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Comment by po1nt | Hacker News Reader

Replacement of cars is realistic until it rains, snows, wind blows too much or you need to haul something, have multiple passengers and such.

I can't imagine owning ebike as a city daily driver though bikesharing sounds reasonable.

The issue is that shared bikes are often gruesome, broken, unhygienic or vandalized.

I believe it's time to abandon cars in cities but there is no viable alternative to many scenarios.

The best solution I can think of is abandoning traditional city designs where city centers are for shopping, work is highly concentrated either in mega administrative buildings or industrial areas on border of cities.

If we could build cities more like cells where everything we could need is within a walking distance and everything we could WANT is within (safe) biking distance, we could eliminate most motivations for travelling.

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You might find this interesting: https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU

People bike in bad conditions all over the world — the difference is that their infrastructure allows that. The bike paths are top priority when plowing, for example. Here in North America, bike lanes seem to be rarely cleaned and maintained even in very bike friendly cities.

The last part of your comment is definitely true, and I hope this is explore more in America. It’s called the “fifteen minute neighborhood” in some places

Yes, this about maintenance.

All around Michigan bike lanes are being put in, especially around Detroit. They tend to be awful to ride in because they become a de facto gutter containing all the debris that gets blown/kicked off the car lanes: rubbish, glass, big pieces of gravel, occasional car parts.

Car lanes are fairly self cleaning... into the bike lane gutters. :(

> Replacement of cars is realistic until it rains, snows, wind blows too much or you need to haul something, have multiple passengers and such.

Don’t all those things apply to a city like Amsterdam? Granted, there were still a decent number of cars on the road, but I was amazed how many people were doing their daily travels on bikes.

I’ve only been there once on vacation, and I didn’t pay attention enough to know whether the city design you mentioned is used.

I do all those things in Amsterdam.

I can get everywhere in Amsterdam much quicker by bike than driving or public transport. Cycling in the rain and snow [2] is no problem, you just need the right gear.

What non-Amsterdammers don't realise is the city never used to be a cyclist's paradise. In the 1960s, Amsterdam's car-obsessed urban planners had grand visions to drive motorways through the inner city, razing the historical buildings, and constructing Manhattan-like skyscraper clusters.

Here's a 3 minute video "Highways Almost Destroyed Amsterdam" [1] about those plans, the fightback in the 1970s, and the resulting bike culture that Amsterdam has today. Enjoy!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB1tgkOM6Bw

Amsterdam has extremely mild weather compared to most of the US. Also, much shorter distances and no hills. With that said, we have much to learn from cities like Amsterdam, but will have to figure out some things for ourselves like distance and weather. Electric bikes can help overcome both of those issues.

Disclosure: Daily human powered bike commuter in the US.

You can totally ride a bike when it rains. Why not? Snow is different, but in many places very rare. If it's frequent where you live, you can get a bike with large tires that are optimized for this.

It's true that you can't take passengers, but I think over 95% of car rides are when there is only one person in the car (the driver).

Snow is fine, I use studded tires. With that said, winter cycling is its own beast, and in my endless bike advocacy, I never push it on people. Instead, my message is: Give cycling a try when the weather is nice, then you can decide how many months you really want to keep riding.

In my world (upper midwest city), "winter" is defined by when the salt trucks come out, because wet salt is murder on bikes. In addition to studded tires, I have an entire dedicated winter bike, to keep the salt off my nice bikes. Winter ends when the first heavy spring rain washes the salt away.

It's not about replacing cars, it's about replacing all those short car journeys. I understand that people are just lazy and take the car for a 1km trip, but with a bicycle you can do the same trip, usually faster. If you don't need to commute to work more than say 5km, then the car isn't your best option, the bike is. Once you got rid of your car, for those few cases where you need to haul big loads or multiple people just rent a car.

I find it hard to believe that in most scenarios an ebike is going to replace these trips, as weather, cargo capacity and logistics have vastly different impacts. I see much bigger application for people who already ride a bike, and more improtantly have a "bike mentality", being able to extend their range and potential use-cases. This is an important market, but much, much smaller than short car journeys.

I think it's true that it depends highly where you are and how your cities are designed. I'm in Denmark and I've never owned a car, and I get by on a (non-e) bike just fine for a daily driver. Certainly sometimes you'll need to do ridesharing in cars or rent a car, but that's less than 10 times a year.

The Better Bikes Pebl are great in the rain or snow: https://www.better.bike/

The Organic Transit ELF doesn't come with a floor but owners have fitted their own: https://organictransit.com/

Where I live there are many e-bikes with extra compartments for bags, children or other things. They have become popular.

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