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It could be attempts to not be opinionated, but the author doesn't seem to be a daily/commuting bike rider. I guess it is bikeshare data so there isn't various
by AtlasBarfed 5y ago
It could be attempts to not be opinionated, but the author doesn't seem to be a daily/commuting bike rider. I guess it is bikeshare data so there isn't various subsegments like road/mtb/fattire bike usage, electric assist vs manual, etc.
I did some three and a half season commuting one year (my bike couldn't handle substantial snow, if I had a fattire I would have done most of the snow days). This is in a northern midwestern state so it is -20 F to 100 F in full seasonal range. Non-assisted, I'm in good shape.
You'd also need information on whether they have showering facilities, secured parking for the bike, a permanent locker/space for the commuting clothes, backup rainsuit, toiletries, towel.
For my 5 mile commute, generally I lost nothing in time assuming the usual gridlock for the cars and parking in a garage. Showering was basically timeshifting with a bit of PITA.
But the big issue is that, compared to busses or even a really cheap used car, it doesn't really save that much money. You need to buy a lot of weather-specific clothing, the maintenance of the bike surprisingly adds up, flat tires are a big PITA compared to a donut wheel, and the rain is so hard... it just gets everywhere it seems.
And bikes always seem to steal about 10-15 minutes at either end, mostly due to security/storing/getting out of storage. Bike locks are a PITA. Bikes run into everything like doors as you hold them open.
So if city governments are serious, they need to get parking garages to pony up free secured storage space, incent those Planet Fitness places (which have the largest number of urban locations for a semi-public shower) to offer subsidized free or near-free access to shower and a free/near-free locker and/or subsidize work showers and lockers and storage. Subsidize/incent a bike rescue/repair service. Then there's the usual bike lanes/trails/crazy driver problem. In for-profit-healthcare America, biking is a substantial risk.
That said, for my 5 mile commute, I far preferred biking over driving, well, as long as it wasn't raining. Bundling up down to 25 degrees F had no effect on my enjoyment.
I also lived in a downtown and when it's nice enough to bike, it transforms living in a city substantially. You can hop on a bike (with the usual 10 minute annoyance) and basically teleport somewhere else in the city in 5-10 minutes. You can't do that with a car and parking, or walking.
The other big issue with urban bike transport is that it is almost impossible to take a left turn safely. And if you really want to make biking in the city nice, "superhighway" bike lanes with no lights make things so much easier. A lot of old railway lines going through cities can become these.
Nothing crystallized the (and I hate using this word) privilege-inducing psychology of cars than the difference in effort between getting going on a bike from a red light and a car. One involves almost a full-body mini-sprint that uses all your muscles, the other involves releasing a couple muscles in your shin to drop a pedal about a half an inch. The psychology of having a device with 100-500x the power output as a human controlled with the smallest of muscular movements coddles you, makes you impatient, and introduces a distinct and dangerous bully complex to the car-bicycle relationship if that person has any insecurity.
Heck the boring company should probably have started with a small-scale bike commuting tunnel as a POC. I also wonder if building elevated bike trails is really that expensive if we threw some civil and materials engineers at it for a bit.
Almost everything I stated was for the scooters too, it's just that they are slow and ridden by utter morons about 50% of the time, which shows I guess they are tapping a new market, since bike riders would never use them in that manner.
- Doctor_Fegg 5y ago> Heck the boring company should probably have started with a small-scale bike commuting tunnel as a POC. I do genuinely think the best way Apple could move into the “mobility” market is by buying Brompton, the folding bike maker. Lightness paramount? Check. User experience way beyond competing products? Check. Premium, urban-focused market? Check. Going straight to self-driving cars is a massive leap for any company, even Apple, with no history in the area. Get people on bikes first and go from there.
- b3morales 5y ago> it's just that they are slow and ridden by utter morons about 50% of the time Can't disagree, but as a cyclist and pedestrian, I'd far rather such people ride scooters than pilot cars.
- mijamo 5y agoI don't really agree on the cost. I ride bike by -15C and the only specific thing I have is studded tires, which are about 200$ the pair and last at least 4/5 winters. Pants, jacket and gloves are anyways needed even to walk in winter so no read additional cost. What's more When it's cold it snows and doesn't rain so you just just warm clothes, not even waterproof ones so I use to just have warm sweatpants. A car would be a least 400$/month so much much more expensive, which is Why I don't have one. Chain maintenance and oils are peanuts, I've spent less than 50$ in three years. The worst season for me is mostly the fall where it gets around 0C with rain and wind and then it gets super annoying to ride. I'd take -5 and snow anyway over a windy rainy day at 10C
- Symbiote 5y agoIn Copenhagen I can only claim a –5°C to 25°C range, but over 60% of people commute by bicycle. Few workplaces have showers, and even where they exist, not many people use them. It's not necessary – we aren't training for the Tour du France on the way to work. A reasonable bicycle costs around €250-600. It should easily last 5 years. The only bicycle-only clothes I own is a pair of waterproof overtrousers (€15-ish). I seem to get a puncture about every 18 months or so. I can fix it myself for €1 (patch) or €5 (new tube), or pay someone about €20 to fix it for me. The delay at either end is measured in seconds, not minutes. Cycle parking is almost always more conveniently located than car parking. My bike is "locked" the Danish way, with just a rear wheel lock. I have occasionally spent 5 minutes looking for my bike, when I park it somewhere busy and forget where I left it, or someone has moved it to sweep up leaves. (I have done the same with a car, except for the leaves.) > Then there's the usual bike lanes/trails/crazy driver problem. Make it safe enough for a 7 year old child to cycle to school, and the most expensive part of the job is done. The rest (parking, showers, free repairs etc) is just decoration. (But copy the Netherlands if possible. Copy Denmark if the Dutch way appears politically unachievable.) > Almost everything I stated was for the scooters too, it's just that they are slow and ridden by utter morons about 50% of the time, which shows I guess they are tapping a new market, since bike riders would never use them in that manner. With the assumption that approximately everyone in Copenhagen is a bike rider, I claim that it's the rented e-scooter that turns people into morons. I don't know why, but something about them makes normal people decide to dump them in the middle of the footpath, or have 3 people zooming around on one through a pedestrian area. After less than a year, the e-scooters rental were banned from starting or ending in the city centre.