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The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

nytimes.com

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Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#251

Post by BackBlast »

xvedejas wrote: post #233
BackBlast wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's... complicated... I rode a bike to school when my limited money would buy a very bad car or a nice bike. So I opted for the bike and had to ride it because that's all I had. I did that for a couple of years - even in the cold and ice. My commute distance varied in my biking days, from 6 to 20 miles. I always obeyed all the traffic laws, though occasionally in the early AM I'd find lights that would not turn gree…

I have been explicitly told by my local bike coalition not to stop fully for stop signs. Stopping fully is not particularly safe and local motorists don't even expect it. Given that information, what do you think is the correct behavior for a beginner cyclist like me?

Rolling stops are fine, I have no problem with that. That's a good effort, gives you time to really examine the area. Don't blast through at full speed even if it looks clear. That's a bad unsafe habbit.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#252

Post by ghaff »

nradov wrote: post #107
enriquto wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed-use paths are an extremely bad idea and dangerous for everybody. I actively avoid them as a pedestrian and as a cyclist. They should all disappear. If ebikes help to accelerate the inevitable dismissal of these stupid mixed-use lanes, so good! A bike-friendly infrastructure is based on three separate networks, for pedestrians, cycles and cars. Each of the three networks must be continuous, reasonably complete a…

That's a nice ideal but it's just not realistic in most existing built up areas. There's literally not enough space for three separate networks without knocking down existing buildings and buying a lot of land through eminent domain. Let's focus on what can actually be achieved with realistic levels of funding.

Not sure how common this is in other places but in Massachusetts a fair number of rail trails have sprung up over the past few decades--often over considerable opposition in some town or another. Some, like the Minuteman, were explicitly "bikeways" (although pedestrians and, for a time at least, rollerblades are also common). Others have always been pitched as mixed use.

In any case, it's pretty much a non-starter to prohibit at least conventional bikes or pedestrians even though, on the more crowded and narrower paths, I'll avoid them during busy times as a walker.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#253

Post by TrevorJ »

jdavis703 wrote: post #188
TrevorJ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically, you have and electric motorcycle with no traction, no safety features and an untrained rider.

Riding a motorcycle is easier than a bike. In a motorcycle there’s three evasive actions: brake, accelerate or swerve. On a bicycle there’s only two, and that lack of speed is exactly what causes some of the riskiest behaviors from motorists (e.g. close passing.)

I think it's charitable to say there are even two fully useful evasive actions on a bike. An absolutely tiny contact patch and low weight mean that there's simply not enough traction for any sort of aggressive change in direction or speed without ending up off the bike.

What's pernicious about this is, that under normal circumstances most people won't have ridden a bike past these limits, maybe ever, so the first time you realize your bike can go from well behaved to on the pavement instantly is the worst time for it to happen.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#254

Post by mjmahone17 »

mike_d wrote: post #203
analog31 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for a Critical Mass of casual cyclists. ;-)

Responsible bike riders should publicly condemn Critical Mass. They are the type of people that make drivers and pedestrians hate people on bikes, and go out of their way to escalate confrontations due to some bike rider victim complex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_involving_Critical_M...

I’m not sure why responsible riders wouldn’t want to see huge groups of riders asserting their equal right to public space?

Critical Mass helped spur NYC’s bike lane growth. If you’re against direct action that’s fine, but it’s hard for me to see what works better in initiating long term transformation than direct action protests like Critical Mass.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#255

Post by dTal »

Steltek wrote: post #160
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed limits is how it is usually done -- cars can all go much faster than most roads allow for and we are mostly fine. Set speed limits and mercilessly fine serious violations, and the problem goes away as far as it will ever be.

Speed limits are effective? Serious enforcement? Surely you must be kidding. Speed limits are a joke everywhere, even school zones during drop off times. Any reasonable speed limit for a shared use bike path (IMO, <15mph) will be routinely ignored by both e-bikes and roadies.

E-scooters in Europe are generally soft-limited to 25kph (15.5 mph). This is seems like quite a good practical measure, although it's "problematic" from a software freedom perspective. It's quite hazardous for the rider to go much faster than that anyway, scooters are much less stable than bikes.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#256

Post by danny_codes »

mulmen wrote: post #246

I like that e-bikes are getting more people on two-wheeled transportation. I dislike that people are effectively riding motorcycles on dedicated bike paths. I especially dislike that companies get to profit from cluttering public spaces with bicycle and scooter litter. My hope is that long-term we get the e-bikes into the street where they belong and combine that with traffic calming measures to make scooter commutin…

As long as they're speed-limited to conventional biking speed I don't think this is much of a problem. E-bikes have similar mass to normal bikes so the forces are basically the same.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#257

Post by filoleg »

clairity wrote: post #193
dan-robertson wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t LA extremely sparse to the extent that cycling is a lot of effort because of long distances? I suppose e-bikes help but don’t you still lose a lot of the advantages—less time at the start and end of journeys and less distance from parking areas—to the increased travel time from large distances?

not really, though socal on the whole is a sprawl. greater LA is decentralized into a bunch of blended edge cities[0], but the city itself is basically split into the LA basin and the san fernando valley. within these sub-regions, it's eminently bikable, with the two areas linked by subway and rail for bikers. central LA, encompassing downtown through mid-wilshire and toward santa monica/venice, is relatively dense (…

Not from LA, but was able to test it in real life during one of my visit with friends there (a couple of years ago).

We got to Santa Monica beach in the afternoon, spent some time there, and we had a reservation for dinner in koreatown (close to downtown), roughly 15 miles away. Closer to 5:30pm it was time to leave, so we split into two groups: 3 people decided to take Uber, 4 people (including me) decided to take those Lime/Bird escooters.

The results were rather surprising. The escooter group got to the restaurant about 15 minutes later than the Uber group, but only because we were navigating to the wrong place and overshot the restaurant by almost 2 miles. Without counting that, our overall trip was around 1.5 hours.

Here is the kicker: batteries on those scooters were rather not the best. With 4 people riding together, every 20 minutes or so, someone's battery would die (because we didn't all start with 100% at the same time, it doesn't mean that the battery life on those was just 20 minutes, it was just the offset that led to this). And when the battery would die, we wouldn't abandon the person, so we would start searching around for another scooter being available somewhere nearby.

With this in mind, if it was just 1 person riding by themselves, it would definitely beat an Uber ride on that day. And even with 4 people with batteries dying every 20 minutes on someone's scooter, we pretty much beat the people who took Uber by a small margin (which would have been much larger if it was just one person on one escooter).

To underline, I was surprised by two things on that day: how awfully close to the stereotype LA traffic actually was and how viable escooters were in that environment. Prior to seeing it with my eyes, I was also thinking that LA was a bit too sprawled out for it to work. Glad to have been proven wrong.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#258

Post by Robotbeat »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #216
Robotbeat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too heavy to allow driving in the bike lane, IMHO. Needs to be a weight, speed, and footprint limit. But the number of wheels shouldn’t matter, regulation-wise.

So something like an electric recumbent e-bike, with four wheels. Closest thing I could find was " City Commuting Recumbent Quad " , 2nd from the bottom of this page: https://www.trikexplor.com/pages/trikexplor-recumbent-quad I still think they are a bit big but with smaller diameter wheels, removal of pedals for full electric kart experience (but otherwise speed limited as per usual e-bike) maaaybe they could be mad…

Yes, this seems to do it! Kind of needs more enclosure, but it’s only 50kg and seems to meet the other requirements. Work bikes can be up to 150kg (not counting rider/payload) which sounds like a good upper limit on empty weight, so something like this should be doable, even able to add a small extra seat and be fully enclosed (with heated seats?).

https://www.motrike.com/product-item/city-commuting-recumben...

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#259

Post by TrevorJ »

enriquto wrote: post #94
TrevorJ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cuts both ways. I am lucky enough to live in an area with an EXTENSIVE system of mixed-use trails for bikes and pedestrians. I worry that e-bikes, which are potentially much less pedestrian-friendly, will lead to a pushback against bikes being used on these trials at all.

Mixed-use paths are an extremely bad idea and dangerous for everybody. I actively avoid them as a pedestrian and as a cyclist. They should all disappear. If ebikes help to accelerate the inevitable dismissal of these stupid mixed-use lanes, so good! A bike-friendly infrastructure is based on three separate networks, for pedestrians, cycles and cars. Each of the three networks must be continuous, reasonably complete a…

In a perfect world, sure. But it's quite a bit better than treating bikes as human powered cars. It's also pretty easy to do safely: walk and ride on the right, pass on the left, and only when there's no oncoming traffic. People here follow that convention and it mitigates almost all of the issues.

Re: The popularity of e-bikes isn’t slowing down

#260

Post by jimmaswell »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #81
paulgb wrote: post #4

The thing that excites me most about e-bikes is that they change the politics around cycling. Proponents of efforts to make roads safer for cyclists have always gotten pushback from people who think that cycling is a niche hobby of rich lycra-clad yuppies. With e-bikes becoming more common, I know a number of people who would not have touched a bike share but are using it as a replacement for Uber/Lyft rides. People…

you can also look at it from another angle - those e bikers are now a threat to regular bikers as they are driving much faster.

Street legal ebikes don't let you go any faster than a fit cyclist. They just make hills, taking off, and long rides easier.
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