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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

#581

Post by BizarroLand »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #532
Symbiote wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are sidewalks "polish"? In most of the world, they're the default thing - before a roadway suitable for cars, before piped water, before sewers, before electricity.

Because where you gonna walk to? Your gonna walk 5 miles to Target and back? That'd why sidewalks is polish. Most sidewalks I see outside of tight downtowns are useless and barely used, and they aren't free to build and they don't generate anything if no one uses them...

I've been to and through Chattanooga a bunch of times. It is a city where you almost definitely need a car for basic subsistence.

The poor areas are super poor and semi-distant from goods and services. Biking somewhere from the poor areas, unless you have time and energy to spare, is going to be a big undertaking most of the time, not even accounting for the hills.

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

#582

Post by blunte »

mint2 wrote: post #556
blunte wrote: post #268

Not a criticism of e-bikes, but I discovered an unexpected danger related to e-bikes which was much less an issue with traditional bikes: when driving a car, it's now much more difficult to judge how much time you need to pass a bike. I would say without hyperbole that it's much more dangerous now, to the cars and the bikes. I currently live in a Dutch village, so bikes and cars share rather narrow roads. The roads a…

Do you mean it only takes the Tesla a very short time to close the gap between it and the car upfront? If so, won’t passing make one stuck behind the next car? What’s the point? To leave less of a gap between the car than the Tesla was doing or to continually pass all the cars?

Imagine you're merging onto a freeway. You have limited runway before you have no more lane. The lane you need to merge into has a Tesla next to you, and some cars behind it.

You could slow down and hope one of those cars behind the Tesla slows to allow you to merge, but not only is that unlikely but it screws up traffic flow. Naturally you step on it so you can speed ahead and merge. But that Tesla drive has the ability to show you that he's boss, and he's faster than you. Now you're going faster and have even less lane remaining, so you must hit the brakes hard and try to merge into the new gap behind the Tesla. That's dangerous, but it's now about your only option.

Or you simply want to change into a lane and fill in the space between the Tesla and the car some distance in front of him. Maybe you see congestion ahead in your lane, or perhaps you're about to encounter traffic merging into your lane.

There are tons of legitimate reasons you might want to get in front of that Tesla. And if you already were going faster than him, it would normally be no problem for anyone. But in angry driver traffic with the new electric capabilities, people can basically use their cars as weapons.

It may sound dramatic, but it was already a bad behavior some people would exhibit when they were angry, competitive drivers. Now they have much more ability to fight.

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

#583

Post by blunte »

sudosysgen wrote: post #567
blunte wrote: post #268

Not a criticism of e-bikes, but I discovered an unexpected danger related to e-bikes which was much less an issue with traditional bikes: when driving a car, it's now much more difficult to judge how much time you need to pass a bike. I would say without hyperbole that it's much more dangerous now, to the cars and the bikes. I currently live in a Dutch village, so bikes and cars share rather narrow roads. The roads a…

When I only had a pedal bike, I would often go 30km/h on a flat. I'm happy you can't assume bikes are super slow anymore.

If you're not on a road bike, and you're riding 30+ minutes, I doubt you're going that fast. You can, but you're going to arrive sweaty and tired.

People just don't ride that fast on non e-bikes here in the Netherlands, not normally.

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

#584

Post by blunte »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #403
blunte wrote: post #268

Not a criticism of e-bikes, but I discovered an unexpected danger related to e-bikes which was much less an issue with traditional bikes: when driving a car, it's now much more difficult to judge how much time you need to pass a bike. I would say without hyperbole that it's much more dangerous now, to the cars and the bikes. I currently live in a Dutch village, so bikes and cars share rather narrow roads. The roads a…

I think one of the big challenges with e-bikes is the acceleration. An electric motor combined with the relatively light weight means they accelerate seriously quickly.

I'm not familiar with this problem since I don't ride them. But as a motorist, their ability to accelerate quickly really isn't an issue regarding me passing them on the road.

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

#585

Post by JoeAltmaier »

blunte wrote: post #583
sudosysgen wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I only had a pedal bike, I would often go 30km/h on a flat. I'm happy you can't assume bikes are super slow anymore.

If you're not on a road bike, and you're riding 30+ minutes, I doubt you're going that fast. You can, but you're going to arrive sweaty and tired. People just don't ride that fast on non e-bikes here in the Netherlands, not normally.

Whereas in the US, road bikes are the norm for adults and are typically ridden around 30kph on open road.

For many of the riders, sweaty and tired is the whole point: conditioning. They may take it easy on the way to work (only 20kph) but they'll go flat-out on the way home.

It's why we're so obsessive about helmets, where the rest of the world isn't.

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

#586

Post by quadrangle »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #383
quadrangle wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it might not be inviting , but it's FINE. Biking in negative temperatures with snow is easier than heavy rain (heavy rain is the worst case). The ONLY barrier to biking in snow is whether priority is given to support the infrastructure to make it safe. Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Answer: because Finnish people have dedicated bike paths th…

“Cleared” is a bit of a red herring. In reality this means ploughed. You’re still riding on compacted snow with puncture-wielding stones on top. In the capital they do “clear” some major bike lanes but it’s rather limited.

Sure, but specifically the video highlights a town that does it the best, and it might be biased but the claim is very strong that it really is used widely and quite nice.

To put it the other way, driving in the most heavy snowy weather isn't ideal either.

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

#587

Post by quadrangle »

topkai22 wrote: post #352
quadrangle wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bikes are not that dangerous, they are less dangerous than cars. So, yes, the danger is infrastructure that puts bikes next to cars instead of giving bikes their own space.

A cursory look at the data says that bikes are more dangerous than cars in the current environment. The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics says that in 2017 806/37473 fatalities were cyclists, or 2.2%, but the NHTSA data indicates that only 1% trips are by bicycle. That is a worse percentage than pedestrians (16.2 % of fatalities but 10.5% of trips) but substantially better than motorcycles (13.9% of fatalities b…

Yeah, but the point is: It's not bikes that are dangerous, it's the biking situation with bikes mixed with cars.

Of that fatality number for cyclists, how much of that is because of cars? I suspect near 100%. Almost every cycling fatality I've ever heard of is because of a cyclist hit by a car. So, it doesn't make sense to say that bikes are dangerous. It's the cars that are dangerous to cyclists.

And the reason it's worse than pedestrians is because proportionally less of the time that pedestrians are out walking are they in conflict-zone with cars. It remains the case that cars are dangerous. It's not walking that's dangerous. Walking in car traffic is dangerous.

On a side note, I think collisions between bikes and collisions with a bike and a pedestrian are less often fatal than collisions with cars. If I were to get hit by someone running a red light while I'm walking across the street, I'd prefer to get hit by a cyclist than by an SUV.

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

#588

Post by qq4 »

edub wrote: post #377
qq4 wrote: post #365

I strapped a no-name Chinese kW hub motor kit and a nice battery on a $100 steel mountain bike I grabbed off Craigslist. I've ridden in downpours, through snow and ice you name it. The bike kicks butt and was way cheaper than a car, not to mention quiet and super easy maintenance. I'm not surprised they're getting more popular. I hope small electric vehicles take over.

Tip for anyone else planning on doing a conversion, milesvp mentioned in a thread a few months ago that other parts of the bike may likely need to be upgraded as well (brakes, suspension, ect): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28270121

I would suggest a steel frame with disc brakes. Suspension is a nice bonus. If it can carry a fat person it can carry a healthy person with battery and motor.

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

#589

Post by nonesuchluck »

mcny wrote: post #434
richiebful1 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't generalize to most cities though. In my Rust Belt city, the government has put a lot of effort into making cycling safer on the road. The people cycling from one neighborhood to the next are a diverse bunch. Kids are using cheap hand-me-down bikes to go to school. College kids are commuting to campus. Adults of all ages are riding to work at a service job or downtown office. What it took was a focus on g…

» What it took was a focus on good quality bike lanes outside the affluent white neighborhoods, bike accessibility at transit stations/on busses, and expansion of bikeshare to poorer neighborhoods. I've never been to Chattanooga, TN but once I realized I can work from home I've been curious about owning a home somewhere with gigabit fiber but without ridiculously expensive real estate within commuting distance to a C…

I've lived in Chattanooga long enough to call it home (decade+). First thing about Chattanooga is, it's built on the backbone of the Interstate system, in the valley between some mountains. It's a bigtime car city. Anyone outside our immediate downtown has to hop the highway to even get here, or brave treacherous mountain roads (our W Road is even a tiny bit famous... W not being a compass point, but a shape).

As you've noticed on Google, our downtown and close-lying (expensive) neighborhoods have sidewalks and bike lanes aplenty. They're fantastic. But there's no similar facilities in older, poorer, and outlying neighborhoods (many of which were simply suburbs until the city crept in). Nor any practical connection between neighborhoods for foot+pedal traffic.

But our internet's great.

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

#590

Post by danny_codes »

elzbardico wrote: post #336
danny_codes wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to bike-rider behavior on roads, of course cyclists appear "misbehaved" on roads. The roads are not designed for cyclists, so we have to fight with the design of the transport network to get anywhere Car-oriented transport infrastructure has been a terrible mistake. Don't blame the cyclists for trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

Car-oriented infra structure was responsible for a sizable portion of the economical development for quite a while.

I would argue the opposite actually. If the US had embraced trains as people movers early on, with local subway systems, I'd imagine we'd have seen even more economic growth than we did. Our cities would be far more prosperous, our people healthier, our energy footprint lower. Better social mobility..

It seems likely that cars actually hindered average GDP growth from '45 to today, rather than helping it.

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