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Comment by 8note | Hacker News Reader

The climate isn't a big deal, finland has the climate for biking too, it's mostly about having the infrastructure and maintaining it.

If cold was a problem, cars wouldn't work either because they'd be unable to handle snow. However, we maintain our car infrastructure and plow the roads

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Cars have heaters. Bikes don’t. Transporting a baby in freezing rain on a bike is a non-starter. I’m sure it could be done, but why? Cars represent progress. Bikes as a primary form of transportation is a regression.

A car is progress for the car's driver, but it is a regression for everybody else: cars are loud, dangerous and they take insane amounts of space. In sparsely populated regions, sure, that is not a big deal compared to the upsides, but in dense cities, cars are basically a public nuisance.

> Transporting a baby in freezing rain on a bike is a non-starter.

My reaction is the opposite. You’d stick a baby in a car to go a distance you could travel by bike?

If you’re going to the next town over, by all mean, go with the car. But I wouldn’t drive to the store with the car when the bike would do (or I’m particularly lazy that day)

Of course I would. My trip would be 2 minutes each way instead of 20, I wouldn’t be considered about weather, and I’m far less limited in what I can purchase on this trip.

Now sure if I want to spend a nice leisurely Saturday afternoon riding a back then maybe I’d take a bike but that would make my intent the bike ride rather than shopping.

Until everybody insists like you on driving. Because of the increased traffic, it now takes longer. Not to mention trying to find parking. And with the extra traffic, it's dangerous to bike now. Oh well.

It depends on the density. If it is a desirable place to live, that will definitely happen. If it isn't, you can still drive and more people won't necessarily join you in driving. The secret is to just live in a so-so place.

This conversation always goes:

- "there should be fewer cars in cities"

- "I need my car in my rural area, there's no-one close by"

- 200 pages of back and forth talking over each other

If you're not in a city or city adjacent, any infraatructure change won't affect you at all.

Since we're talking about e-bikes, more and more of them can maintain 20 mph with or without pedal assist and some can get up to 27 mph with pedal assist. But either way, you'd have to be a snail-pace rider for a 2-minute car ride to take you 20 on a bike, unless you are like 1 block from a freeway that doesn't get backed up routinely and has an exit near your destination.

Nothing wrong with snail paced riding of course. But going fast is pretty damn fun in a city with decent infrastructure that makes it reasonably safe. I routinely keep pace or beat traffic on shorter trips on my road bike. It's not really that hard to maintain 18mph if you do a lot of riding and have a moderately well-maintained bike (mine isn't even nice lol, it was like $400 used and is almost 50 years old, with a few choice part upgrades). And a lot of city traffic is stuck at that speed or lower during congestion hours in many areas. Granted, I'm closer to 12 mph on the trip home if I'm hauling several days worth of groceries.

For reference, my commute within SF used to take me 45 minutes due to traffic by car. On my bike it was 50. Include finding parking and it was a wash. By bus+wall it took about the same. I didn't drive. If the bus was faster (because it didn't get stuck on traffic), I would have used it exclusively.

To some people, cars represent consumerism, not progress.

Most normal people take public transit into consideration when moving to a new place.

Consumerism sounds like progress to me. It’s the reason I don’t wake up and farm my land or sew my own clothes. Sure, there is a lot of shit products nowadays but that seems caused by corporate profit seeking and globalism.

Exactly! Corporate profit seeking is why most cities in the US don't have functional transit systems.

Car ownership is forced upon us here. Some of us would prefer a functional system of busses and trains.

Cars externalize their problems. If cars internalized their problems the tailpipe would come out of the dashboard.

While I enjoy the imagery, the same is true for buses.

The metaphor doesn't work all well for tailpipe emissions, but the reality that cars externalise their impact is obviously true for things like congestion, the cost of road maintenance & so on.

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