it unlocked for the next person.
Inexpensive? In THIS economy?
Compared to a car they are damn near free for a used one.
We can't sell a bike for any price around here. People just leave them out for whoever wants them.
I wish I could still ride a bike. I walk for most of my errands and just enjoying the local nature trails, but bike seats are agony after both a bike accident 40 years ago (thrown 10 feet after an RV sideswiped me) and catastrophic car accident 11 years ago. Both made my existing lower back issues far more urgent and exceptionally painful before getting on a bike.
Oh noooooo
So sorry
Is sitting on seats hard as well? I imagine it probably is so some kind of recumbent trike, besides being very expensive, wouldn’t be a way to get you back riding…
In which case I’m glad you’re able to enjoy those trails even in spite of the tragedies!
I had to get a recumbent due to pain issues with a regular upright bicycle seat. I've owned a couple of them over the past 20 years or so, and they're great.
💪
I've had scoliosis since before those accidents, so it's a whole host of back issues. Sitting sucks, but is ameliorated by a quality cushion (a very thick memory foam pad I've had for a while now). I can't sit on benches or hard seats for any length of time at this point.
I've heard full suspension bikes enable some people who have back pain. Might be worth giving it a shot, depending on your pain levels.
I honestly love walking, despite my screwed up back and panoply of other issues. I can mostly manage without a car for anything but large shopping at this point. And since kids and grandkids moved out, most shopping is reasonable and amenable to backpack or cart.
Is there any kind of rehab you can do? One thing I've found with modern medicine is that they focus on getting someone healed until they can do basic things like sit and walk, which allows them to sit in an office, and sit in a car. But, they don't address the other needs someone might have, like if they're a dancer, or a martial artist, or a cyclist.
I've had some severe injuries over the years, and they basically called my rehab done when I could sit, stand and walk. But, on my own I've worked on my range of motion and strength to do more than just those basics.
Part of the problem is that I've learned to accept and work around so much chronic pain that I just realize there are activities I can't engage in. I really need to do something as this has gotten markedly worse in the past couple years despite being quite active (I walk at a very brisk place for 5-8 miles per day).
I hope I never have to deal with chronic pain like that. It sounds awful. I hope there's something you can do to work on reducing the pain.
sore bum tho
Recumbent, like being in a recliner on wheels.
Get a better seat.
Or use more lube
Soft seats actually cause more discomfort. You've been warned
some pay lots of money to get someone to get their bums sore.
so another bonus
With an appropriate seat, this is not a problem, even in regular clothes. For longer rides, bicycle shorts are recommended, which are padded to avoid saddle discomfort.
You guys have zero understanding of America.
The only way this will even get started is if there's a push for motorcycles over cars. Thats a good middle ground.
People in every city between LA and New York will laugh at you for trying to use a bike for daily activities. Shit is just too far apart. Which is fine with me, I dont like neighbors, im loud and dont like people watching me in my yard. Probably autistic.
I agree.
However I cant think of a single person in my life who would choose public transit even if it was available more. Im sorry but the ugly truth is, it's dirty, smells, loud, and the people on it are often on drugs (notice im not saying we need to deport and kill homeless people, some people think im saying this but I am just speaking from experience here). Public transport is not the utopia people think it is. Unless you have security and 24/7 cleaning, humans will ruin it (like everything).
Noy yet! Im sure its much better there. There's really no hope for American public transport. Too many assholes.
Sounds like a skill issue on your part.
Mostly the urban design skill :-)
If you're not actively trying to push for designs that promote more walkability and bikability; and instead contributing more to our motor-centric nightmare, then please do everyone a favor and quit your job.
My city is expanding too fast and is too spread out. They refuse to design it better so there's nothing I can do. Suburbia nightmare roads here.
Like I said, you can quit and stop being a part of the problem.
Car go fast
I'm still too scared of the road and of my ADHD to bike, me take tram and walk
That's exactly how I arrived at this theory. Went on a particularly nice bike ride last summer and suddenly remembered that feeling of freedom I got from owning my first bike.
i grew up in Barcelona with a bike.
never in my life I've felt that sense of freedom.
even with a car. not even close
Bikes are good for short distances of say 5-20km. Try to bike 500km in 5 hours? Or haul a couch on a bike? Yeah, much freedom.
That's like 95% of all trips.
Take a train. Even if trains are not available, those trips are rare enough, for average people, that renting a car for them is cheaper than buying.
Unless you're a professional furniture mover, you're going to do this so rarely that it would be cheaper to just hire a professional furniture mover, than to buy a truck.
It helps if you have an old car that doesn't cost a lot of money. In terms of cost vs renting. And a trailer hitch so you can just rent a trailer for furniture and stuff. I've used mine a lot. Doesn't need to be a truck for that, even a small car can do a normal sized trailer.
I don't live anywhere near an airport so no rental cars available to me either, it'd take at least 2-3 hours to get to one via public transit
I live in a major German city, have a car, bicycle and a public transport subscription. I use public transit daily, ride bycicle 2-3 times a week and drive car 2-3 times a month. I do transport heavy loads when driving car. I use bike in my area to get to shops. I go with public transit to and from work.
Inter-city trains are fast, but fuck schedules and interruptions. I'd rather wake up, pack my backpack and hit the Autobahn for 4-5 hours and be there rather than go though a hellhole of trying to reach central station on time in the middle of the night just to save me 20-40 euros one way cause later time tickets are more expensive.
I don't want to rely on a tram in the night that not supposed to be there, but schedule says it will, and then it still doesn't arrive just to run quick to a nearby parking lot and try to pickup a Carshare and drive to central station under time pressure and spend shit ton of time trying to find a parking spot in the night.
I don't want to get a ticket with a connection train just to have my or connection train to be late for the connection schedule and then wait god knows how much for the next train and pray that won't happen during cold weather.
One time I took Flixtrain to save some money and that shit was extremely noisy even my noise cancelling headphones didn't help much.
One time I took bus that would go 15h one way. I will never take a bus in my entire life again for this much time. I value my painless back much more over money.
I still would fight for much more better public transportation in any city of the world. But that is bullshit to think that bike of all things gives much more freedom than a car.
Yeah, Deutsche Bahn is legendary. You are excused.
Can... Can you haul a couch in your car? Isnt that whar moving vans are for? Or trains?
Skill issue.
Looks like a moped to me. I'd also be weary of what this will do to that fridge's compressor.
Motorbike.
Should refrigerators be transported like this? (This isn't even in the top 5 most loaded bikes I've seen, washing machine+dryer in the paniers, then a refrigerator on top isn't that uncommon)
One sudden stop and theyre crushed
Ride bike to station, take bike onto train, ride from station to your final destination.
Am I too Dutch to understand this problem
How often are you hauling couches, most cars can't take one either. Mine came with free delivery.
Have 3 friends help you out with a sofa, or, listen to me for a sec, have a vehicle that can do that by design.
Fuck cars, and all. Ofc they are not good for environment and are a cause of millions of deaths but you cant be saying bicycle is superior to a car while having a straight face. Apples to oranges ffs.
Not sure what car you drive but 99.9% of cars normal people drive (at least here in Europe) don’t fit a sofa, so it’s a complete non-argument. Even if you did have one that does, are you saying you can load a sofa into your car by yourself?
If you buy a new sofa, you have it delivered. The delivery guys will deliver it to your living room. No hassle at all. They don’t use a car either, they use a truck (not one of those surrogate penisses americans call trucks but an actual truck).
Most people in the US, if they don't have a truck, they have an SUV or crossover with a hatchback and seats that build down. I drive a Subaru Crosstrek, their smallest US crossover, and I have loaded/moved/unloaded a couch by myself with it.
Yeah it hangs out the back a little but you click a mini carabiner into the door mechanism at the upper part of the hatch and tie some rope to that and down to the metal bar it normally closes onto. That keeps the couch from falling out, and keeps the hatch down at the couch level so the hatch door isn't sticking up extra tall.
Here, most places will deliver said sofa to you cheap or even free, and even bring it up to the umpteenth floor your apartment is on.
Buying a car in cities here would be an insane money drain for literally no benefit. Even if you want or need to drive, you can rent an almost-new German car for single trips for super cheap.
I've lived a couple of years in Germany and the Netherlands and I know the options you have, it's very nice. I'm on the outskirts of a good size city. There are bikeable places when you get more urban closer to downtown, but there are no options other than car in the area I live in. Even most homeless people have a car here, or they have someone they rely on with a car who is willing to help them out.
I guess it was the same in Budapest, Hungary. It didn't make sense for me to get a car there either.
This is why it's nice to split a car and hitch with friends and neighbours (and other lending library stuffs while you're at it). Just like the lawn mower you might share, no one (well no one with access to quarter-decent infra) needs a car every day, but it's handy to have access for hauling big stuff.
> dies
> of obesity
> of oversized trucks
I can't believe more people have figured this out yet. The simple answer is: money. The REAL answer is that money itself is the dominant life form on our planet. Humans are powerless against anything that allows money to congregate and reproduce. Billionaires are quite literally the reproductive organs of the money demon that rules us. Politicians are the brain. We (the tax paying citizens) are the food.
So why do we drive cars instead of riding bikes? Money wills it so.
Sure, that's why.
Let me hop on my bike for the 12-mile round trip to the nearest grocery store. No idea how I'm getting anything home though.
It's a quick trip out to our camp in the swamp, only 52-miles out and back, 3 miles of which are impassable on a bike. I'll just carry it over my head.
Then I'll make the quick 625-mile round trip to pick up my kids 4 times a year. Hope they got their own bikes!
"But if we all lived packed in like rats in arcologies, we wouldn't need cars!"
Have you ever been to the Netherlands? "packed in like rats in arcologies" certainly doesn't describe NL living conditions.
It's one of those things where people imagine they're going to go on a big road trip... someday. Some may have done this when they were younger and imagine they'll do it again because they aren't too old for that yet.
But the reality is having to plan to go places in specific routes at specific times to avoid traffic, sitting bumper to bumper in gridlock cursing out all of the idiot drivers all around you, while constantly being stressed one of the most expensive things you own might get damaged. Then voting for someone to fix the problem of all of the other idiots on the road because you're the only one that isn't an idiot... but you definitely are one of the idiot drivers.
But maybe this weekend you'll take a road trip and enjoy the freedom. Well not this weekend, you're too exhausted from commuting 15 hours this week to be able to get up before sunrise to beat the cottage country traffic. But next weekend you'll enjoy that freedom for sure!
I've only seen someone try to cycle on the roads around me twice in almost 20 yrs living here, and both times there was a line of cars a mile long waiting their turn to get around him. He was lucky he didn't die.
I also know several people who live in actually-bikable areas not too far from me who have taken out loans to buy bikes. It's not difficult to spend $3k, you can well upwards of $10k if you want high end. But yeah you can still buy a piece of garbage from Walmart for $250.
I cycle in the middle of the road any time there isn't a suitable bike lane, cars will have to wait their turn and then I overtake all of them at the next set of traffic lights.
Well yeah they have to ride in the lane, there's nowhere else to ride. But no one does because our roads are narrow and curvy with relatively high speed limits and a lot of large truck traffic that can't stop quickly. I actually see bikes on my commute every day, they are on the side of the road as a memorial to people who died on them right there. Tons of deer get hit on those roads too. If you're not traveling in the direction of traffic at least close to the speed limit, you are seriously risking your life.
Being highly visible helps a lot, also in the UK we don't have high speed traffic in urban areas. Outside of urban areas there is usually some kind of bike path you can use unless you are using country lanes but in that case you get people walking in the road too.
I've lived a couple of years in Europe and spent time in the UK. I know what your reality is, you have probably never experienced mine. Visibility doesn't help when a large dump truck carrying 25 tons of gravel comes around the bend and physically can't stop in time, and there's incoming traffic in the other lane. I'm on the outskirts of a good size city. There are zero bike lanes outside the urban inner city. Absolutely no one walks or bikes these roads out where I am.
Those prices are way too high. $250 gets you something decent off marketplace. $50 if it's shitty but still works fine.
The people spending thousands are either very avid bikers or well off boomers going through their gravel bike mid life crisis.
10k is insanity, like spending 300k on a car
I live in an area that is completely un-bikable so the only bike shop near me only sells to enthusiasts who are driving their bike somewhere to ride it. It's also in a nicer neighborhood than I live in, so much of their clientele are middle class or upper middle class. They don't sell a bike under $2k. I know a few people with 300k cars, they're very wealthy. I know a dozen people with 5k-12k bikes, they're middle class enthusiasts.
The affect is widespread. My kids didn't even learn how to ride a bike because there is nowhere to ride them. Nobody owns bikes, so they aren't many on marketplace nearby. The ones that do go on marketplace are either worn out or rusty or still very expensive because they started their lives as $5k bikes. Even the thrift shops around here only sell nicer bikes and they're at least $200.
I'm sorry, that sounds so awful.
That's like buying racecars for commutes.
You need a 50 EUR bike, and for deterring theft, a can of cheap pink spraypaint and go wild with it. At least, that was the strategy of several of my coworkers, and all of them had six figure salaries.
Well you can't commute on a bike here, and there are no functioning bikes for 50.
That's kinda my point.
I can take the tram to my job, why don't you get a tram then? /s
People here don't understand that people in general do what makes sense for them, and you can't ask someone in a place with no bike infrastructure to "just buy a bike bro".
Did inflation hit bicycles? I put some miles on this for 550USD before I left the US, and I had no complaints, maybe an aluminum frame would have been lighter.
It shows $749 as the base price now. Almost everything has gone up 50-100% since 2020. At least my mortgage is fixed rate. My property taxes doubled though.
You should visit one of the university cities in the Netherlands, and then tell me if you're still fine with cities designed around bike traffic.
Edit: this one's on me for getting down voted. In my experience, if you go to the university cities, you have to have eyes in the back of your head as a pedestrian. There's alway some cyclist coming from a random direction at high speed, ringing the bell and expecting you to give way (even in pedestrian zones). So as a cyclist it's probably nice, as a pedestrian not so much.
Can you write down the problems you have with them? I've stayed in Copenhagen for a few weeks with a bike and it was lovely.
I have, I am?
Gonna need some elaboration on this one...