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> The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they can start using it again or sell it to somebody who will use it. Certainly d
by Zenst 6y ago
> The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they can start using it again or sell it to somebody who will use it.
Certainly do more to increase bike usage and keep the momentum of usage going than any marketing thing.
What would be nice would be better incentive to use public transport and to not use cars, we have used the stick with taxes for a while, carrots like this can only work better.
If they could get that balance right and maybe focus on cheaper public transport, incentivise ride sharing and bikes, more so bikes over electric as they are more accessible to the whole populus, not just those who can afford to cash in on incentives out of many peoples reach.
Been all well having subsidies for solar paanels, electric cars, but when the outlay and means to get those put those out of the reach for so many, let alone people who rent, or indeed walk or cycle. Perhaps the focus would perhaps incentivise using less electricity, incentivise public transport and bicycles, not just expensive hire bikes for hipsters in which most will end up being stolen by those who can't afford to access them via other means.
But this initiative as a one off is both timely and good on many levels as you say, getting unused bicycles into action over the whole disposable mentality of most objects, is fantastic. Also nice boom for the bicycle repair industry, though unsure how they have been impacted by things currently.
- bobthepanda 6y agoAt least in the Parisian context, moving people to bikes is probably the most cost effective way to green transport, since the trains are all packed to the gills and getting some people on bikes is a cheaper way of making space than spending billions of euros on new lines (which they are also doing, but it's good to have more than one arrow in the quiver.)
- Zenst 6y agoI was thinking more about buses, had a look and https://www.ratp.fr/en/plan-bus https://www.ratp.fr/en/plan-bus More useful in replacing cars in many area's, as using existing infrastructure, unlike trains.
- bobthepanda 6y agoBuses are good short term but suck long term. Where I live, in Seattle, the bus system has been wildly popular over the past several years and the transit system has had high ridership growth (in total rides and as % of commutes) in North America while most of the peer agencies have seen total declines. The problem is that they stopped scaling: - For a while Seattle has been unable to hire enough drivers to run the schedules, because there is simply more demand than supply of bus drivers in the entire US - Seattle has also run out of space to store buses, and for various reasons people do not like having a bus depot located in their neighborhood (parking lots are unsightly, the bus depot generates traffic and lots of diesel buses are unpleasant; electric is not mature enough for widespread fleet replacement and it would be a massive capital cost) - the amount of buses being run is now so high that buses get stuck in bus congestion, even with a whole four lane road dedicated only to buses in the downtown area, and several more bus lanes on parallel roads So now we are hurriedly spending $50B to replace buses with rail, because - trains carry more people in one vehicle and with one driver - trains have full or mostly full separation from traffic, which means higher average speed and thus better fleet utilization and running less vehicles for the same frequency