The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
With e-bikes becoming more common, I know a number of people who would not have touched a bike share but are using it as a replacement for Uber/Lyft rides. People can cycle in to work without breaking a sweat.
It's a bummer that so much legislation aimed at reducing emissions subtly encourages the use of cars without throwing any bones to people who would like to ride bikes, electric or not.
Do some cities actually let cyclists bike on sidewalks? I bike 24/7 but this seems crazy. Bicycles needs their own, separate, protected paths, at the road level. Period.
Not sidewalks per se, but combined, mixed-used paths are very common. Whether this is a good idea or not is another issue.
There's something very nice about these types of mixed streets, but they're pretty much unheard in the US. They work very well on small residential streets, where cars would otherwise get 80% of the street width reserved to their use, even where car traffic is low.
Also, US sidewalks tend to be extremely narrow, which makes it worse to share modes.
I've even seen bikes trying to make their way through a pedestrian crush that's basically the people density of Times Square in NYC.
There's a lot of mixed-use streets here without sidewalks, and if cars weren't allowed on them, they'd be great. I'm always worried about being hit by a car on them.
https://i.imgur.com/OzShuC8.jpg
I wouldn't generally call Tokyo a bike friendly city but they do have bike parking lots and more and more bike lanes are being added.
In my city at least you can't really go fast on the sidewalks even if they're empty (lots of uneven brick, chunky curbs, trees, buildings have stoops, etc) so it's not a big issue. If someone has to go a couple blocks on the sidewalk they'll generally get back on the path / road as soon as able
Do you want an e-bike you can ride like a bicycle, or do you want an e-bike you can ride like a motorcycle?
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain...
It's also a big issue with response time and with the rate pedestrians expect bicycles to be travelling. You shouldn't bike on the sidewalk because no one is looking for vehicles going more than a few miles per hour (walking). You shouldn't bike more than 15mph on trails/lanes shared with pedestrians for similar reasons. 20mph is a tolerable compromise, 25mph is flat out dangerous.
I ride a bicycle, bike and drive a car and the ammount of crazies on all sides leaves me speachless sometimes. I see cyclist cutting off cars and shooting into a roundabout just because cars will avoid them. I actually had a crash becasue of a retard like this and I chased him until I caught him. Took him to court and won.
On the other side of the coin - I see cars taking turns without checking their mirrors, overtaking while in a queue without making sure no cyclists are passing by. Smashed a bike to bits because of 1 twat. His insurance paid for the bike and treatment.
P.S. I'm not a perfect driver but people these days lack consideration and defensive driving(even the notion of it is foreign now)
What's pernicious about this is, that under normal circumstances most people won't have ridden a bike past these limits, maybe ever, so the first time you realize your bike can go from well behaved to on the pavement instantly is the worst time for it to happen.
I am always afraid of falling of the bike while there is a bus driving behind me. Could happed with a pothole, random garbage/bottle of the road, etv
I certainly don't agree with 35km/h on bike paths. The current 25km/h is plenty and given their popularity with older ages, already producing outsized numbers of injuries and deaths.
Again, not saying it should not be allowed, but man, at that point please just take care of yourself and get a little honda motorbike and a full face helmet/leathers.
It means that a ciclyst on an ebike can outperform a group of friends with normal bikes on an slope but can't stay with them on the way back home and they'll have to wait. I experienced that and it's not nice. The two types of bikes mix well only in low intensity sightseeing rides.
no commuter in shirt and trousers with saddlebags for the laptop etc is going to be running at more than 25kmh
Which I think is misguided pushback btw (which I think you agree with based on the context).
I see it as a chicken and egg thing. The roads are unsafe for bikers, so the only people who bike are those who are super dedicated to it. Then when people ask for the roads to be safer, it gets pushed back as "only biking enthusiasts use the roads now".
Safer roads means more people will bike, which means biking will stop being seen as an elitist thing.
Edit: to add on, bikes are like 1-2 orders of magnitude cheaper than cars too, both in upfront and ongoing costs also. It’s super unfortunate that it still gets the stereotype as a “rich white people” activity when it’s really so much more financially accessible than a car.
Yup. Bit like how it's hard to argue for building a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river.
It's even worse since the bridge will be built with connecting roadways on both sides so it will be instantly popular.
But often a few bike lanes will be constructed in isolation,t then people will complain "Look, we built these expensive bike lanes to nowhere and no one is even using them!" It takes a rich network of safe bike infrastructure to get average riders to use bikes. At least eBikes make hills less of an impediment.
Key example [0], the difference between the north and south entrances to the Sydney Harbour Bridge cycleway, which are under different local governments. The North Sydney council is actively fighting an upgrade [1], whereas on the south side it's smooth access expanding into a network of bike paths.
In my city, the major conflict points are all short stretches of busy narrow road, while paths are going in elsewhere.
[0] https://bicyclensw.org.au/a-tale-of-two-sydneys/ [1] https://architectureau.com/articles/sydney-harbour-bridge-cy...
My South Bay commute has nice bike paths part of the way, but they stop just short of a major highway-freeway intersection. Sure, it would be tough to build a good bike lane through this busy, high speed intersection. So there isn’t one. So the bike path just… stops. And you have to navigate this scary section to proceed. So almost nobody does.
It’s such a shame since we have among the best bike-weather in the world, and a fairly flat basin to ride in. A little more infrastructure would help a lot. And e-bikes have their place for people going more than 20 mins and need to arrive feeling presentable.
The thought that biking is only for the rich is especially galling when I hear it said about NYC cyclists. The person saying this is thinking of the lycra'd-up dentist riding a Pinarello Dogma. The Manhattan Bridge had 180,000 bike trips on it this June. Williamsburg had 230,000.[1] Cycling is much more prevalent than non-cyclers think.
1: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bike-counts.sh...
That's not bad at all, close to 10% of car traffic, based on old numbers.
It’s like dealing with serious lap swimmers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_involving_Critical_M...
Critical Mass helped spur NYC’s bike lane growth. If you’re against direct action that’s fine, but it’s hard for me to see what works better in initiating long term transformation than direct action protests like Critical Mass.
Overall it’s hard for different physical capabilities to share a resource. If the pandemic taught me anything, it’s that peoples perceptions and ability to act in the common good are wildly inconsistent.
https://www.electricbike.com/cheap-electric-bike/ http://myelectricbikemotor.com/category/30mph/ https://www.amazon.com/Folding-Electric-Bike-Adults-Enduranc...
Right now there is no way to identify a speeding bicycle, no matter how fast its going. You could be doing 50 in a 40 zone and there is no way to issue a fine.
Where in the Bay Area are bells required? I've never heard of police there ever enforcing equipment requirements, not even lights at night.
It does not matter whose job it is. If increasing speed improves safety for the cyclist, in this case by reducing the incentive for car drivers to overtake, then a good number of cyclists will do it.
There's no road I commute on (including 25 mph city streets) where a 30mph bike would keep up with traffic, riding a skinny tire 40 lb bike at 30mph in the road shoulder that passes for bike lanes around here sounds hazardous.
If I wanted to keep up with car traffic so I can ride in the road, I'd get an e-scooter or e-motorcycle that's designed for higher speed. But then I couldn't ride in bike lanes.
Bike lanes do not exist in most places. The poster had said that their comment was about:
> areas where the bike infrastructure is poor or nonexistent
If there are bike lanes, then being overtaken by cars is not as much of a problem. But in most places, cyclists have to use the same lanes as motorised traffic, so it is more important to be able to keep up.
They should, but OMG cars don't
I have to say though being able to keep up with cars when I can't have a bike lane is pretty nice.
Public transportation and city bike rental systems should be free to ride. We all pay taxes to keep roads maintained, we should all pay taxes to keep public transportation maintained.
Not charging would help busses keep their schedules with less queuing and waiting, tourists would be less likely to rent a car, and it could help that chicken and egg problem. The problem with charging people with riding public transportation is you are taxing the very people we should be rewarding. The people who are committing to taking up less space on the road and living with a smaller carbon footprint are being penalized for their hugely beneficial decision to society not to drive. Making public transportation better and free are the two things that can transform a city and make it more equitable. Poor people would have more money and more places available to spend it. Every city benefits from its people having more money to spend and more places to spend it.
This would depend on first fixing the poverty and homelessness that make theft, vandalism and antisocial behaviour so common. These things cost money to protect them from the impact desperate people otherwise have on them.
Now, I’d be thrilled to help pay for that to all happen, but the order should be respected; making trains and buses free isn’t as simple as it sounds.
It might be expebsive, but it's definately as simple as it sounds.
I do not see how vandalism will be any different than it is today
How convenient for the car lobby that their luxuriously subsidized travel mode already excludes the poor, making them immune from this line of reasoning!
Most bike thiefs are not homeless, especially high end bikes.
Not to many homeless have a bolt cutter in their worn packs, nor do they have a way to sell, or part out.
In my liberal wealthy enclave, it's middle class guys doing the stealing, or gangs.
(This whole blaming the homeless needs to stop. Most don't have the savy to steal a locked bike. Plus--riding a nice bike is a cop calling card. I know homeless guys who are afraid to carry their own prescriptions in their pack because they frisked so frequently.)
Also because when you are in separate cars, you can't get sick from, or harassed by, or groped by, other drivers. If another driver is bothering you, you can usually just speed up or slow down to increase distance.
To get true mass adoption of public transit in the US, as the parent comment said, you need to fix "the poverty and homelessness that make theft, vandalism and antisocial behaviour so common," or at least work around it. Maybe trains with a hundred doors leading to a hundred isolated seating areas would convince people.
Here’s a theory: road cycling is more available to those who live reasonably close to work and have time to spare, and that is relatively rich people. Poorer people literally cannot afford not to have a car because they have to travel long distances to work, and their areas are not well served by public transport.
Not necessarily. There is often less traffic at night, for example. It depends on how well-lit the route is.
I use this set (with the 1000 lm):
As to living near the urban core, inner cities have a lot of relatively poor people. Roommates and HUD style affordable housing add another dimension to housing that’s not obvious to most people. Twenty to Thirty percent of the units have been set aside for low or middle-income residents, which means the monthly rent is affordable to low or middle-income households and those households must qualify at the outset. https://www.residenewyork.com/faq/how-many-units-are-allocat...
Majority of America is overweight, staring down at their phones day and night, and dread physical activity. They also like to flex their position and wealth to others, one of the reasons why pickup trucks and big SUVs sell in great numbers. These people are in no hurry to transition to riding bikes.
The only way biking might work is if some popular celebrities on social media or otherwise started doing it, since many Americans just like to imitate what's popular.
I think there would be an increase in biking if the celebs did it, but I say this imagining a new generation of Americana growing up watching a bunch of them doing it, not just one or two starting tomorrow and the nation follows suit.
The issue was that she and 4 years old walked 20minutes to preschool and back. That is it, 40 min total walking time was assumed to be beyond 4 years old capabilities.
I'd disagree on the looking suave bit, it might just be because so many riders are clueless (and this perception being reenforced by selection bias), but someone on an escooter always looks far sillier to me than someone on a dutch style or folding bike, or even someone in lycra.
Regarding lycra - we can disagree on whether you look suave while riding, but a huge advantage of the e-scooter is that you don't need special clothing - don't even need to tuck your pants leg into your sock. You wouldn't turn up to a date clad in lycra - but you can ride an e-scooter to one.
Apologies, I was trying to say that the brompton was the horrifically expensive option.
Upsides is they are a bit better for carrying cargo, can handle slightly rougher terrain, are a little more comfortable at long range and are a little more compact than the more capable escooters.
Both have their place, I was just trying to mention another option that hadn't been included.
I don't think it is just safety. Most people understand an e-bike is going to be more dangerous, but they are popular anyways.
The other factor is distance. e-bikes increase the distance that can be covered by a significant amount, which changes a lot of commutes from "too far" to acceptable. The only people who can afford to be within a bike commute are at least above-average income-wise.
Even satire news sites have caught onto this: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2020/09/i-bike-everywhere-brags...
No. The income bracket most likely to bike to work makes less than $10k/year.
https://i1.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
It's true that a bicycle is itself cheaper than a car, but housing within biking distance to job centers sure isn't. In my view this is the primary reason bicycle commuters are stereotypically rich folks. The bicycle itself isn't the expensive part; you need proximity, extra commute time, and infrastructure. That stuff just isn't accessible to many people.
Stereotypes are only useful to the extent that they contain a kernel of truth, and this one is just false. The largest group of American bicycle-to-work riders lies in the $20-30k/year income group, i.e. poor people. With each increase of $10k/year income there are fewer riders.
https://i2.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
Basically, if you can be all-in on not driving, you save a lot. But once you even want to drive a little bit, the savings to driving only sometimes instead of all the time is not very large (and can in fact be negative, as you pointed out with needing closer housing with parking). Unless it allows you to go from a two to one car family.
Interestingly, the average distance the Dutch ride is about 1.2 miles per day:
https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/best-kept-secret-dutch-b...
I could go for "often doable".
That’s a pretty uncharitable reading of their comment. It is obvious we are talking about people that are already physically capable of riding a bike and are discussing a specific distance for a commute.
Even so, I tried to find common ground by merely softening the "trivial" language to "often doable" rather than contradicting. Because clearly it will sometimes be "trivial".
So, I disagree with your assessment of "uncharitable". And I am taken aback that there is so much bitter contention over this issue when it seems to me as though the important thing is that e-bikes have made commutes much easier in general.
I think the worst part is a stop sign every block.
I used to commute by (ordinary) cycling and this is a huge part of it. It's stressful navigating on urban roads through taxis and vans who seem to see you as the equivalent of a preachy vegan on wheels and drive like complete arses as a result. I've been literally run off the road by people who either can't be bothered to check their mirrors or have some creepy notion that cyclists "deserve" to be scared off the road by their aggressive driving. The only deterrent seems to be wearing a camera because they know it's the only way they'll ever have a chance of facing prosecution for it.
I'd never dream of telling someone else how to live their lives, I'm not one of those moral crusaders who endlessly harrass people about giving up their cars in favour of bikes. I just don't want to get mowed down by Billy Big Bollocks because he's too important to wait ten seconds to overtake safely.
If you commute in rush hour that is actually a lot faster than going by car, so biking is the fastest option available.
Edit: And that was at a leisurely pace, similar to the effort of walking.
_Averaging_ a 12mph pace with signal lights, traffic, and stop signs is an entirely different story, especially in a busy cities.
Google maps calculations are decided by Google and take into account padding plus some degree of inclination calculation
I do a 4.8-mile trip on a class 3 ebike (28 mph) consistently in 14 minutes in San Diego north county.
General population would struggle. I used to bike commute twice that distance regularly and think that'd take me more like 25, maybe 30 now that I haven't done it for almost 2 years.
I live in a city with mediocre to poor bike infrastructure at best, and I see plenty of 50-70 year old women doing 25km/h on ebikes or 10-15km/h on regular bikes.
Granted I wasn't overweight when I started, but after 5 years of largely being a couch potato and doing office work, I averaged around 20km/h or ~12mph door to door over a commute of 10 miles on a 40lb trike.
After getting fitter I'm about the same speed but a shower and change of clothes at the other end is optional now even on a 32C day rather than being drenched.
Your experience can only be due to bike hostile infrastructure or laws. If you had to stop three times for 2-5 minutes a piece at each intersection in a car while the empty lane for bikes and pedestrians got a green light on the off chance they showed up, you'd probably be complaining about how inconvenient driving was.
No, I'm just a person with very little natural fitness who happened to enjoy riding a bicycle.
Having done a similar distance in the cycling capital of the world for about a year I wouldn't exactly call it "easy". I was happy to exchange it for a bus + tram combination even though it added ~15 minutes. Though I'll admit it's nice to be able to commute that distance by bike once or twice a week; but to do it day in and day out gets tiring.
Can confirm this: I'm doing a 14 km commute and yes, for the first few weeks it's really tiring. Wanted to go to sleep as soon as I got home every afternoon. However, after say 2 or 3 months, your metabolism sort of adapts to it and you do it "naturally", without thinking too much about it. The idea of taking the bus again makes me anxious, though.
I agree it's easy if you're fit though. But I know it can be a pain for people who don't do sport at least weekly.
https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/average-annual-cost-...
It probably says more about how expensive taxis were pre-Uber. I'm sure ride shares are a nontrivial part of living without a car today.
Housing isn’t abundant within 50 miles of London and other similar major cities, let alone 5.
Ok but now we’ve moved from ‘bicycling is relatively practical’ to ‘it’d be relatively practical if only everything about our politics and built environment was instantly completely different.’
The amount of on street car parking in zones 2-3 is insane. Now that actually IS a subsidy to rich people.
Meanwhile, for $2,000 a month in the upper midwest you can rent a house with multiple bedrooms and bathroom on 40 acres of land, or a nicely remodeled house with a small yard and river views in a town if you prefer. Or, with enough for a minimum down payment saved up, you could also buy a small house on 5 acres in a forest.
Granted, you'll pay more for owning a car, but... deciding between studio, or a prime house for $300 less per month, and the car doesn't sound too unreasonable.
Probably do that in rural CA, too (certainly you can get a nice single family home in many CA suburbs), and not be as far (but probably still too far) from the job the individual in question has that enables paying $2,000/mo in the first place. And similar work closer (to either rural CA or the upper Midwest) would pay less.
If you went really rural, you would be able to get much more for your money.
For example check out the restaurants in Mountain View, CA patronized by affluent employees of Google and LinkedIn. Walk around back and you'll see a bunch of cheap bikes.
For these reason and I’m sure others, bicycles for commuting are more popular outside of North America.
What it took was a focus on good quality bike lanes outside the affluent white neighborhoods, bike accessibility at transit stations/on busses, and expansion of bikeshare to poorer neighborhoods.
The rich lycra-wearing stereotype won't go away until we invest in equitable access to bike infrastructure.
I've never been to Chattanooga, TN but once I realized I can work from home I've been curious about owning a home somewhere with gigabit fiber but without ridiculously expensive real estate within commuting distance to a Costco or Sam's Club (so clearly not Jersey City, NJ or Longmont, CO).
What I noticed just looking at Google Maps Street View was that any home within my price range lacked a sidewalk. Apparently, only the wealthy people in Chattanooga, TN need sidewalks. How do we talk about bike lanes when places lack sidewalks?
Western New York has cheap housing and older, 150+ year old urbanization that doesn't suffer as much from 20th century shortsightedness.
In most of the world, they're the default thing - before a roadway suitable for cars, before piped water, before sewers, before electricity.
That'd why sidewalks is polish. Most sidewalks I see outside of tight downtowns are useless and barely used, and they aren't free to build and they don't generate anything if no one uses them...
The poor areas are super poor and semi-distant from goods and services. Biking somewhere from the poor areas, unless you have time and energy to spare, is going to be a big undertaking most of the time, not even accounting for the hills.
As you've noticed on Google, our downtown and close-lying (expensive) neighborhoods have sidewalks and bike lanes aplenty. They're fantastic. But there's no similar facilities in older, poorer, and outlying neighborhoods (many of which were simply suburbs until the city crept in). Nor any practical connection between neighborhoods for foot+pedal traffic.
But our internet's great.
Perhaps in some places (where the major newspapers are?), but there area I grew up in has residential, industrial, and commercial all mixed up in a way that solves that issue: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/50.8285/-1.0276
(Likewise Berlin, though Berlin also has much better public transport).
I rode a bike to school when my limited money would buy a very bad car or a nice bike. So I opted for the bike and had to ride it because that's all I had. I did that for a couple of years - even in the cold and ice. My commute distance varied in my biking days, from 6 to 20 miles.
I always obeyed all the traffic laws, though occasionally in the early AM I'd find lights that would not turn green for a bike no matter what I did.
I had people scream at me to get off the road, and otherwise be exceptionally rude. I occasionally had bike lanes and appreciated them, sought them out because it provided better spacing. But the busses on those routes were frequently in the bike lane and were, frankly, slower than I was. But navigating them was always a pain until I got well past them.
On slower roads (20-25 mph) with no bike lane I would take a lane to myself and keep up with traffic but only when I could reasonably keep up.
In the end, safety won out, and I abandoned the practice.
Now, as a driver, I am appalled at the behavior of cyclists. With my experience I take interest in and carefully watch their behavior.
Running red lights and not stopping for stop signs is the worst. And it's pretty universal.
Bad spacing in the lane, little to no accommodation for drivers when they could provide a bit more space for a comfortable pass. Sometimes they can't help it, and I get it, but when they can and don't... I always tried to be crystal clear about my messaging to the cars around me. I'm taking the lane here for my safety because there are parked cars in the bike lane or otherwise on the shoulder. I'm done now and look, I'm providing lots of space for everyone to safely pass me.
So the rude behavior I encountered was finally somewhat understood.
I really appreciated having good bike lanes. But cyclists do themselves no favors in how they conduct themselves, which will hurt them when pining for better road accommodations.
Even the cost factor is complicated. Everyone factors in the cost per mile of the bike, which is excellent, but the input calories are non-trivial and if you're not running the numbers on just ramen noodles it turns into quite a significant financial cost.
There are definitely health benefits.
In Australia, bikes are required to follow the same rules as cars when on the road.
I have used a bike as my primary transportation for 15 years. The majority of rides are in traffic - there's very little dedicated bike infrastructure (painted sharrows or gutters don't count)
Trust me when I say, in the US, an intersection is the most dangerous place to be. You are a sitting duck if you aren't moving when clear.
A lot of drivers straight up don't pay attention at lights, due to phones or spacing out, and don't give you space when coming up behind you. Mix in right-on-reds, unprotected left turns, and the general drivers failure to negotiate turns - if it's clear I'm going. It's also safer for me to stay at a relatively consistent speed for predictable passing than accelerating in mixed traffic with very different acceleration curves.
If all the give way signs on my commute were replaced with stop signs, I'd sure feel like rolling through them.
At the same time, it takes a cyclist far longer to start off from being stopped, so every time they stop when they didn't really need to, it puts them in a vulnerable position for much longer time than was necessary. So apparently it turns out a lot safer to let cyclists slow at stop signs but not have to fully stop if it's safe to continue.
Car-oriented transport infrastructure has been a terrible mistake. Don't blame the cyclists for trying to salvage something from the wreckage.
Hong Kong is not car oriented and it develop just fine…
Strong Towns also have some good examples of how car-oriented infrastructure can also be economically unsustainable in that it encourages low-density neighbourhoods with a lot of roads, so long term cities can't afford to maintain the roads without cross-subsidising it from new developments. So if the city stops growing, it often can't sustain the infrastructure it has! Whereas somewhat more dense areas (especially where retail and small business tenancies are mixed in with housing) can have much more property tax income per unit area as well as less road infrastructure to maintain which can tip the balance to being economically sustainable in itself.
It seems likely that cars actually hindered average GDP growth from '45 to today, rather than helping it.
I don't blame them for trying to salvage/use something from what exists, I've been there. I found the behavior of ignoring established traffic law as if it were optional to be dangerous and selfish.
Don't they pay income tax? I think I read that most of the cost of roads in the USA is raised from income tax and sales tax.
> I found the behavior of ignoring established traffic law as if it were optional to be dangerous and selfish.
A lot of car drivers are out there too running lights, breaking speed limits and driving under the influence. People are the problem, not their transport.
> Running red lights and not stopping for stop signs is the worst. And it's pretty universal.
Some areas have a yield at stop signs law for bikes so the stop signs could be legal, but I think a major driver of this kind of behavior is bike hostile infrastructure. If you've stopped for your 20th red light that prioritises non existent car traffic and that won't turn green today, or you're going past your fifth intersection that requires crossing at signals 3 times, waiting 2 minutes a piece on an empty road with visibility 500m in each direction it starts seeming pointless. Once someone is in the habit of disobeying clearly pointless (or in the case of many stop signs, actively unsafe because there is no visibility at the sign and accelerating up hill from a stop rather than 2mph causes you to spend far more time in the danger zone) signals and signage I can see it being easy to start ignoring others.
Respect works both ways, and when your city and laws clearly disrespect someone you shouldn't be surprised they stop respecting you.
Seems to me that it's a very bad idea to disrespect in ways that actively make your own life less safe. Especially on something as fragile as a bicycle. Regardless of the disrespect heaped your way.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/43060/coal-rolling-teen-that-h...
>Coal-Rolling Teen That Hit Cyclists Charged With Six Felonies
>The 16-year-old was not arrested after the incident, but has now surrendered to authorities.
>On September 25, a group of cyclists riding near Waller, Texas, were hit by a Ford Super Duty driven by a 16-year old youth. Reports from witnesses indicated the driver had been "rolling coal" on the group immediately prior to striking six cyclists, four of whom were hospitalized due to injuries sustained. Now, news out of Texas is that the teen driver is finally in custody according to the District Attorney of Waller County, over a month after the incident occurred.
>[...] Cyclist Chase Ferrell, who saw the events unfold, told Fox 26 at the time that the crash happened "because [the driver] was accelerating to blow more diesel fuel on these cyclists," adding that the driver "ended up hitting 3 people before his brakes even started." Ferrell noted that the teen remained at the scene after hitting the cyclists, and spoke to police. However, the driver was not arrested in the wake of the crash. "I don't understand, if it was me who had struck someone else, I would be in jail," noted Ferrell.
https://www.thedrive.com/article/9930/colorado-bans-rolling-...
>Colorado Bans Rolling Coal: Hallelujah!
>It doesn't matter that it will be nearly impossible to enforce: this legislation is more than welcome.
>For those not in the know, rolling coal is the name for blasting black smoke out the exhaust of a diesel-engined vehicle. It is done by modifying the air and fuel mixture in forced induction diesel engines to make the engines run rich, the result of which is a cloud of soot blowing out the tailpipes. This is done for the childish sake of annoying people, typically anyone that a coal-roller doesn't like, which includes but is not limited to hybrid drivers, convertible drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians, and anyone who so much as looks like they don't attend the same evangelical megachurch. Why do people do it? Nobody one can say for sure, though it has been suggested that it has its roots in anti-environmentalism.
Cycling advocates like to talk about sharing the road but I've yet to see any sort of acknowledgement that there's plenty of bad behavior on the part of cyclists that needs some curbing as well.
And I fully agree that there are a lot of bad bikers, but a bad biker is a nuisance to a driver while a bad driver is a potential fatality to a biker.
You're leaving out an entire category of users. Not that I'm surprised, having been in many of these debates regarding the multi use path near my home. "Share the road" turns into "get off the path" rather quickly, in my experience.
You have to see how this is a completely selfish position right?
The road is dangerous for cyclists so cyclists make the sidewalk dangerous for pedestrians. Sure there's a difference in degree but that's not a justification.
> And I fully agree that there are a lot of bad bikers, but a bad biker is a nuisance to a driver while a bad driver is a potential fatality to a biker.
To me, the "bad cyclist" is generally creating havoc on both the sidewalk and the street, alternating between street, sidewalk, crosswalks, alleys, etc. as it's convenient. This is really what I'm referring to when I said "especially at closing time". Those people are creating a dangerous environment for even safe drivers who may either hit them or get in an accident avoiding them.
I don't often find the hobbyist biker doing things like that which are dangerous to themselves except treating stop signs like yields.
I'm not nearly as concerned about the hobbyist as I am about the guy who thinks driving his ebike home from the bar is a great way to get home without drinking and driving. And that is definitely happening, especially with electric scooters.
That depends how busy the sidewalk is, and how the cyclist behaves. Conversely, I see videos of many places in North America where cycling on the road, even in dedicated cycle lanes, is a suicidal activity.
> The road is dangerous for cyclists so cyclists make the sidewalk dangerous for pedestrians. Sure there's a difference in degree but that's not a justification.
Have you ever tried biking on a 45/50mph road? The chance of you not being hit at the end of the day is not high. I'm not sure where else would one bike when there's such a large speed difference.
And in some US cities there really are no alternative roads with lower speeds limits to bike on.
When deciding policy, one cannot afford to frame things in terms of personal responsibility.
What percentage of streets have physically separated lanes for biking, the way we have them for walking?
Bikes don't fit well with pedestrians or cars, and painted bike lanes are a joke -- imagine if you replaced every sidewalk with "painted walk lanes".
In places where there is good infrastructure, like the Netherlands, cyclist reputations for behaving badly are basically no different from pedestrian or motorist reputations.
In Germany, protected bike lanes are mostly extensions of the sidewalk, and while it's not ideal, it still works pretty well.
I think that's kind of missing the GP's point. AIUI they weren't saying cyclists shouldn't move to the sidewalk when necessary. They were saying cyclists should do so with respect for the sidewalk's primary users especially with regard to safety. A sidewalk is a kind of commons, to be shared. "I need this now so you all get out of my way" isn't good sharing, and in many places (where the law explicitly gives pedestrians right of way) should deserve a ticket.
But realistically, "cyclists should be nicer" isn't a policy prescription. We're just shouting into the void here, you can't actually accomplish anything significant with, I dunno, billboards shaming dickhead cyclists. Whereas zoning or road design changes could result in actual, meaningful change. And that would also result in cyclists being a lot nicer.
Evidence I can find suggests that's not entirely true. While pedestrians dying to bikes is extraordinarily rare, police reports of crashes in the UK in 2019 involving a (pedal cycle, pedestrian) pair happened 375 times and killed 4 pedestrians (~1%). Crashes involving a (car, bike) pair happened 13,336 times killed 48 cyclists (~0.3%).
That is (bike, pedestrian) happens 35x less often than (car, bike) but is fatal to the weaker party 3x more often when it does happen.
This dataset is particularly "accidents involving a pedal cycle and pedestrians which don't involve any other vehicles" so it excludes car -> bike + walker, kills walker situations.
(Injuries are another matter).
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/reported... looking at sheet RAS40004: Accidents, vehicle users and pedestrian casualties by severity and combination of vehicles involved (ODS, 105KB) with Vehicle A being Pedal Cycle -> Single Vehicle accident with Pedestrian and Pedal Cycle -> Two vehicle accidents with Car.
Also, note that super bike-friendly Netherlands has 1/10th the pedestrian fatalities with 1/4th the population of the UK. If bikes are that dangerous, why would such a bike-focused country have radically fewer pedestrian fatalities?
From what I've seen, the data is pretty consistent, in that more car-focused countries tend to have more pedestrian fatalities.
Saying "the way things are is dangerous for me, so I'm going to break the law and be a danger to others instead because I'm what matters here" is not ok behaviour. If cycling is too dangerous for you, don't cycle. You don't get to say "driving in traffic is dangerous so I'm going to drive in the bus lane where there's less traffic", right?
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cycli...
It's also legal in my state to ride bikes on the sidewalk. That doesn't cause much of a problem for pedestrians because unfortunately there are few bike riders or pedestrians.
I only mention this to make people aware that what's legal depends on where they live.
The red light, yes, that is valid complain. But stop sign, meh.
But also, pretty much any transport mode features people with bed behavior: cars, pedestrians, roller skaters. Those people are not even that much demographically different, unless the transport ends up tied to politics.
If cyclists had 90% of the road, and cars were forced to share the remaining 10% with pedestrians, everyone would be complaining (with reason) that's it's incredibly dangerous
While I agree with e-bikes being a generally good thing, I also think they involve a lot of secondary consequences and we still need to figure out the best solutions. For example, having more e-bikes on the already overcrowded bike path near where I live is becoming a disaster. There had already been enough problems with mismatched speeds, impatience on all sides, etc. There had even been fatalities. Adding e-bikes makes all of that even worse. While I have little love for the "rich lycra-clad yuppies" (there really are plenty of them) who are mostly just horrified by the idea of their hobby becoming more inclusive, I kind of agree with them that the path can't safely support yet another (faster, heavier) type of conveyance. I wouldn't want horses on the path for the same reason.
There's a complementary issue with e-bikes on roads. There's still going to be a speed mismatch, with e-bikes in the middle this time instead of the high end. Bike lanes are going to become more dangerous, traffic-light timings will have to change, etc. Where are the e-bikes going to be parked or stored while not in use? On my now-ended visits to Seattle I saw these problems already manifesting, and they're likely to become even worse as e-bikes continue to become more popular.
In the long term, maybe the "changed politics" will lead to improved infrastructure that supports all classes of users including e-bikes. In the short term, it's likely to be a free-for-all like I used to see in Bangalore with all the tuk-tuks and scooters mixed in with cars and trucks and buses. Not looking forward to it.
we need better infrastructure for non-car transportation. the short-term hell is simply more people experiencing what most cyclists are already used to.
Did you miss the part where the cyclists are the ones inflicting that hell on others sometimes? Cyclists haven't been the only ones demanding better non-automotive infrastructure. I've supported the local path with both my dollars and the sweat of my brow, only to have freeloading cyclists tell me that they have priority (exactly opposite to how the laws are written) and I should get out of their way. One political change that needs to happen is that cyclists need to stop looking down their noses at other non-automotive users. When cyclists stop treating pedestrians exactly the same way they complain about being treated by cars, maybe greater cooperation will be possible. Nobody likes the smell of hypocrisy.
yes, there's some bad cyclists. but because there's few enough cyclists, people who aren't cyclists like to group us all together. when a driver or pedestrian is an asshole, you say the person was an asshole, because you understand that they don't represent all drivers or all pedestrians any more than you do. but when a cyclist is an asshole, you jump to treating that as the behaviour of all cyclists, as if we're all the same, because we're just a group of weirdos that you don't feel a part of.
No, I don't, and even if that was meant as a generic "you" it seems a bit like attempted mind-reading. How about not doing that? FWIW, the people I've worked with on maintaining my local path are mostly cyclists. No friction there. When people call out "on your left" (interestingly that's most of the women and damn few of the men) I always say "thank you" in return. I'm well aware that most cyclists are good people and I treat them as such, but there are enough - and an even higher percentage among cycling activists - that it's a problem.
I guess I should have been more explicit about referring to that subset earlier, but other cyclists should be aware that those are the ones people remember (it's basic math + psychology) and exert peer pressure accordingly instead of getting aggressive themselves every time the issue comes up.
Ya know, I don't have to look any farther than this discussion to see people doing exactly that, painting all drivers as bad.
I had to slam on the breaks 3 weeks ago when making a left because of a biker completely running a red light in front of me.
I find the number running lights to be similar.
Mostly e-bike riders are just ignored. Like they don't affect us in any way and we barely even notice that they exist.
1. convert curbside parking into dedicated and protected bike lanes (not everywhere, but extensively)
2. require bike parking (preferably covered and right next to entrances/foot traffic) and liability requirements anywhere that has a (car) parking lot
this would put biking on par with cars and would encourage businesses to reorganize around mixed traffic, rather than car only.
Source: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html
We got to Santa Monica beach in the afternoon, spent some time there, and we had a reservation for dinner in koreatown (close to downtown), roughly 15 miles away. Closer to 5:30pm it was time to leave, so we split into two groups: 3 people decided to take Uber, 4 people (including me) decided to take those Lime/Bird escooters.
The results were rather surprising. The escooter group got to the restaurant about 15 minutes later than the Uber group, but only because we were navigating to the wrong place and overshot the restaurant by almost 2 miles. Without counting that, our overall trip was around 1.5 hours.
Here is the kicker: batteries on those scooters were rather not the best. With 4 people riding together, every 20 minutes or so, someone's battery would die (because we didn't all start with 100% at the same time, it doesn't mean that the battery life on those was just 20 minutes, it was just the offset that led to this). And when the battery would die, we wouldn't abandon the person, so we would start searching around for another scooter being available somewhere nearby.
With this in mind, if it was just 1 person riding by themselves, it would definitely beat an Uber ride on that day. And even with 4 people with batteries dying every 20 minutes on someone's scooter, we pretty much beat the people who took Uber by a small margin (which would have been much larger if it was just one person on one escooter).
To underline, I was surprised by two things on that day: how awfully close to the stereotype LA traffic actually was and how viable escooters were in that environment. Prior to seeing it with my eyes, I was also thinking that LA was a bit too sprawled out for it to work. Glad to have been proven wrong.
I don’t know who “those people” are, or what regional politics are at play, but that doesn’t pass my “smell test”. How about deploying “think about the children” here for something that increases exercise and happiness, mobility, fosters growth… it’s not even contentious with respect to (e.g.) civil liberties.
I suspect the answer is people just don’t care. Especially once they’re behind the wheel of an automobile, electric or otherwise.
(Edit: expand/clarify suggested benefits)
Keep in mind that most cyclists are also drivers, and in the latter role many of them also don't seem to care. These debates often sound like we're talking about two disjoint groups of people, with one having a grievance against the other, but in reality they're just different transport modalities that people switch between.
The project kept getting derailed due to bicycle special interests having a literal fit because a section of the road was too narrow to have the walkable sidewalks(priority number 1), the cycle lanes with adequate safety, and not congest the rest of the road. A consulting company made recommendations based on traffic simulations and the requirements to have the bicycle route go off onto a parallel side street through this section.
Oh man, what a shit show it turned into. But most of the pushback against what the cyclist special interests wanted(lanes through this section, fuck everything else) had to do with the practicalities of balancing the requirements. Not the meme arguments people who hate cars often throw out as scarecrows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
>Traffic calming uses physical design and other measures to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. It has become a tool to combat speeding and other unsafe behaviours of drivers in the neighbourhoods. It aims to encourage safer, more responsible driving and potentially reduce traffic flow. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming, including narrowed roads and speed humps. Such measures are common in Australia and Europe (especially Northern Europe), but less so in North America. Traffic calming is a calque (literal translation) of the German word Verkehrsberuhigung – the term's first published use in English was in 1985 by Carmen Hass-Klau.
https://www.wired.com/2004/12/traffic/
>HANS MONDERMAN is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn't done his job. "The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there's a problem with a road, they always try to add something," Monderman says. "To my mind, it's much better to remove things."
>[...] In Denmark, the town of Christianfield stripped the traffic signs and signals from its major intersection and cut the number of serious or fatal accidents a year from three to zero. In England, towns in Suffolk and Wiltshire have removed lane lines from secondary roads in an effort to slow traffic - experts call it "psychological traffic calming." A dozen other towns in the UK are looking to do the same. A study of center-line removal in Wiltshire, conducted by the Transport Research Laboratory, a UK transportation consultancy, found that drivers with no center line to guide them drove more safely and had a 35 percent decrease in the number of accidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjBGokenEhQ
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
>Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
>Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’ Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
It sure doesn't sound like the "bike special interests" were the ones being unreasonable here.
The congestion would not just be on that section of road, it would propogate out and cause major issues. The bikes are not going to experience congestion.
In the gold standard countries for cycling, this sort of design is done on purpose. Pedestrians get the best route, followed by cyclists, and vehicles have what's left.
Elsewhere, doing the easy work to accommodate cycling, then ignoring anything that would cause even the slightest inconvenience to cars, is the norm.
Nassim Taleb made some pretty interesting points on the magnitude of a risk vs its probability. If you get a shower of pebbles thrown on your head, you'll be sore at worst. If you get the same mass thrown as one big rock... you're dead.
Same with bikes. You're much more likely to fall (you really are). But chances are, you'll not even ruin your clothes when you do, and the risk of serious injury, while of course present, is much much smaller.
we're talking here about cycling on bicycle lanes.
Which is fascinating and really tells you something about ingroups and outgroups because cyclists are hurt and killed every day by drivers and strangely nobody seems to be that fussed about it.
That being said, these are edge cases. The sad reality is that a driver must display extreme levels of negligence or malice before the state will step in to punish them. In NYC only 1 percent of drivers who injured a pedestrian or cyclist even got a ticket. Assuming the driver is sober and doesn’t flee the scene, neither cops nor DA’s really care about prosecuting negligent drivers who injure or kill anyone.
Ummm- yes, yes they are.
The hatred heaped on cyclists escalates towards violence, and next to nobody on the escalating side (motorists) really acknowledges that it happens.
Even in the places I'm familiar with which still allow escooter rentals, my observation is you don't really see very many of them--either being ridden or littering the sidewalks. It does seem to be one of those things that, while you still see them, appear to have mostly been a fad. At least in the cities I'm familiar with.
don't you have restricted ebikes in the US? In most of Europe they're either sold restricted to 25kmh, in which case they're legally bikes, or unrestricted, in which case they're legally mopeds
A bike-friendly infrastructure is based on three separate networks, for pedestrians, cycles and cars. Each of the three networks must be continuous, reasonably complete and able to stand on its own.
The first is car centric, with lots of roads and deep set backs. These cities are amenable to bike and public transit transformation in terms of space, but usually have political resistance to change. These cities will be the easiest to add extra bike infrastructure to, once a political mass is reached. My current city is like this, and the current bike path master plan is trying to add enough paths for 96% of the city to be near bike infrastructure (currently it’s 10%).
The second category are really dense, and do not have the space for any extra lanes. But these cities dedicate a huge amount of space for parallel parking. Theoretically the city could remove parking for bikes, but practically this means purposefully pricing people out of car ownership, which is obviously unpopular. These cities should focus on public transit, which is by and far the most space efficient way to move people. For a lot of these cities this is less about installing new lines, which is expensive, but about making the existing system feel cleaner and more dignified. It will always be hard to make improvements when even the crappiest sedan is considered a step up from taking the subway to work.
Especially in the US there is plenty of space you can take away from cars, both lanes and parking.
The Netherlands did not knock down and rebuild Amsterdam to build bike paths. They took space back from cars.
The key is that cars don't belong in most places anyway. A residential street can easily be design as a 10mph one way cobblestone road with calming measures, freeing up the "other direction" side of the street for a 2-way bike lane and expanded sidewalks. Larger roads can be redesigned similarly for bike/transit with cars filling in particular niches like delivery of bulk items, etc.
In any case, it's pretty much a non-starter to prohibit at least conventional bikes or pedestrians even though, on the more crowded and narrower paths, I'll avoid them during busy times as a walker.
There was not enough space for cars, we tore down entire neighbourhoods and blasted through bedrock to create highways.
There is not enough money to fund a moon program or fix climate change, but when time came to bail out the banks, if you stacked that money as 1-dollar bills it would reach the moon.
There is not enough money to Fusion research, but our fossil fuel and airline subsidies in one year are greater that all-time fusion research budget.
Priorities.
The prioritization back then was that "those people" don't matter. That is how those were build.
It also costs less to maintain, kills fewer people, massively reduces healthcare costs improves the local economy and is far nicer to live next to.
There is plenty of money, most places are just directing it to yet another road widening project that will make things worse.
Ultimately it depends on the cycling culture in a place and a lot of that depends on whom cycling is available to. If it is more accessible you will probably find people acting more sensibly and more like pedestrians.
A mixed use trail can provide refuge from busy roads. This is much more important if roads are awful for cyclists and I this can often be the case in some parts of the world. If roads are good for cyclists then the obnoxious people who would otherwise endanger those on the trail will be happier going faster and straighter along the roads. But they will only get better if cycling is more popular which will only happen if it is more accessible.
I think mixed use paths are not particularly bad and are also necessary on the way to better infrastructure.
Calling them bike infrastructure is like calling a school zone with zebra crossings and speed bumps a highway.
They are what should be built first though, because you don't get new cyclists without low speed, safe, fully separated bike infrastructure. They should always be paired with a nearby road with a cycle lane and somr plan for separated infrastructure though.
The separated bike lane *and* the mixed use path is the end goal, but if the immediate goal is to save the city money and make people healthier rather than create conflict and negative sentiment towards cycling, then you need a separate route for ebikes and more experienced commuters. Sharrows or magic paint suffice for this (at least temporarily) with adequate traffic calming or if the main car flow has an alternate route.
Imo, American negative sentiment and aggression toward bicycles is way more about politics and assumed demographics then anything else. It does not matter how well behaved average cyclist is. It does not matter how intrusive or safe it is. The people who are aggressive will focus on that one minor infraction that happened once to validate their anger.
It is already difficult to have a car near house where you live here.
You complain that bike lanes are not used "enough", but a single parked car forces a whole lane to have a throughput of 0 commuters per hour. A bike lane that gets a single cyclist per hour is infinitely more efficient!
I think we overall agree, but there are many things that can be done to reduce conflit points.
Firstly I agreed that the mixed lane with a shared car/bicycle alternate route should come first (as this covers both short/slow speed trips and high speed/high confidence trips), but secondly the shared lane has an absurdly small cost. Under 5% of the space and an even smaller fraction of the money spent on roads will give you a world leading bicycle network, and if you build it, it will be used -- cycling on good infrastructure is simply so much cheaper and more convenient than car ownership and cycle lanes have so much more capacity than roads that it becomes a no brainer.
I agree that bootstrapping it to get the political will needed for that pittance is extremely hard, which is why we need to think very carefully about encouraging long distance commuters who must average over 15km/h to make reasonable time and people taking the pram for a walk to mix. Ebikes are a big potential issue because they are both fast and favoured by new riders. It will only take one ebike with the speed limiter removed accidentally injuring a kid and hitting the news to set back bike infrastructure in an entire country by years.
Step 1 is mixed paths connecting local destinations (schools, shops, church, etc) and start reserving your space for the separated bikeway
Step 2 is a fully connected network where all the mixed paths have an alternate route with magic green paint or sharrows for high speed trips and to handle congestion.
Step 3 is build the separated paths.
You can't skip step 2 or avoid thinking about step 3 until it is too late.
Additionally throughout this process you need to fix all the cyclist and pedestrian hostile signals (waiting for a full 5 minhte cycle at a one way street full of stopped cars because the button wasn't pressed is absurd) and provide some alternative to stop signs (carefully designed roundabouts, yield signs, or cyclists-yield laws with public outreach work okay).
https://www.insidenova.com/news/arlington/w-od-trail-effort-...
Set speed limits and mercilessly fine serious violations, and the problem goes away as far as it will ever be.
Any reasonable speed limit for a shared use bike path (IMO, <15mph) will be routinely ignored by both e-bikes and roadies.
I'd say they are somewhat effective. I don't ride much on shared paths, but when I do, I usually see people not going full speed. After all, unlike with a car, it's also dangerous for the biker. The only concern might be that you may experience speed differently on an ebike/pedelec since you have to put in less effort. I've never tried those so I have no idea.
I'm a daily cyclist (18-20 miles round trip for work) and I don't know which one annoys me more: the lycra yuppie who wants to race me, or the e-bike Patagonia vest financebro yuppie who salmons[1] me while screaming through his AirPods :-)
[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/05/15/3124556...
This has never been true, of course. As you would expect for something that costs a hundredth as much as a car, bicycling to work has always been more common among the poor: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/08/low-income-americans-...
Consider there may be a dignity issue: If you are a lycra-clad yuppy, you're cycling because you want to. If you're poor, it looks like you can't afford a car.
Here's another study showing the same https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Relationship-between-inc...
Here in New York City, people delivering food, packages, etc are one of the major biking contingents, I guess invisible to the Hacker News community.
Sadly, here in New York City, kids can't ride bikes around for fun except once or twice a year when they close Park Avenue or if you get an open street. I don't see why kids riding casually shouldn't be a major interest of the population. If the streets aren't safe for them, maybe change the streets and disallow cars instead of depriving kids of that space.
I'm curious about this - do you have specific examples? HOV/EV lanes?
Is this even a thing outside of USA? Nobody thinks that where I live, and it's not a particularly bike-friendly country like Netherlands, just average EU country.
i've seen this pushback come from two camps. 1) people with cars who get pissed when street parking or automobile lanes get turned into bike lanes (i prefer bike lanes, but i can at least understand this.) 2) professional users of the roads who saw early construction of bicycle infrastructure as something that would attract more cyclists and therefore make their jobs harder/riskier.
i feel like construction of bike infrastructure in many us cities is something that really blossomed in the late 00s/early 10s when urban cyclists were often more ragtag jorts with tattoos than "lycra-clad yuppies."
This is a big one for me. Cycling into work doesn't take too much time (30 minutes), and it's good to be active. But showering at work you often need to wait, you need to bring all your clean clothes with you, and after going back you need to shower again.
It just costs too much time to cycle because of the sweating.
With e-Bikes I'm able to cycle into work slightly faster (saving a few minutes when going up hill) and I'm still fresh when I arrive.
Sure it's not as sporty, but it's something, especially compared to driving.
Another catch is safety. Forcing bikes to share the road is dangerous. Cities really need bike lanes.
I live across the border in Indiana, and have wanted to bike on the beach/dunes/trails for years. I just bought a Specialized Fatboy with a BBSHD motor, can't wait to get back out there.
I dislike that people are effectively riding motorcycles on dedicated bike paths.
I especially dislike that companies get to profit from cluttering public spaces with bicycle and scooter litter.
My hope is that long-term we get the e-bikes into the street where they belong and combine that with traffic calming measures to make scooter commuting feasible from a safety perspective.
A buddy of mine bought a Super73 which has speed limiting modes but operates purely on the honor system. In the "unlimited" mode it can do 28mph, without pedaling. In the "limited" mode it can still do 20, which is faster than most people are capable of for any extended period of time without a power assist.
A Super 73 weighs 73lbs. That's double a regular bike. Moving at 2-4x the speed. Sure the rider is more than that but e-bike numbers are a lot closer to mopeds than bicycles.
I've passed people on Lime/Jump bikes while riding a single speed bike so I'm not sure that I'd say they're significantly faster. They can get up to speed much faster than a regular bike, which is really nice in traffic.
Super73 bikes are premium bikes that start at $1500 and can easily top $5000 with accessories. The highend RX cost $3500 base, has 750w motor that boost up to 1200w with an almost 1000 watt hour battery.
Compare that to something reasonable like the RadPower Radmission that costs $999, has a 500w Motor that cuts out at 20 mph powered by a 500 watt hour battery.
Just like regular bikes, ebikes come in all varieties and banning them all or relegating them to car lanes because a few should be classified as Mopeds isn't the answer.
Some responsible ebike companies ship their top end bikes with VINs that require they be registered as Mopeds.
Many ebikes are completely unassuming and you don't even realize they are battery powered.
I actually think the Super73 is great, on the road. I’d like to see something even more capable. I’m hoping they lead to light e-scooters (like a small motorcycle, not the stand-up things) that can do 45+ MPH. That should probably require a license plate and motorcycle endorsement but I’m ok with that. America needs more two wheeled transport adoption.
Partially repeating my comment from another sub-thread here:
In Europe, the speed at which an ebike motor may assist one is limited to 25 km/h (~ 15.5 mph):
> pedal cycles with pedal assistance which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having
> a maximum continuous rated power of less than or equal to 250 W, where the output of the motor
> is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally
> cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h;
-- REGULATION (EU) No 168/2013, Article 2, §2 (h)Note that while the current regulation is valid since 2016 there was a (in this regard) very similar one since 2002 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...)
There are faster pedelecs, but those need to be registered and have insurance, same as any lightweight motorbike needs to have since like ever, most common are the ones <= 50cc as those are allowed with 14 or 16 years of age, and those are not allowed on bike-only roads or lanes.
I am talking about a dedicated asphalt path that runs parallel to a road with parking and/or a curb or barrier between traffic and the bike path. Next to this path is a sidewalk for pedestrians, separated by grass. In some places the pedestrian and bicycle traffic merge. They are always separated from traffic. Sometimes they take routes that do not follow roads, such as through parks.
The road itself also has a bike lane which is striped between traffic and the parked cars. Cars and bicycles sometimes share this space, sometimes it is separated by a double white line or some cones. Considerate bicycle riders that want to go faster than is safe around pedestrians use this in-the-road bike lane rather than the bike path. This is where e-bikes that can go 28mph belong.
The only motorized vehicles I have ever seen on these bicycle paths are e-bikes. I have not seen full electric motorcycles (with plates, like a Zero) or any ICE vehicle, even a moped, on these paths.
Yeah, I assumed both (separate bike road and just painted bike lane) and I've seen both.. And really even a car during rush hour, granted in a bit more rural area and the bike road wasn't _that_ much used, but still...
> The only motorized vehicles I have ever seen on these bicycle paths are e-bikes. I have not seen full electric motorcycles (with plates, like a Zero) or any ICE vehicle, even a moped, on these paths.
Yeah, but as, at least where I live (in a European country) they're limited to 25 km/h it's not a issue. As said, pedelecs, which can go faster, are a thing but need a plate, more safety equipment and insurance, and I see no reason why people then would more (or less) frequently use them illegally like existing motorized vehicles.
I'm massively pro-cycling, but bikes belong either in dedicated infrastructure or on the roads. Roads must not be monopolized by motor traffic — everyone pays for this infrastructure through taxation and it should serve everyone equally well.
Cycling on a sidewalk is also not a good experience for the cyclist, either. When crossing a perpendicular street it's quite a pain to look behind to see if someone is about to turn into you as you cross the road. This is no problem for pedestrians because they move slowly and can usually look back without wavering too much. It's not a concern for cyclists on the road because they have the right of way. Then there are reversing cars, stuff in the way (bins, lamp posts, whatever) and myriad other reasons why cycling on a sidewalk is impractical.
I love cycling and bikes and firmly believe cycling has an important role in getting people around. But it shouldn't be at the expense of people who're walking. Bikes belong on dedicated infrastructure or on the road. If the road is deemed "not suitable" somehow this needs to be addressed by building better roads.
I think its weird that we would let children of any age, with no knowledge of road rules ride a bike around in traffic.
In my small city, it's legal for kids to ride bikes on the footpaths, but in most of Australia its is not. I think its backwards.
Last week in my city an electric scooter pulled out of a junction - where the light was red - in front of a bus. The bus performed an emergency stop, causing minor injuries that required hospitalization to a number of people onboard. The scooter just continued without stopping. Police are trying to track down the driver, but it seems pretty much impossible (it was privately owned, not rented from an app).
I've also seen countless accidents from people driving at 25km/h across pedestrian crossings, and the car not seeing them before it's too late. Here you are supposed to dismount from vehicles and walk across, but most people do not.
Near my office there is a junction where you can turn left - crossing a lane coming in the other direction - and go up a hill, at the same time the light is green for pedestrians to cross, and cars are supposed to give way. If a scooter is coming along the pavement at full speed, in the same direction as you are travelling before you turned, there is no way you will see it until it's right in front of you and it's too late to stop.
Then you'd better be driving slowly and paying attention if you want to operate a heavy vehicle around where kids are.
> the road is a dangerous place to be
Roads are fine; motor vehicles being driven at speed make places dangerous.
I think this is a disingenuous description of "provide a valuable service that many people appreciate".
I also don't see why speed-limited e-bikes shouldn't be on bike paths, unless you're living in an area where they are unthrottled or have a ridiculously high limit.
They’re a nuisance. The city actually marked off some specific parking areas and is asking the ride share companies to require drop off in those areas. It got that bad.
I regularly see bike shares and scooter shares blocking curb ramps in crosswalks. Good luck to anyone in a wheelchair.
E-bikes might provide some value but proponents and users are ignoring the negative externalities to existing cyclists and pedestrians.
It will get better but we need to educate people on how to use these things responsibly.
Then you must hate on-street parking and parking lots.
I think the speed and power limits of ebikes are actually pretty reasonable. A fit cyclist can go faster on the flats, and I don't just mean a pro, anybody young and healthy who cycles a few times a week should be able to manage it.
Bikes should have their own transport spaces, not sharing with cars. Cars should be limited access from many areas. And pedestrians should be as mindful of bikes as they are of cars.
Here in Seattle we actually reclaimed on-street parking for dedicated bike-share parking because people park them so inconsiderately. Like sideways blocking entire bike paths and sidewalks.
If you are in a wheelchair you can forget about curb ramps, they’re blocked by bike shares.
But to those companies credit, they do have at least token process of punishing bad parking.
I think the parent commenter is suggesting that devoting vast swathes of land to storing objects that are only used for few percent of every day could, in some ways, be considered "cluttering public space".
I certainly agree that scooters dumped in the middle of a sidewalk is very annoying. I haven't lived anywhere where rental bikes can just be dropped (they're returned to stations) so I haven't experienced littering in that sense.
My bike is 2004 Specialized mountain bike. Bought the motor from ebay and just bolted it on. The battery lives in a home sewn bag I made which I velcro strapped to the frame. I have gone about 35mph on it. Do not recommend super high speeds unless you are a capable bike rider.
It looks like a mad max experiment. I just wanted to ride the thing and wire management is def an afterthought. I do not ride anywhere I can't take it inside with me even though I only have about $500 into it. Too much work to risk theft.
So much fun to ride. Peeling out in dirt is thrilling on bicycle.
I was hoping to use this as a project to learn electricity with and it sounds like you did something similar.
Batteries are really simple, just need to respect them. If you are going to use recycled batteries, I suggest you buy a Opus c3400 tester. Run them through a complete charge/discharge cycle to identify capacity and bad cells. If they get hot, take them out and properly recycle them at Autozone. Otherwise, write down the capacity on the cell.
You can use repakr once you have 100 cells or so. I went with a 13s6p configuration for a 48volt system. I learned a ton from Micah Toll's DIY Lithium Battery book. Also, register at Endless-Sphere and start reading. Eventually the information will coalesce and you can start to buy bits and bobs. Take your time and don't rush buying right away... lots to learn.
Unfortunately, the bike being worth thousands of dollars, it was a prime target for theft. My bike was stolen in San Jose and I decided to replace it with a sub-$1000 regular bike.
I know people who have had 2-3 of these bikes stolen. I use mine for commute at the moment and that’s it.
Sounds expensive to me. I ride a Decathlon Triban 100 FB that cost me 150€ (new). Better than most 1K+ gravel bikes and not a target for thieves in Paris bc it's too common.
https://www.decathlon.fr/p/velo-route-homme-cyclotourisme-rc...
I just bought a Kryptonite + a Kryptoflex and nobody tried to steal it yet. My locks were more expensive than my bike but it seems to work for now.
[0]: https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1UMz3k8yWBuNkSmFPq6xguVXar/1pc...
For example around here you can get a ticket for using one on both cycle paths and also on roads with a 40 MpH speed limit. So you're more legally limited than both a cyclist but also a moped user. The biggest reason why they're popular here at all is that laws are selectively enforced.
None of this is e-bike's fault of course, and the original Segway mostly failed because it too was banned from both footpaths but also many roads. Local city and states haven't evolved much to include new modes of transport outside the traditional (although some would call that a blessing as they don't want licensing/mandatory insurance/tax on e-bikes/e-scooters).
I currently live in a Dutch village, so bikes and cars share rather narrow roads. The roads are narrow enough that two cars barely fit side by side. Normally when you're approaching a bike from behind, you know you only need 2-3 seconds to pass it. If there's oncoming traffic, you can easily judge if you have time to safely pass the bike, or if instead you should slow down and wait behind it.
But now that bike which would normally be moving 10-15kph may actually be an e-bike doing 24-ish kph. That's quite a big difference. And if you're doing 50-70 as you approach, it's _very_ difficult to identify from a distance if that bike is going 12 or 24. It matters too, because it might take twice as long to pass as you would normally expect.
Of course we can adapt and take the safe approach, always slowing to the bike speed before deciding to pass. But not only is that rather aggravating to go from 70 to 15 and then accelerate to pass, but it's wasteful on brakes and fuel. Also, if there's any oncoming traffic further down the road, you're much more likely to now be stuck behind that bike for an agonizingly long time.
For the cyclist, they will now be more at risk of a passing car misjudging and pulling back into the lane, cutting the bike off.
Tangentially related is the (new for cars) Tesla problem. That's when you're merging or needing to pass someone, and that someone is driving a Tesla and has a bad attitude. Historically it was pretty easy to judge if you had enough speed to pass someone; but now if that someone is driving a Tesla (or other new, performance oriented electric), they can decide to not allow you to pass by simply stepping on the throttle. They can so quickly accelerate that they can fill that spot which was safely available. If you're not paying close attention (being prepared for something like that), or if you have nowhere else to go (merging, lane ending), you're at great risk of accident.
So in summary, electric vehicles are dangerous! I jest, but they do indeed present some new challenges that don't make them more welcome on the roads.
Of course, these are easier to spot than ebikes...
You could slow down and hope one of those cars behind the Tesla slows to allow you to merge, but not only is that unlikely but it screws up traffic flow. Naturally you step on it so you can speed ahead and merge. But that Tesla drive has the ability to show you that he's boss, and he's faster than you. Now you're going faster and have even less lane remaining, so you must hit the brakes hard and try to merge into the new gap behind the Tesla. That's dangerous, but it's now about your only option.
Or you simply want to change into a lane and fill in the space between the Tesla and the car some distance in front of him. Maybe you see congestion ahead in your lane, or perhaps you're about to encounter traffic merging into your lane.
There are tons of legitimate reasons you might want to get in front of that Tesla. And if you already were going faster than him, it would normally be no problem for anyone. But in angry driver traffic with the new electric capabilities, people can basically use their cars as weapons.
It may sound dramatic, but it was already a bad behavior some people would exhibit when they were angry, competitive drivers. Now they have much more ability to fight.
People just don't ride that fast on non e-bikes here in the Netherlands, not normally.
For many of the riders, sweaty and tired is the whole point: conditioning. They may take it easy on the way to work (only 20kph) but they'll go flat-out on the way home.
It's why we're so obsessive about helmets, where the rest of the world isn't.
Sweat was an issue, but you get used to it and it stops being tiring
Would that we could...
But yes, many others would be fairly straightforward, the only blocking issue is political will. "A bakery on my street corner makes me scared for my neighborhood character" is a surprisingly common sentiment in the states. People don't want any kind of retail whatsoever.
A few days ago I was pulling out of a side road. I was turning to go into town such that I had to first cross a lane of traffic going out of town.
I checked the crossing lane — nothing except for a guy in work clothes, no helmet, on a push bike. I checked the other direction and it was clear. I looked back towards town and got ready to start moving and…
HEY! The guy on the bike who was maybe 100 yards away before was now right in front of me. I was moments from pulling out in front of, or more like on top of him. He must have been doing 25-30mph without breaking a sweat.
It’s going to take a generation to re-learn our assumptions about what these vehicles mean. I wish, for their sake, they were speed limited to be like normal bicycles.
Overalls on a sit-up-and-beg do not do this effectively :)
> pedal cycles with pedal assistance which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having
> a maximum continuous rated power of less than or equal to 250 W, where the output of the motor
> is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally
> cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h;
-- REGULATION (EU) No 168/2013, Article 2, §2 (h)Note that while the current regulation is valid since 2016 there was a (in this regard) very similar one since 2002 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...)
The current regulation seems Ok to me in the sense of, its simple, and it prevents most of the danger by default and the alternative would probably be to ban ebikes completely (as any hack-prevention will be circumvented sooner or later), which well would be rather counterproductive and people get hurt in cars too, so we'd need to ban almost everything..
I'd rather see some effort in educating people on bike safety in schools. We already had a bike driver licence test in elementary, while it wasn't legally binding it had some educational value, ebikes just weren't a thing there so nothing was thought about them.
You see regular bikes going on very high speed as well, so I wouldn't say the general speed assumption has to change
I agree it’d be super awesome to get car-like protection from rain and wind, better stability than a bike, but maintaining the very low mass (and therefore low inertia and low pedestrian risk) & low cost & low footprint & high efficiency of bikes.
approximately 360kg, so def not as light as a bike, but not incredibly heavy either. 100km range.
Closest thing I could find was " City Commuting Recumbent Quad " , 2nd from the bottom of this page: https://www.trikexplor.com/pages/trikexplor-recumbent-quad
I still think they are a bit big but with smaller diameter wheels, removal of pedals for full electric kart experience (but otherwise speed limited as per usual e-bike) maaaybe they could be made small enough and lightweight enough to play with.
https://www.motrike.com/product-item/city-commuting-recumben...
EDIT: this is even closer: https://www.better.bike/models
I'm in Austin, TX and get soaked for a different reason - sweat. We get about 3 months of 100 degree days. I'd love a golf-cart EV with good A/C.
biking in the rain mostly sucks because of splashback from the road. once you've eliminated that, it's no worse than walking in the rain.
I think the main reasons bikes aren't popular are: safety (perceived) weather cargo capacity effort requirement
Enthusiasts don't mind the latter and reluctant cyclists will still find sufficient deterrents even if it's eliminated. So I don't think ebikes are really going to move the needle in terms of ridership, regardless of what their buyers tell themselves at time of purchase.
"Velosurance" is also an option for many with expensive cargo ebikes.
Ebikes are a pretty new technology with very little used market so far, but that will change quickly— I already managed to dig one up for 50% off MSRP last winter.
$5k-$7k for an e-bicycle?
Yes yes yes, I realize enthusiasts pay up to $10-15K for high-end frames and wheels, with full Campy gruppos[1], but eBike buyer's aren't CAT-2 qualifiers.
On a side rant, the price of bikes in general has skyrockted. With so much of the manufacturing happening in China, I would have assumed that the overall costs of bikes would go down and quality would go up since the 80's (when I was really into cycling in my 20's). But the opposite has happened: quality stayed roughly the same and prices went way, way up. (e.g., A Tom Ritchie frame went for about $1.5k in 1984, and that was hand-made.)
[1] Wowzers: today, the campy super record gruppo is $3500. https://www.merlincycles.com/en-us/campagnolo-super-record-1...
Then you can convert those to ebikes with kits that cost €500-800 depending on power of motor and range of battery.
That's what I did; I transformed a regular Btwin Rockrider bike to an ebike 3 years ago, and have now ridden about 10k km with it. Couldn't be happier. It changed my life.
I used to drive a (big) motorbike; it's now been a year since I used it; it just doesn't make any sense to use a motorbike instead of an ebike for rides under 15 km, which are most if not all rides.
I built a second ebike for travel by train. Some trains have special "seats" for bikes but most don't, and they are in very limited supply anyway. But you can put a folding bike in the luggage compartment without a problem.
So I bought a used folding bike for €50, still in excellent condition, added a (low power) hub motor and a battery for €400, and I can go almost anywhere without worrying about finding a cab at my destination. It's exhilarating.
Like hydrofoil surfboards [1], one-wheel skateboards [2], electric paragliders [3]... what next!?
1. https://youtube.com/watch?v=i9yCe6ibhzU
Fortunately, due to the size of the European market and the good sense of European bike regulations, virtually all factory-built e-bikes are coming with good headlight optics and usually a sensible mount point for the light, lower than the handlebars.
A loud contingent view them as a scourge, calling for ebikes to be banned, or otherwise licensed, registered, and insured, which would eliminate them as a common mode of transport. Most of the people I see riding them around here are high-school aged who probably don't care enough to deal with that. The next step up (moped) licensing requirements are more onerous than those of a car.
In the UK (and the EU) they are restricted to 15 mph so no different to a traditional bike. If you want a speed pedelec (28 mph) then it needs to be registered like a moped and mostly can't go on bike paths.
I find the average motorist expects to be able to save themselves from any dangerous situation by simply slamming on the brakes. With traditional bikes piloted by neophytes, this works alright since the top speed is probably ~15mph. But this doesn't work as well for two wheeled vehicles traveling at high speeds, where slamming on the brakes can cause a loss of traction and ultimately balance. Mopeds and motorcycles require special certification in the US (beyond a normal driver's license) because they are not just tiny cars, and the same should apply to ebikes.
1. Apparently, cyclists have to follow each and every rule of the road—rules which were designed with cars in mind—in order to be allowed to be on the road, or I should say even to be allowed to _live._
And the margins on e-bikes (relatively speaking) are a lot higher than on cars.
No harder to judge than a motorcycle, of course, but it will take time for 'static person on bike' to connote 'might accelerate without warning!' to the navigational lizard brain.
I think we've all done the same thing in a car as well as some point.
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/future-of-mob...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferdungs/2021/07/19/why-mi...
https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/spring-2021/micromobil...
Doesn’t mean we won’t do a lot of miles by bike or bus, but as long as people have the money for it, they’ll still buy at least one car per household for cornercases that buses and bikes (& ride share) don’t address.
If we get really good public transit and bike infrastructure, the median American household will probably have a couple electric bikes, one or two electric cars, and at least one person will commute via electric bus or train. It’s gonna be “both and.”
What is that based on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
499/816 = 61%. Only a 39% reduction.
But there are geographical differences that make it even harder for the US to get rid of cars even if it had the same culture/institutions as the Netherlands.
Not having a car and being able to bike and take transit around the city has been the most significant value add to my quality of life in a long time.
https://www.specialized.com/ca/en/s-works-turbo-kenevo-sl/p/...
I use these to keep my hands warm while riding: https://cozywinters.com/shop/bar-mitts.html
I rarely use just the motor when I ride, and that helps keep me warm; I'm usually pedaling just as hard as if I were riding without a motor. The motor makes me much faster, and also a lot less of an annoyance to vehicles. :)
A lot of people use balaclavas for preventing cold air on their faces too.
People regular go hundreds of thousands of miles on their used Priuses.
I own a 2012 Leaf and a 2013 Tesla that I intend to drive for another 6-10 years. Both work great. (Also selling a 2012 Volt which is fantastic but doesn’t have enough seats so I’m selling.)
One issue is obsolescence. The newer bikes have bigger tires, better frame designs to accommodate the motor, better controls, more battery capacity, and so forth. They are purpose built as e-bikes, rather than conventional bikes with a motor and battery strapped on.
Another is repair. Finding spare parts for the electronics is a headache. The hall sensor went out on one friend's bike motor, resulting in a new bike. Voltages and connector pinouts have to be matched unless you're a whiz with a soldering iron and can find documentation -- good luck.
Conventional bikes had similar issues with both things, but there's a brisk global market for keeping older bikes working, and a sufficient supply of aftermarket parts for obsolete bikes are available in the US. And there's a lot of shared folklore on how to keep old bikes working, along with people who cobble bikes together from old parts and sell them. I can still maintain a 1963 Schwinn. All but one of my bikes are assembled from spare parts. That kind of secondary economy hasn't emerged for e-bikes yet.
What I do hope is that otherwise good bikes and their parts don't become un-salvagable because someone can't find a wiring diagram or something like that. I hope that like with conventional bikes, a cottage industry arises that shares information and recycles out-of-fashion bikes into usable vehicles for the rest of us. What do they do with old bikes in India or Africa? That's what I want to see. I don't feel bad if that 5-10 years is followed by a decent life in someone else's hands.
Not in Germany. Biking is and will stay irrelevant for daily transport as long as the infrastructure is a joke. Electric propulsion isn't the missing link.
Interestingly you'll find holiday areas that have biking infrastructure packed with older people on e-bikes.
That said, bike lanes were still an obvious second class citizen compared to car lanes in terms of ubiquity and quality, so there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Maybe there are people that enjoy doing 30 km under heavy rain or negative temperatures with snow, I rather not.
Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Answer: because Finnish people have dedicated bike paths that aren't next to traffic and are cleared and maintained by the city, even in snowy weather. And in that case even elderly people still bike. It's not some extreme thing.
To put it the other way, driving in the most heavy snowy weather isn't ideal either.
Definitely wouldn't force myself cycling with -10 degrees nowadays, when given the option.
Car-oriented areas are also designed with less respect to topography than older areas designed around pedestrians, and electric propulsion makes biking up grades easier.
Until that starts changing I don't think there will be many takers for an e-bikes unless you already own a car.
"E-bike ownership has skyrocketed in New York since the pandemic began, and with it, e-bike fires, according to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). There have been 75 e-bike fires so far this year, which is on pace to double last year’s total, officials said. The fires have caused 72 injuries and three deaths."
No throttle, only pedal assist, 250w motors maximum and no assist over 25km/h turns it from the perfect future-proof vehicle for inner-city use and suburban commuting into a weird hybrid that isn't fast enough to replace a light road bike, But also not strong enough to haul multiple saddlebags full of groceries up hills without breaking a sweat.
You’re not getting forward collision warning or anything like that on two wheels. Certainly not airbags or a cage to protect you…
Around town the speed is fine although it would be nice to go a little quicker out of town.
Also I know a bunch of people waiting for legislation to promote EVs (ie, extend the tax credit) all year (may never happen).
We recently moved from Munich, and there we didn't even have a car, just public transport and biking for us. Now we're living in Kirkland, we have no car and will probably get another one, and biking will probably be minimal, honestly. We can bike okay to the closest grocery store/shopping center, but going further seems sketchy.
Outside of the powertrain, seems like the rest of the car should be similar though, like tires and brakes, right?
[1] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/used-car-buying-guides/25...
I think you are trying to say these statistics would change if we created an entirely separate set of infrastructure for cyclists, but that is not the world we live in currently and can't be realized quickly in any sane and humane scenario.
Ed- I'm a big electric bike fan, but we have to work within the world we live in, not the world we'd like to see. Right now using a bike or an e-bike for most tasks is more dangerous to the user than using an automobile. Doesn't mean we shouldn't use them or encourage them (after all they in the same ballpark as walking), but there is a lot of work to do to make them "safer" than cars. BTW- I don't think this was always the case- there were 5x as many fatalities per mile traveled in automobile in the 1960s then there are today, primarily due to the addition of vehicle safety features. I wonder what sort of active and passive safety features could be incorporated into cycles now?
(1) https://www.bts.gov/content/transportation-fatalities-mode (2) https://nhts.ornl.gov/person-trips
Of that fatality number for cyclists, how much of that is because of cars? I suspect near 100%. Almost every cycling fatality I've ever heard of is because of a cyclist hit by a car. So, it doesn't make sense to say that bikes are dangerous. It's the cars that are dangerous to cyclists.
And the reason it's worse than pedestrians is because proportionally less of the time that pedestrians are out walking are they in conflict-zone with cars. It remains the case that cars are dangerous. It's not walking that's dangerous. Walking in car traffic is dangerous.
On a side note, I think collisions between bikes and collisions with a bike and a pedestrian are less often fatal than collisions with cars. If I were to get hit by someone running a red light while I'm walking across the street, I'd prefer to get hit by a cyclist than by an SUV.
We in Asia have figured the urban transit riddle long ago: Motorbikes or the more sustainable option; electric scooters [1]. If we are going to share the road, might as well everyone becomes capable of reaching similar speeds. E-bikes necessitate a cyclist lane for no good reason.
Also, it’s not obvious but the highest throughput per unit area at street level is sidewalks, bike lanes, and then the least efficient traffic lanes. Sidewalks need skyscrapers and a massive subway system to really scale, but bike lanes are mostly limited by adoption which again makes E-Bikes really useful.
I honestly don't understand why people need to exercise on their commute, just go to the gym!
E-bikes combine that basic level of exercise with being able to travel significant distances or across steep hills. Driving is faster but takes longer to park and doesn’t scale nearly as well in terms of infrastructure so it’s not a major time saver compared to short bike commutes. Granted, bike infrastructure is often unused in the US but it’s often a question of critical mass. There needs to be enough in place to get to everything safely and it needs to be around long enough for people to start using it.