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> - might be impossible depending on work or children; The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Have two kids seated in the trunk of
by matsemann 4y ago
> - might be impossible depending on work or children;
The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Have two kids seated in the trunk of the bike and drop them off at kindergarten, then continue biking to work and pick them up on the way home.
Those are a bit on the pricier side, though. Still cheap compared to a car, but people often look at them as something "extravagant" or "in addition" to a car. But they can be a replacement for most car use, and then just rent a car for other more seldom occasions.
And to avoid the initial big purchase, not even sure if it's something for you, there's a startup where I live ( https://whee.no/ https://whee.no/ ) where you also can rent the bike on a monthly basis. Really recommended to see if it suits your lifestyle.
Lastly, I also think this kind of easier movement will change how people live. You can no longer expect to move out of the city and still get a short way to everything by using your car, making life miserable for everyone else (noise, danger, pollution, too much asphalt). So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, where they will no longer base their lives around owning multiple cars.
- celticninja 4y agoI used a bike trailer and child seat when my twins were young, I could drop all 3 kids off at nursery, unhitch the trailer and leave it at the nursery, cycle on to work from there. On the way back I would hitch the trailer up and go in and collect them and cycle home. Trailer was around £150 and I only had to tow it when necessary.
- sidfthec 4y agoWhy is no one talking about the safety of hauling kids on a bike? It's incredibly dangerous compared to a car. In my city, it's not if but when you'll get hit by a car on a bike. Yet I see parents increasingly think it's okay to haul their children on their bikes.
- oangemangut 4y agoBecause it should be okay, and it's a societal failing that it currently isn't as safe as it should be. Cars are always safer for their occupants, but using them puts vulnerable road users at greater risk of serious injury or death. In my city I love to see more people on the road with their kids on e-bikes. It shouldn't be a moral failing on part of the parent to be doing that. OTOH, just this morning one of the A*Hole parents back her SUV out of a parking space in a day care parking lot while on the phone and holding the phone to her ear. When I motioned for her to get off her phone in the DAYCARE PARKING LOT she shrugged and sped off.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sidfthec 4y ago> Because it should be okay But it isn't. End of story. Happy to support people who want to make biking safer. Happy to support politicians who want to build protected bike lanes. But you can't just make up a fairy tale land and pretend it's safe. Bring yourself back to real life, and your children are in danger.
- seagullriffic 4y agoI hope this is meant ironically. Cars regularly mount pavements/sidewalks as well, and kill pedestrians who are not even in the road. The correct response to "cars make cities unsafe for everyone" is of course to ban all but the most essential cars from cities. It is not to suggest that the _other_ forms of transport (including walking on the pavement/sidewalk!) are so unsafe as to be irresponsible, in the presence of cars.
- sidfthec 4y agoGreat. But that doesn't help today. And today people are having their kids ride with them on their bikes.
- yibg 4y agoSo it’s not the bikes that are dangerous but the cars around them. Shouldn’t the solution be about how to keep cars away from bikes, not ditch bikes and drive cars?
- sidfthec 4y agoYes that's the solution. How does that help today, as I see parents carry their children on their bikes around dangerous cars?
- garfieldnate 4y agoIn Japan I once saw a woman bike to the grocery store with 4 children on a regular mama-chari. One seat in the front and back, and one child strapped each on her front and back. The most bad-ass mom I ever saw.
- askiiart 4y agoThere's also fairly cheap trailers that you can attach to any bike, and they work quite well.
- petrusnonius 4y agoBrompton lets you try before you buy.
- sharkweek 4y agoIn upfront transparency to avoid sounding like I have a superiority complex based on just how much I love my cargo bike, our family does still have a car. Okay that being said… our cargo bike has replaced 90% of our “last mile” driving here in the city. We take the kids to school on it, we do grocery runs, we take it to the park, out to dinner, just about anywhere we can. In the first two years we’ve put at least 2k miles on it. When we first bought it, I thought “okay when my wife rides the ebike with kids, I’ll just ride behind on my road bike.” It took all but a week for us to go buy a second ebike because of how failed my idea was. The guy at the bike shop, same that we bought the cargo bike from, laughed and said that happened all the time. While we have always been big into bikes, we’re on another level now. I always feel sorry for the poor suckers at the park who ask me how we like the bike who have to listen to me rave about it for 20 minutes when a “we love it” probably would have been enough.
- _hcuq 4y agoPresumably you live in a place where it's safe to cycle. If so, I am envious.
- megablast 4y agoYou don't get to pick where you live? I value my time and safety, so I live inner city, near a park and river I can ride to almost anywhere along.
- wolverine876 4y agoI might be safer than you think. I used to refuse to ride in a city because it seemed dangerous and many people I knew who rode in traffic had been in accidents with cars. But when I ended up on a bike trying it out, I found I could almost always (~95% of the time) avoid traffic, even without bike lanes. Side streets and alleys are great - too slow for cars, but you're probably cycling at 10-15 mph, which is fine. Parks can be great - a shortcut with no cars and beautiful scenery, while the cars have to go the long way. Campuses, plazas, etc. etc. Even sidewalks when empty or nearly-empty can work to bypass traffic or go the 'wrong' way.[0] [0] Second to riding, cyclists love to lecture others on how to ride. And a favorite outlet for their obsession is sidewalks. They don't discuss or consider the reasons or merits, they just have found an easy outlet for self-righteousness and repeat the same phrases over and over. Just remember that sidewalks are for pedestrians first; you are a visitor. Give them the right of way always, let them know when you're behind them (e.g., 'on your left!'), and give them plenty of space (trying walking when a bike buzzes past in either direction - from behind, you can't even hear it coming). Defer to their safety, real and perceived. It's easy. No problems at all IME, except self-righteous people over-excited at an opportunity to lecture someone.
- Tade0 4y ago> So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, where they will no longer base their lives around owning multiple cars. Not if real estate in cities remains as expensive as it is now. That's one of the main reasons why so many people move out and choose to spend so much time commuting. Cars are just a means to an end, which is not living in a one-bedroom apartment as a family.
- CalRobert 4y agoSadly this rings somewhat true, I'm trying to make the maths work on moving from my house in the horrible Irish countryside (horrible if you don't like profound isolation and car-dependency, that is) and move to Utrecht or Houten, or Freiburg, and it is challenging, to say the least.
- Tade0 4y agoGood luck - I have a friend in Utrecht and he's happy there but IIRC he's renting and will do so for the remainder of his life. I was priced out of the city where I grew up, so going somewhere more expensive is out of the question.
- CalRobert 4y agoI'd rather rent somewhere I can walk to the pub then live in my current paid-off house where I'm just lonely all the time. It's beautiful but that only goes so far.
- flir 4y agoI like profound isolation... what's the bandwidth like? (The other thing that ties a lot of us to cities).
- CalRobert 4y agoIt's excellent. Gigabit fibre. I mapped out the rural fibre routes (along with other infra) and current real estate listings. Threw it up at gaffologist.com if you're curious. Note that I am not a front-end dev and it shows.
- mikepurvis 4y agoAs a parent myself who has always had a car but has aspired at times to go car-free, I think the whole "semi-frequent short term car rental" thing only really gets realistic when the kids are old enough to just need those tiny Mifold booster seats / seatbelt adjusters. Conventional UAS-attached car seats are just too bulky and troublesome to be installing and uninstalling all the time in cars you only rent for a few hours at a time.
- CalRobert 4y agoI think the key there is "all the time" - when we lived in the middle of a European city we used car-share, and the car seat was a bit annoying but since we were using it maybe once or twice a month tops it just wasn't that big a deal. Though we were using the seatbelt mount, and not ISOfix.
- ilyt 4y agoI guess if renting was big enough there could be option to rent a car with those pre-installed
- mikepurvis 4y agoI looked into carseat rentals about ten years ago, and it sounded like it's only really common at the agencies located around airports. Overall, I got the sense that there's a lot of fear and liability tied up in it— that giving someone the wrong seat or installing it incorrectly or not cleaning it adequately were all potential landmines waiting to happen.
- aperson_hello 4y agoThat's generally an option, but it's not exactly cheap!
- r00fus 4y agoThey even have inflatable ones you can easily fit in a backpack - I have one sitting in my garage from years ago when my tots needed them. But yeah, if your kid is too small, it's a hassle to to carry around that bulky infant seat.
- Rendello 4y agoI had my mind blown about Dutch-style cargo ebikes, bakfietsen. The cool thing is that you can use the bikes to haul cargo, or put three kids in the front in special harnesses when you need to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA
- em500 4y agoMost Dutch parents don't bother with harnesses in cargo bikes. Or with helmets on normal bikes.
- r00fus 4y agoIf they don't have to deal with cars, perhaps it's ok - but yikes. Helmets for everyone because even at 20kph someone could get a nasty/fatal head injury when they're yeeted out of the cargo area.
- em500 4y agoTry to count the number of helmets you can spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8 In Amsterdam if we see adult cyclists with a helmet we'd guess it's probably a tourist or new expat. For children most parents only bother with helmets until they're six years or so.
- ryukafalz 4y agoThe cargo area in mine has seatbelts sized for small children.
- jodrellblank 4y ago"Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet" by former editor-in-chief of Bicycling, the world’s largest cycling magazine - https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped-wearing-a-bike-helmet/ https://www.cyclingtips.com/2018/11/commentary-why-i-stopped... (Although he does still say kids should wear them).
- holoduke 4y agoYou live in a city bubble. I have three kids and live in a suburban town about 40km away from the nearest big city. No way i can live without a car. I do have bikes and use them often to bring kids to school. But many friends and family are scattered arround the country. Many places i go to with my kids can only visited by car. And i find a car often very useful during a period of reconstruction of my house or garden. Or when i pick up big stuff from somewhere. Nah i couldnt live with out it
- velocity23 4y agoThey said "for many families", not for all families, so there is nothing to refute here...
- ArcticLandfall 4y ago> You live in a city bubble Or relatively, you live in a suburban bubble? Different lifestyles, different modes of transport.
- judge2020 4y agoThere is no bubble, only a lack of desire to seek out knowledge about other lifestyles. The problems with car culture were not surfaced until the rise and dominance of the internet.
- wolverine876 4y ago> The problems with car culture were not surfaced until the rise and dominance of the internet. I'm pretty sure it was discussed long before the Internet.
- ovi256 4y agoWhen people are accused of living in a bubble, it's usually because they show a strong universalist desire to expand their lifestyles to others, without consideration for the others' preferences. The opposite of humanist liberalism that was foundational for Western liberal democracies, or 'live and let live'.
- slothtrop 4y agoCan't understate the temporal dimension to owning a car. When dropping and picking up a kid at daycare, you want to move fast, if you work for a living.
- prmoustache 4y agoA kid goes to daycare for what 3 years? If you have 2-3 kids and you don't wait 10 years in between these are just 10 years of your life.
- slothtrop 4y agoMeaning what, it's not worth owning a vehicle for a 10 year span? Be serious.
- prmoustache 4y agoMeaning this is a moot point for most of your life.
- slothtrop 4y ago10 years does not make a moot point.
- noelwelsh 4y agoEh. For all my kids' daycare career I dropped them off by bike. Given the distance and route it was faster than driving. It really depends on the distances involved, road layout, cycling infrastructure, geography, weather, etc... Not many universals here.
- em500 4y agoThis depends very much on local circumstances. In our local daycare in Amsterdam, probably 3/4 of dropping and picking up was done by bike. Even at that level, using a car is often slower due to tightness of parking space.
- 4y ago
- ulrikrasmussen 4y agoYou can also just put seats on a normal bike. I have two kids seats on my bike, front and back, and take my 3 and 6yo to kindergarten that way. It's cheaper than a cargo bike, and much less likely to get stolen.
- uoaei 4y agoI am dismayed but not surprised at just how much money people will spend on e-bikes to avoid exercise. There are literally millions of decent analog bike frames bouncing around in various corners of <your city here>. Getting one up and running, and strapping a seat to the front and back as you have done, would be about 10% the cost of a new e-bike, and maintenance would be negligible. Plus, you get to eat whatever you want guilt-free!
- grouchomarx 4y agopretty narrow to view ebikes solely as a means to avoid exercise. The list of benefits is long and proven. Regardless, suggesting someone simply dredge up a used bicycle and strap their child to it after a bit of maintenance is unrealistic
- r00fus 4y agoI loved biking into work when I lived close enough (7mi) but honestly I would never have done it if I didn't also have shower access (was a small company but the business park had a shared shower). Doubly so if you're doing any hills with a passenger on board. Sweat/stink is what they're avoiding.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> I am dismayed but not surprised at just how much money people will spend on e-bikes to avoid exercise. I am dismayed at how much people spend on plastic coffee pods just to avoid making a proper coffee! Before I got an ebike, I didn't have confidence of riding on the road proper- > now I know I won't be slowing down to 5 MPH on an uphill, with someone behind me honking incessantly or overtaking dangerously. I installed nice bright lights powered from the central battery, mirrors and a horn. This makes a world of difference.
- gpvos 4y ago> You can no longer expect to move out of the city and still get a short way to everything by using your car E-bikes could actually improve rural life as well (the example I read about was Spain). If you live 10km outside a village and can do your normal shopping by bike instead of car, that can really make an impact. Won't work in really sparse areas of course.
- loeg 4y agoUnfortunately the big front-loaded cargo bikes are, well, big. Almost as long as a car, if not as wide. You need to park them somewhere and they're definitely too big and heavy to carry up any stairs. They're also expensive, like mid 4 figures USD. This starts to look like a similar problem to car ownership and parking. (I say this all as an avid cyclist -- my household has four bikes and one car.) Rentals seem like a good fit for some users so I'm happy to see someone trying it as a business model.
- velocity23 4y agoI agree, I think they're an interim solution for not-very-bike-safe societies. (And bike-safe societies for people who are actually carrying cargo and have to use a big vehicle one way or another). I've read that in the Netherlands, they aren't as common as you'd expect, because kids just ride their own bikes almost as soon as they're able to walk, because school, sport etc is nearby and on a safe separated bike path network. While younger babies are carried in those little seats that mount on the handlebars or racks of regular bikes. I don't think ability to be carried up stairs easily is a good criteria for the practicality of any bike though, or it rules out many ebikes too. Just need secure parking at the ground level.
- lock-the-spock 4y agoI own a bike with a big box in the front and parking has absolutely not been an issue for me. In the last six months I rode > 2600km in and around one of the densest European cities and parked in many different places. I have yet to find a place where I cannot park the bike . You can use regular car parking, but you will always find a dead corner, bike rack, big sidewalk, etc where you can leave the bike. And to be clear, I don't block the sidewalks or otherwise selfishly get in the way of other city dwellers. My bike is an urban arrow, so one of the bigger two wheelers. ~7500€ new with all possible add-ons and a €150 annual insurance that covers the bike in full if ever stolen or damaged in an accident, so I also feel safe parking in rough areas with it.
- loeg 4y agoGlad to hear it. The biggest barrier for me is parking it at home. I don't have an indoor space big enough for a cargo bike and don't want to leave a $8-10,000 bike exposed to the elements and thieves (regardless of insurance).
- rickydroll 4y ago> So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, where they will no longer base their lives around owning multiple cars. Magical thinking will not make it so. My partner and I moved further away from the city where she works because we wanted to move in together and we can't afford rent or property where either of us used to live. I work from home so most the time my car sits charging the driveway. However, all of my doctors are at least a half-hour drive away, my dental clinic is a 50 minute drive, my hobbies are anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour half drive away. The rest of my family is an hour away so no amount of moving will change these things without making the rest of them worse. But bicycles will work fine for 10% of my travel except for there being no infrastructure supporting bicycling.
- fho 4y agoYou might consider getting a velomobile. Slower than a car, but a lot faster than a regular bike. Eg I am currently considering a job that is about 50km away from here, one way times are: public transport 1h50m, car 50m, velomobile 1h to 1h30m depending on effort.
- velocity23 4y agoThere is the 'extra 300 euro/month' bit. Which can be even more in the long run with not paying for car maintenance, insurance etc.
- CydeWeys 4y agoIt sounds like your underarching problem here is housing costs.
- gambiting 4y agoSure but like.........people always say that (for example) in London you can't live closer to work because houses/flats are too expensive. Ok, I mean that's true, but how are you going to solve that? It's a gigantic city which is already full to the brim, with literally 1000+ years of building on top of every single square inch of land available. You would probably have to demolish large areas of London and replace them with high-density housing to match demand - but obviously that's never going to happen. What other options are there? Maybe the only inevitable conclusion is that not everyone can live in London(or any other major city). You can't fix expensive housing in them by just wishing they were cheaper, or with regulations(or I'd love to hear how any regulations would help, beyond banning things like AirBnb).
- robbyking 4y ago> The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car. Absolutely! My wife and I have a 6yo, and we take him everywhere on the back of our Kona Minute. He's big for his age (65lbs) so we're looking to move to a ebike sometime this year, but up to now it's been great! Literally the only time we need to use a car is when we go out of town.
- TomK32 4y ago> So I think we will see a shift in where people settle, Let's hope not all will want to live above the supermarket they work at: https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness
- r00fus 4y agoThis is the case in Hong Kong when I visited my extended family who live there a decade ago. Powered walkways/escalators/elevators everywhere, metro came every 2-3m, shopping/city offices/food courts connected to it all and you did a LOT of walking. That was the closest to Trantor I'll ever be in my life. Sigh.
- tfourb 4y agoWe live in a very small town and I built a cargo bike from scratch to drive my (disabled) son to school. Excellent experience, despite not having motor assist. We still own a car, but we can easily make do with that one car now, where we would likely have had to buy a second one without the cargo bike. And having built it myself, it cost below 1,000€, including the welder I used to construct it. My sister lives in Berlin, has a very young child and just bought an electrified cargo bike. She is not a bike rider, never has been, but loves it. Great alternative not only to a car in a crowded city, but also to crowded public transport if you are transporting a small human.
- ryankshaw 4y agowhat do people do that have kids between the "too big for cargo bike" and "too young to drive their own car" category? I used to take my kids all the time on my e-bike with a burley bike trailer. Now I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. I'm pretty sure the middle schooler would get made fun of if his friends saw him showing up to school or soccer practice in the cargo bucket of my bike. For people that have hit that milestone before me, what do you guys do for your older kids?
- olau 4y agoMy children ride their own bike to school at age 6. I bought light-weight bikes (like Frogbikes or Woom, they keep a great resale value), and accepted that it takes a bit more time. There's a certain joy in being propelled by your own muscles. But of course it depends on the distance.
- Fricken 4y agoMy commute in Jr. high was 7.7 km each way, I started doing that when I was 11.
- Macha 4y ago10 is plenty old to cycle a bike themselves?
- juancb 4y agoSounds like it's time for them to get their own bike to ride to school? You can ride with them on a few practice runs on a weekend and then continue to do so on a weekdays. Once you're both comfortable with the route and their ability to navigate it safely you can cut back on how much of the route you do together or just let them run it on their own. That last bit is a call to be made based on a lot of factors including your kids desire to ride with you.
- atotic 4y agoMy 11 and 13yo happily ride on the back of my cargo bike (Extracycle). Some of their braver, bike riding friends, do ask "Why don't you ride by yourself?" I used to have a burley before the cargo. I think the cargo upright position makes it feel a bit more grown up. Plus, it is so fun. The highschooler absolutely refuses to ride the back of the cargo, and insists on being driven by car. It takes so much longer with all the traffic, but he is willing to suffer to avoid looking uncool.
- throwaway894345 4y ago> The newer style of cargo bikes can for many families replace a car This very much feels like "in addition to" rather than replacing a car, at least in the US. My wife and I (without kids) tried living without a car in one of the largest, most walkable cities in the US and it was doable, but it's just soooo much nicer to have a car. Coordinating rentals or even ride shares are a lot more tedious than jumping in a car and driving, and even if ride shares are cheaper than car ownership, I would often find myself not doing things because of the cost of ride share / car rental / etc. Further, I would have occasional ride share drivers blow me off when I really needed to be punctual, and I also had some fraudulent experiences with car share companies (upcharging me for services that I've explicitly declined and not correcting it via customer support channels). There's also public transit, but that takes wayyyy longer to get around and it's also really dirty, crime-y, and otherwise uncomfortable at least in the cities I've traveled around in. Lastly, cycling is probably always going to be less safe than getting around by car (we can and should improve cycling safety, but I don't know that we're ever going to get to parity with driving) and I don't know that very many people are going to want to subject their kids to that risk as their primary form of transit. I probably wouldn't, realistically.
- olau 4y ago> Lastly, cycling is probably always going to be less safe than getting around by car (we can and should improve cycling safety, but I don't know that we're ever going to get to parity with driving) I think you're biased towards where you live. Where I live, cycling is definitely not considered risky, there are plenty of bike paths, and many people do indeed let their children bicycle as their primary means of transportation. One of the benefits is that the children can get around on their own and be more independent. And yes, 30 years ago there were far fewer bike paths here. So things can change.
- throwaway894345 4y agoI’m not biased by where I live, cycling is riskier statistically than driving pretty much anywhere, including bike-friendly Netherlands: something like 70% of total distance traveled is by car (https://www.statista.com/statistics/449436/netherlands-modal-split-of-passenger-transport-on-land/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/449436/netherlands-modal...) and yet there are fewer annual motorist fatalities than bicycle fatalities (207 cyclist fatalities versus 175 motorist fatalities in 2021: https://www.statista.com/statistics/523310/netherlands-number-of-cyclist-road-fatalities/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/523310/netherlands-numbe...). EDIT: cycling in the netherlands is about 685% more dangerous than driving per https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2020/31/decline-in-road-fatalities-larger-among-motorists-than-cyclists https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2020/31/decline-in-road-fatali.... Of course, this isn’t a like-for-like comparison since the distance traveled by car skews more toward the more dangerous highway miles while cycling skews heavily toward the much safer local/city streets—if you account for that, the difference becomes even more pronounced.