The Bike Is the Vehicle of the Future | Hacker News Reader

The Bike Is the Vehicle of the Future

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37 pointscdepman17 comments

Bikes are nice, but the bike lovers keep writing pieces like this. Don't get me wrong. I like them, but I think we should balance our love with these points:

* Only fit people can use the human powered ones for more than a short distance. If you've got cardio issues, a bad knee or worse, it's not for you. * eBikes help but even they're not powerful enough for many situations. If you take someone moderately obese and put a hill in the way, the bike is in trouble. 40%++ of America is obese. * Many jobs require commuting in the dark during the winter. Bikes are much less safe in the dark, even if there are no cars around. * You can't carry very much on a bike at all. Oh yeah, a few have clever trailers but even they can't carry much. * It's not so easy to carry a toddler. Sure, you can carry a baby -- if you can find a baby helmet that fits. But a toddler is too big to share a bike but too small to ride a separate one. * Bikes are dangerous, even without cars around. Bikes toss people over the handlebars all of the time. The tires lose traction and people crash. Cars make things worse, but getting rid of cars won't make bikes safe. * Rain, snow and ice are danger multipliers. Take all of the danger of a sunny day and multiple by a large fraction. * Many people live too far away to bike to work. My job is a 60-80 minute ride each way. Driving takes 25 minutes. Guess which one I choose? * Bikes are unfair to the poor. Poor people live further away. That's how real estate works. If the rich people don't have time to ride, the poor are going to be riding even longer.

The bike riders can dream. They can claim it's a future. But none of my objections will change in the near term. They can keep putting out propaganda. But the Americans are not buying for good and practical reasons.

I would like to re-balance out your balancing:

If you ride a bike every day, you probably won't be obese for long. Decent e-bikes do fine even with obese people, the motor is not the primary motor, it is only meant to assist your pedaling.

Powerful LED-based lights for bikes exist, and will absolutely both make you visible to anyone, and let you see any potholes etc.

You can carry plenty on a bike. For instance there are panniers and pannier bags front and back, bike trailers, backpacks made specifically for biking. Go further and you have cargo bikes, both trikes, reverse trikes and bakfiets/Long Johns. Beyond that, there are specialized moving "van" e-bikes, which I've seen used in the Netherlands.

Toddlers can ride trailer bikes, which attach to your own bike, and lets them pedal and help out, preparing them to ride their own bikes.

Bikes don't toss people over the handlebars "all the time", only when people have absolutely no feeling with the front brake and just jam it on as hard as they can. Learning a bit of basic motor skill completely prevents it from happening.

In 30+ years of cycling, I have never lost traction once. It's basically impossible to force the rear wheel to slip unless you jam the brake for a sweet powerslide. For the front wheel, just steer around any gravel or other loose material in corners, it's a very basic bike-riding skill.

Distance is a factor, that is a tradeoff you make for a less expensive house, but also a significantly longer commute. This is where bikes work great in tandem with public transit. You ride the bike to the station and bring it with you and ride the proverbial last mile. It does take a little bit of effort to optimize for better cycling conditions, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. And it won't be a perfect solution for 100% of people, because it doesn't have to be. As long as we get a significant percentage of people to bike, that's a victory!

The bicycle is one of the greatest mobility-increasing inventions of human history. It put entire populations on wheels, let them transport their produce much easier and much farther than simply carrying it. They're inexpensive, simple to repair and DIY.

Millions of Americans in cities like NYC, LA, SF, Seattle love their bikes. The reason they are not more popular is due to the overall infrastructure in the US being hardcore focused almost entirely on cars and cars only.

In places with colder climates, icy roads/sidewalks can easily cause traction loss. Where I am, Edmonton, Alberta, -20°C is common for months of the year. This is combined with icy roads, and deep snow in the side streets.

Mountain bikes with knobby and even studded tires exist, and a great thing about bikes is that they're relatively inexpensive and don't take up a ton of space.

I know many people have beater cars for winter, so have a beater bike instead.

The bike maybe the vehicle of the future for many young downtown city residents who live close enough to use it.

Mass transit still owns the crown of vehicle of the present and I would suggest perhaps still vehicle of the future.

Bikes for me represent the vehicles of my past.

Funnily enough I actually see it the other way around (maybe because of the peculiarities of where I live).

Biking sucks for downtown urban areas due to crappy drivers, bike thieves, and more accessible public transportation.

However, for those who aren't well served by public transportation it seems like a great way to solve the last like problem. On foot, a train station 2 miles from your house isn't practical. On a bike it is.

You should visit the Netherlands or Belgium. Or China. Or a bunch of other places. You'll find people young and old biking around - in the city and in country. Naturally, if you need to get go 10+ km it becomes less relevant, but around wherever it is you live - it's perfectly useful.

To even sort of make sense, you have to have high population density. That's looking less and less like a good idea right now.

Even without that, xhkkffbf's points pretty much demolish this idea.

Bikes are great and a nice occasional complement to cars, just as flugelhorns are a nice occasional complement to trumpets. But replacement? No.

I can't imagine doing my 20KM commute over bike in -20°C (very common here in Edmonton,Alberta). It's sub-zero temperatures for easily 5 months of the year, with large amounts of snow. Even to the nearest train station would be quite an adventure in -20 with snow drifts.

I did such a commute in Los Angeles for a number of years. Weather was fine. Sweaty, but doable. But it just plain soaks up your time, which is your life.

Some people would be cool with that, but it certainly shouldn't be forced on people. And really, it was only possible for me because I was young, single, childless, and had close to no life. To say that everyone should do this is the height of narcissism.

The bike is the vehicle of the present.

If only it wasn't for all those young, old or sick people /s I sometimes imagine how my city would look like if there were no car lanes and pavement but grass and trees along the middle of the "road". Then I remember I can't physically be outside 6 months of the year due to asthma and allergies so I have to use the car

If cars disappeared you'd probably just get narrower "roads" in the long term. The real-estate is still valuable, not every city is going to be able to justify letting it sit idle as what is basically park space even though that would be nice. I think over time the cities would sell it to be developed and used for commerce/housing/whatever.

air pollution exacerbates asthma as well as increases the chance for new-onset asthma. So the relationship here is more complicated. Just how lack of movement feeds into obesity which feeds into less mobility.

So better not be so quick to put the cart before the horse here. A lot of people don't use cars because they're sick, they're sick because we've built unhealthy environments in the first place.

Also as far as young people are concerned, not sure I've you've ever been to the Netherlands but biking with kids is perfectly fine.

The bike is the vehicle of the present in many places around the world (Netherlands!). As for bike-shares - they have their place, but it's limited.

The story itself sounds like some marketing copy for some get-rich-quick shared-bike provider.

PS - Remember, though, that some cities are built on hillsides (e.g. San Francisco), and are not very bike-able.

As far as dockless last-mile transport goes, I'm actually a big fan of those electric kick scooters... but I acknowledge I'm an imbecile and they're really dangerous.

One issue I have with that model in general is that for many of the distances I'd like to use a share bike or scooter, it would take longer and cost money to walk to the vehicle and unlock it. It's frequently faster and free just to walk to my final destination.

In the future there will be no rain, there will be no snow, it will never be 100 degrees F, there will be no prostate problems and everyone will be 28 years old forever! All happy on bikes.

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