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France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

cyclingweekly.com

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Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#121

Post by com2kid »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #76
jamil7 wrote: post #73

People in this thread are getting really hung up on the idea that someone with a bike == cycling enthusiast. In Europe a huge amount of people just own a bike. Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop and use to commute or meet friends. Maybe it's fallen into a state where it's unrideable. The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they c…

> Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop In Belgium, Belgian people buy mostly new ones in the range of 500-1000. People who don't earn much or students, buy the cheap/used bikes you mentioned. Electrical bikes are > 2000 € and pretty popular. In general, a whole family can bike together and it's very popular during the summer. We can bike were-ever we want during Covi…

One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all.

I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home!

I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will get stolen within 3 years.

Is bike theft just less of a problem in Belgium?

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#122

Post by loeg »

ogre_codes wrote: post #66
CalRobert wrote: post #11

People are focused on the relatively small amount here, and that's valid, but I suspect that some of the incentive here is to keep momentum in cycling going (from people avoiding transit, enjoying temporary bike infra, etc.) and trying not to lose that progress. There might be a lot of people for whom that €50 means a tuneup that gets them to take the bike out when before it would've just rusted. I mean, data would b…

Bikes tend to degrade slowly over time if you don't do regular maintenance. Most people don't notice the slow decline until it's quite bad when suddenly it feels like an unreliable POS. Giving people who are just a little frustrated with their bike might go a long way to helping keep people from getting to that point at least once.

And this is also true of cars, except the maintenance and parts on cars are much more expensive. Probably most Americans don't think much about this much as they drive and service their cars regularly.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#123

Post by Drup »

DonHopkins wrote: post #81

"we want the bicycle to be the queen of deconfinement" I'll bet that sounds really beautiful in the original French.

In french, "la petite reine" (i.e., "the little queen") is a fancy literary idiom for a bicycle. Also, "bicyclette" is a feminine noun.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#124

Post by rytis »

frankohn wrote: post #99

Adoption of cycling would require more serious actions like improving the road system for the bicycles so that cyclist are safe from the cars. The cycling should be also a pleasant activity so that people can do it naturally, without being forced. I am in France and I am enjoying now the reduction of car traffic and the improvement of air quality but this is going to end as soon as the confinement is over.

Same here in London. We still can enjoy relatively car free roads, but this is definitely going back to "normal" where cycling becomes quite close to a Russian roulette type of activity... I'd like to commute on a bike, but I'm not that suicidal (I've clocked in 20k km on London roads commuting, but now it's too far, too dangerous).

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#125

Post by loeg »

cultus wrote: post #69
ogre_codes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bikes tend to degrade slowly over time if you don't do regular maintenance. Most people don't notice the slow decline until it's quite bad when suddenly it feels like an unreliable POS. Giving people who are just a little frustrated with their bike might go a long way to helping keep people from getting to that point at least once.

This doesn't get enough attention in cycling promotion. One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance. Wheels go out of true, shifting gets wonky, and it starts to look like an unreliable form of transport. Sturdier commuter bikes help a lot with this, but every commuter seems to think they need a bike with super-light wheels and a thin, weak 12-speed chain.

12-speed chains are exclusive to the high end MTB space; no commuter bike is going to have that. Even high end road is still mostly on 11-speed. They're also not any weaker than wider chains:

https://bikerumor.com/2013/02/19/bikerumor-shimano-chainwear...

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#126

Post by egypturnash »

Aeolun wrote: post #93
NicoJuicy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop In Belgium, Belgian people buy mostly new ones in the range of 500-1000. People who don't earn much or students, buy the cheap/used bikes you mentioned. Electrical bikes are > 2000 € and pretty popular. In general, a whole family can bike together and it's very popular during the summer. We can bike were-ever we want during Covi…

> 1 € / bike / 24 hours for 12€ / year) At that price point it becomes hard to justify owning a bike yourself...

If you bike every weekday: (52 weeks/year * 5 days/week * 1€/day) + 12 = 272€.

Add in however much you think these bits of hassle are worth:

• various amounts of time spent looking for a bike, especially if you go somewhere they don't tend to cluster and someone else took the one you're using

• bikeshare bikes are typically kind of heavy and clunky, possibly with solid tires that don't blow out but transmit every bump in the road to you

• bikeshare bikes are usually one-size-fits-all, which I guess is fine if you're the perfectly average size, but they're always too small for me; an improperly-sized bike is harder to ride and can create more strain on your body

And of course you can subtract maintenance costs, I'll pull 50€ out of my ass as a yearly number for that.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#127

Post by mytailorisrich »

Etheryte wrote: post #101
chrisseaton wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France is one of the world's richest countries Not even in the top 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

While I don't agree with the original discussion points, I don't think this counterpoint has much merit. While France may not be "one of the richest" verbatim, there's no denying France is a rich first-world country. In the list you linked to, it ranks 25 out of 187 by the IMF estimate and similarly in other listings.

This was not a counterpoint point at all. More like bike-shedding meets strawman.

There has not been any counterpoint to my comments yet, actually. My guess is because people have an emotional and ideological take on this: Cycling is good so giving money to fund repairs of bike has to be a positive measure as well. Except that it is not based on any economic or rational reasoning. I'm pretty certain that the only result will be to fund superfluous purchases or upgrades because that the standard effect of windfall subsidies.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#128

Post by touisteur »

The region around Paris decided to give a 500eur subvention for ebikes and 600eur for ecargos. One per adult person if you live in Île de France. Great (waiting for the check right now) but I'm not sure it didn't jack the prices up a bit :-\

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#129

Post by loeg »

ogre_codes wrote: post #72
cultus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't get enough attention in cycling promotion. One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance. Wheels go out of true, shifting gets wonky, and it starts to look like an unreliable form of transport. Sturdier commuter bikes help a lot with this, but every commuter seems to think they need a bike with super-light wheels and a thin, weak 12-speed chain.

One of the reasons I think people like the bike share programs. The bikes are burly and slow, but they get the maintenance they need where they usually don't end up truly horrible.

In my experience they mostly don't get maintenance; they're just built extremely cheaply and treated as disposable. Various parts that are easy to break (derailleurs) are elided by using Internally-Geared Hubs (IGH). The wheels are non-pneumatic and just a solid piece of rubber, so they never go flat.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#130

Post by jobigoud »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #13
soperj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because most people who bike are rich?

That's beside the point. If you have a bike and puncture a tyre, you do not wait for the state to give you money before you repair it. France is one of the world's richest countries so I'm thinking that the French were not saving up to change their bikes' tyres... They've been given free money to spend on bikes, so they will spend it on bikes (repairs or not, let's be honest, because it's ridiculous to think that the…

What if it's the chain that's broken or a wheel is not straight or a brake cable needs replacing or the bike spent a few years in a cellar and it's not clear to the owner if it's roadworthy or not?

Almost everyone has a bike but they are convenience vehicle, not everyone is a hobbyist or has the proper tools to repair it outside of patching inner tubes.

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