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Electric bikes are a huge improvement over standard bikes, and no improvement at all over a car for a significant number of use cases. They’re also no more usef
by GW150914 8y ago
Electric bikes are a huge improvement over standard bikes, and no improvement at all over a car for a significant number of use cases. They’re also no more useful than a bike in places where roads are poorly maintained, rain and snow are frequent, or no bike lanes exist. They’re not useful for taking kids to school, or doing significant errands. They are amazing for a single person to get around cheaply without killing themselves on every hill, and probably a godsend in SV. Most of the world doesn’t have SV’s weather though, and a lot of people have kids.
Electric bikes and scooters are very cool, but they’re no more a solution to the car in most cases than a motorcycle or Segway. They do nothing for people with long commutes, or who live in spread-out suburbs. No one is trading in their minivan for a moped.
- jacquesm 8y ago> They’re not useful for taking kids to school, Where I live a few hundred thousand kids are taken to school by bike every day. All the way up to age 10 or so it's pretty common to see parents with kids on the back (and sometimes on the front or both) of their bikes. https://www.24baby.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mamafiets.jpg https://www.24baby.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mamafiets.j...
- icebraining 8y agoEven in Brussels, with its heavy traffic and unseparated bike lanes, there are quite a few parents taking kids around on bike.
- roel_v 8y agoNo sane person would do so in any country that doesn't have the bicycle infrastructure we have in the Netherlands. I live in Australia and/or New Zealand a few months out of the year, and I've taken my kids to school there - it's insane to do so on a bike. And this was in places that actually have bike infrastructure and bike activism! Dutch people need to try cycling somewhere else before claiming that bikes are a car replacement somewhere else (they could be everywhere, given the right infrastructure and culture, but they're currently not, that's my point)
- bodas 8y agoMy parents must not have been sane! London doesn't have the best bicycle infrastructure (it certainly didn't when I was a kid) but you still see parents riding with their kids. Although nowadays you tend to see parents on kick scooters hurtling down the pavement.
- ufo 8y agoBike infrastructure in the Netherlands is actually a very modern invention. It used to be a car-centric place like everywhere else.
- jacquesm 8y ago> No sane person would do so in any country that doesn't have the bicycle infrastructure we have in the Netherlands. Totally agreed, but bike infrastructure is something that you can actually decide to implement.
- GW150914 8y agoHow? I personally can decide, but unless many millions of other people agree, and make it a voting issue then my decision is sort of masturbatory. How can public transit be improved in NYC, or SF, or The UK? How can people make that decision and make it stick, get political support, financing, and avoid common pitfalls of large public works projects?
- u801e 8y agoI do so with 3 kids on the bike on the road following vehicular cycling principles.
- u801e 8y ago> No one is trading in their minivan for a moped. During the summer, Iwould take my three kids to the daycare/summer program by bike. Two would sit in the Burley Bee bike trailer and the third would sit in the Thule Yepp maxi bike seat. It's a 3 mile trip one way and would take me about 20 minutes. I would then ride back to work. I also would do some grocery shopping with the trailer used as storage. I didn't get rid of the minivan, but I didn't drive it more than a few times a month.