42 ms·

To expand the scope here a little, personal electric transport will take over city centres over the next five to fifteen years and managing that transition will

To expand the scope here a little, personal electric transport will take over city centres over the next five to fifteen years and managing that transition will be tricky and divisive. The fundamental driving force of this change is that electric vehicles scale much better than fossil fuel power vehicles. A 500watt ebike is perfectly quiet, clean and reliable whereas a gas engine of similar power and weight is messy, polluting and loud. Start with bike paths. In North America, the standard is becoming 20mph/32kph. I ride an ebike often and I find this is more than fast enough and probably equal to about an automobile's 40mph with traffic lights. Vehicles allowed on these paths should have a limited width and the allowed speed should depend upon its weight. It's not necessary to restrict motor power since speed is regulated by weight. So yes, if you're on a pedal bike you still have to follow the speed limits even if it's down hill. Some jurisdictions already follow this scheme with police and speed guns (Calgary is one as I recall). The next step is to transition fossil fuel traffic to electric traffic in the city core. The most effective approach here is to initially allocate an entire lane on say, every fourth road, to electric (but not pedal only), vehicles of all sorts. The reason for excluding pedal only, ie normal bikes, is that their acceleration is too slow when starting from a dead stop at intersections. Whereas electric bikes have excellent acceleration, even better than cars from a dead stop. Allocating a full lane to electric traffic (even Teslas) will be a big incentive for commuters to switch to electric transport. Another benefit is that it's much cheaper to do it this way than to create bespoke bike lanes. Just the low concrete dividers on top of the lane lines is enough and they can be laid down or removed very easily and cheaply for flexibility. As more commuters adopt electric transport more lanes can be allocated to them. Before you know it the city core will be all electric excepting delivery trucks.

rsj_hn 5y ago
The problem with bikes is the collision safety issues as well as protection from weather. It's not so much that pedalling is hard, but that it's not safe, and requires a high trust society. While there are small island of high trust urban socities still around, they are not the norm. Yes, I know of all the bike riders in Holland. I also know that the rest of the world is very different from Holland. This is why ever larger SUVs are popular. That's not to say that they can't be electric, but the future is more with the frigthteningly large cybertruk clad with bulletproof glass that provides someone comfort driving through a dystopia of riots, assaults, and protection from other cybetruck drivers running into them, rather than a version of happy milk-maids bicycling through meadows of flowers. This vision of bike riders, while certainly very pretty, is lost in the Julie Andrews past, and will remain a dream as long as we continue to live distrustful, isolated lives. Unfortunately nothing I've seen has made me believe the west is even capable of turning that around, and whether it turns around or not has nothing to do with urban planning or technological advances.
- MivLives 5y ago
  My biggest concern when I'm on an ebike is parking it. Bike racks and locks aren't really designed for the thicker tubes. My bike is suddenly worth 5 or 8 times as much as it was without the motor. When I used to ride a One Wheel around, at least I could take it with me. With a car I could at least be sure it likely wouldn't be stolen.
  - entropicgravity 5y ago
    Much of this could be remedied by ebike makers including a front wheel lock that keeps the wheel at an angle. Almost all mopeds have this and it's cheap and effective. Because the lock is integrated with the steering breaking it involves breaking the bike. Because the wheel is "turned" a thief has to either carry it or but it in a vehicle both of which attract attention.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      As long as you can lift a bike and stick it in the back of a pickup truck or load it into a van, bikes are going to be much easier to steal regardless of physical locking mechanism. But one interesting idea is some kind of electronic kill switch and GPS tracker, particularly on the electric bikes that have juice. I think that would be the direction I'd like to take anti-theft defences for bikes. But as you start adding more valuable components to bikes like batteries and motors, you will start getting bike chop shops like you have with cars.
- entropicgravity 5y ago
  What I'm talking about here applies to the urban downtown where traffic is usually congested and slow. The situation you're describing is more like stroads and highways where bigger is better. Driving a cybertruck in congested downtown traffic is not something that most drivers would look forward to. A zippy ebike would get them where they're going faster and more conveniently.
  - asdff 5y ago
asdff 5y ago
I think a big issue with these is that for one people are buying them with cash, for two the used market is questionable owing to battery/abuse/etc and overall not much cheaper than new, and three they aren't insuring them. in an urban area, this means if someone steals your ebike, you are out like over $1k sometimes with no recourse at all. We have systems to deal with this for car theft (insurance, cops that care more about car theft than bike theft), but nothing for small transit like a bicycle. Most people will probably give up after a single theft if they have a car still in their garage. $1000 is a lot of money for the vast majority of people. To make these sustainable they either have to be cheap cheap, like less than $100 cheap because for some people that's over a days wages, so that when they are stolen they can be replaced rather than alternatives sought, or we have to invest heavily in securing these bikes and going after theft. I'm not sure if the latter can actually be done considering I've had my own bike stolen in my city from my underground, gated, surveilled apartment parking garage, and I'm not sure what's left to prevent that from happening to anyone again short of a guard standing watch 24/7, and you can't practically have that on every corner of the city.

rsj_hn 5y ago

The problem with bikes is the collision safety issues as well as protection from weather. It's not so much that pedalling is hard, but that it's not safe, and requires a high trust society. While there are small island of high trust urban socities still around, they are not the norm. Yes, I know of all the bike riders in Holland. I also know that the rest of the world is very different from Holland. This is why ever larger SUVs are popular. That's not to say that they can't be electric, but the future is more with the frigthteningly large cybertruk clad with bulletproof glass that provides someone comfort driving through a dystopia of riots, assaults, and protection from other cybetruck drivers running into them, rather than a version of happy milk-maids bicycling through meadows of flowers. This vision of bike riders, while certainly very pretty, is lost in the Julie Andrews past, and will remain a dream as long as we continue to live distrustful, isolated lives. Unfortunately nothing I've seen has made me believe the west is even capable of turning that around, and whether it turns around or not has nothing to do with urban planning or technological advances.

MivLives 5y ago
My biggest concern when I'm on an ebike is parking it. Bike racks and locks aren't really designed for the thicker tubes. My bike is suddenly worth 5 or 8 times as much as it was without the motor. When I used to ride a One Wheel around, at least I could take it with me. With a car I could at least be sure it likely wouldn't be stolen.
- entropicgravity 5y ago
  Much of this could be remedied by ebike makers including a front wheel lock that keeps the wheel at an angle. Almost all mopeds have this and it's cheap and effective. Because the lock is integrated with the steering breaking it involves breaking the bike. Because the wheel is "turned" a thief has to either carry it or but it in a vehicle both of which attract attention.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    As long as you can lift a bike and stick it in the back of a pickup truck or load it into a van, bikes are going to be much easier to steal regardless of physical locking mechanism. But one interesting idea is some kind of electronic kill switch and GPS tracker, particularly on the electric bikes that have juice. I think that would be the direction I'd like to take anti-theft defences for bikes. But as you start adding more valuable components to bikes like batteries and motors, you will start getting bike chop shops like you have with cars.
entropicgravity 5y ago
What I'm talking about here applies to the urban downtown where traffic is usually congested and slow. The situation you're describing is more like stroads and highways where bigger is better. Driving a cybertruck in congested downtown traffic is not something that most drivers would look forward to. A zippy ebike would get them where they're going faster and more conveniently.
- asdff 5y ago

asdff 5y ago

I think a big issue with these is that for one people are buying them with cash, for two the used market is questionable owing to battery/abuse/etc and overall not much cheaper than new, and three they aren't insuring them. in an urban area, this means if someone steals your ebike, you are out like over $1k sometimes with no recourse at all. We have systems to deal with this for car theft (insurance, cops that care more about car theft than bike theft), but nothing for small transit like a bicycle. Most people will probably give up after a single theft if they have a car still in their garage. $1000 is a lot of money for the vast majority of people. To make these sustainable they either have to be cheap cheap, like less than $100 cheap because for some people that's over a days wages, so that when they are stolen they can be replaced rather than alternatives sought, or we have to invest heavily in securing these bikes and going after theft. I'm not sure if the latter can actually be done considering I've had my own bike stolen in my city from my underground, gated, surveilled apartment parking garage, and I'm not sure what's left to prevent that from happening to anyone again short of a guard standing watch 24/7, and you can't practically have that on every corner of the city.