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Comment by wiredfool | Hacker News Reader

That's one big factor why I don't have an e-cargo bike. Live in town, in a detached, Shops are <1km away. I want an bakfiet style e-cargo, but I've got no place to store one.

Can't get a decent sized bike down the alley, it's difficult to pull one through the house to the shed, and the entry hall already has a tandem in it, which is wide enough to step around.

OTOH, I could get a trailer and park it in the front, and that would be totally legal.

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Solution: buy an old, rusty, barely functionnal van, paint it the most provocative way for the conservative people while still abiding to the law. Boobs, penises, vulvas, LGBTQ+ slogans, drawings of Bin Laden with huge neon colors, whatever. Park it in your driveway if you have one, or on the street in front of your house if you can. With an amovible ramp, here is your bike shed.

Now after a few months you can apply for a permit to have a bike shed, maybe the concil will be more tolerant.

People have been tolerating thousands of ugly eyesore vehicles that do not match at all with the architecture but crack down on small, well integrated bike shed. This is just hypocrisy and jealousy by people who refuse to evolve to a new, better world.

I like the way you think.

A few years ago, a local residents association protested and actually got blocked the opening of a daycare in an actual commercial space due to "traffic" concerns and, I literally quote "The heritage status of area properties would be “eroded” by the daycare use, he said, and the idea of plastic toys, jungle gyms and signage in pastel colours “truly distressing.”.

I fantasized about being a billionaire, paying whatever it would have cost to purchase the property, then opening a private "biker bar club" that would operate at insanely late hours and just paying any noise bylaw fines that came our way. I would have sponsored harley noise competitions at 3am and would have said that it's a pop up club that would end when the application for it to become daycare was granted. I'd have named the daycare "little trikes daycare" as a constant reminder.

But the HoA/council/government can often make your life hell by selectively over-enforcing other laws and taking up a lot of your time and/or money. If I were rich and retired, it'd be "fun" to pass the time (though I wouldn't want to live in such a community anyways).

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/cabbagetown-daycare-proposa...

Get a trailer and park the bike in the trailer.

I _have_ a trailer, but it's got too much bike holding stuff inside to hold a large bike.

(It's a tall box, sorta horse trailer shaped, with benches on each side. Luggage goes underneath, 4 bikes go on the left on the bench, 2 on the right (including the tandem), with front wheels in the nose. We travelled around Europe with all our stuff in it.)

Why? Their goal is not to somehow get away with making the envirinment more ugly and consume a part of the street or driveway permanently.

They don't want that trailer any more than anyone else does.

We've had similar struggles and something like a babboe or urban arrow won't fit. I was 95% close to ordering a Libelle https://leichtlast.de/ The non-motorized unsplittable version weighs around 20kg, the splittable slightly more, but it is splittable.

We then settled for a Muli https://muli-cycles.de/en/

I still sometimes think the Libelle would have been cooler but the motor is stronger on the muli and I'm very happy with it too.

I really like the cargo basket on the Muli. I've kind of had my eye on the Omnium (https://omniumcargo.com/de/shop/produkt/cargo-v3-wifi/#frame...), there's a hinge attachment for the rack which can make it a lot narrower. (https://damgood.bike/products/ouch-1-omnium-utter-cargo-hing...)

You might see improvement here - https://irishcycle.com/2023/07/28/department-exploring-plann... but honestly Ireland is so carbrained I wouldn't hope for much.

Ireland being carbrained is an understatement. I have neighbours who will drive to the local Lidl which is _in_ the housing estate. I cycle or bus to work and you see so many motorists glued to their phones. Just awful attitudes because of their addiction to their cars and their phones.

We moved to the Netherlands for our kids. People were apoplectic when I said that rural Ireland is actually a terrible place to raise a family.

I grew up in rural Ireland, you’re not wrong.

Fortunately our Urban Arrow fits down the side of my house.

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