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Remote work’s toll on cities

nymag.com

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Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city governments cater to childless people, criminals, and the homeless, not necessarily in that order. They don’t give a shit about you and your kids and it shows in everything they do.

Cities spend between 50 and 75% of their budgets on schools, and the largest line item after that tends to be policing, followed by water service.

You’re right, I forgot downtown employers on that list. Cities operate the schools so workers have a place to drop off their kids during the workday.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities spend between 50 and 75% of their budgets on schools, and the largest line item after that tends to be policing, followed by water service.

You’re right, I forgot downtown employers on that list. Cities operate the schools so workers have a place to drop off their kids during the workday.

Have you thought about making your own Richard Scarry book? It'd be fun to read. I want to know why the cities fund the water systems next.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, I forgot downtown employers on that list. Cities operate the schools so workers have a place to drop off their kids during the workday.

Have you thought about making your own Richard Scarry book? It'd be fun to read. I want to know why the cities fund the water systems next.

Totally OT, but TIL about Richard Scarry. Neither my childhood nor my childrens involved an encounter with that author's works significant enough for me to remember.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very accurate description of trying to live in San Francisco with kids. My family moved to a town outside of SF and all of those issues vanished. The few people I know who stayed behind are fighting are fighting fiercely to fix some of these issues. I madly respect and admire them for it, but holy cow does it take a toll. At some level I’ve accepted that cities in the US are really optimized for people who…

The city governments cater to childless people, criminals, and the homeless, not necessarily in that order. They don’t give a shit about you and your kids and it shows in everything they do.

[deleted]

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, I forgot downtown employers on that list. Cities operate the schools so workers have a place to drop off their kids during the workday.

Have you thought about making your own Richard Scarry book? It'd be fun to read. I want to know why the cities fund the water systems next.

To deliver the mind control fluoride, duh. Or wait, that's too wild. To monitor the viral load of the sewage to justify freedom destroying lockdowns.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, I forgot downtown employers on that list. Cities operate the schools so workers have a place to drop off their kids during the workday.

Have you thought about making your own Richard Scarry book? It'd be fun to read. I want to know why the cities fund the water systems next.

[deleted]

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#237
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a life-long New Yorker, born and raised. Even I gave up on the city and moved out, despite all the desire to live with low carbon-impact and live a moderate lifestyle w/o cars. At some point, the pain factor becomes too much. I'll give you some examples - Approximately 5-6yrs ago the transit quality in the outer-boroughs (not Manhattan) became so bad that you could spend 2hrs hours switching multiple trains if yo…

> as if I could jump on a ride-share bicycle with two kids. So while this is rather tangential to the post in general, The cargo bike is the exact solution to this problem[0]. Just because your city is terrible at bicycle infrastructure doesn't mean it's a problem inherent to cities. And honestly by your post it sounds like New York is just terrible about infrastructure in general . [0] https://www.babboe.be/media/we…

That’s funny. Do you have kids? That picture is quite cute but reality is different.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#238
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensively, yes. Having housing & non-housing in the same area is rare in much of the US.

But... What happens if you've had a beer and suddenly remember you need a pint of milk for the morning? To pick an entirely not uncommon example from my own life...

You take the car to the nearest big box store, mart, etc... usually miles away.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#239
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as if I could jump on a ride-share bicycle with two kids. So while this is rather tangential to the post in general, The cargo bike is the exact solution to this problem[0]. Just because your city is terrible at bicycle infrastructure doesn't mean it's a problem inherent to cities. And honestly by your post it sounds like New York is just terrible about infrastructure in general . [0] https://www.babboe.be/media/we…

That’s funny. Do you have kids? That picture is quite cute but reality is different.

Your misconceptions about reality and kids are sad and badly misinformed.

Bakfiets are quite common and extremely popular in the Netherlands, and people carry their kids around in them all over the place all the time. They even have transparent hoods and windshields for the rain. And the kids and parents absolutely love the delightful experience of safely biking all around the beautiful parks and ubiquitous well maintained bike paths of the city and countryside together.

Biking in Amsterdam on a bakfiets with kids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1ThOYD8Ic

And now they even have bakfiets eBikes with heavy duty powerful motors and stepless continuous variable planetary hubs with automatic transmissions (Enviolo Automatiq), which make them easy and effortless to ride. So you can stop at lights without shifting down, and they automatically shift down without pedaling and back up as you accelerate, so you can pay full attention to the road, other riders, and your kids, instead of worrying and hassling with shifting gears.

I have two Kogi eBikes with Enviolo automatic hubs (not cargo bikes with the heavy duty motors and hubs, but normal city and countryside bikes), and they really are as great as the reviews describe:

Review: Lovens cargo bike (with English subtitles!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx30anSN6Bo

@3:23> After a week this cargo bike really feels like a second car. Maybe even my first car. Before every journey I thought: Can I take the cargo bike, or do I need the car? Often the cargo bike sufficed. My wife needed to take the kids to the other side of town. She was late going to the playground, took the cargo bike, and arrived well ahead of time. We had a day out with it, disposed of waste paper and went shopping. There's no problem with this big box. So how does it feel? This is the more expensive, automatic bike. And I'm very happy with that. Here you set the pedal frequency, the amount of revolutions per minute. Then the bike changes gear automatically, so you pedal the same frequency while picking up the pace. The speed is great. It rides very smoothly up to 25 km/h. But you can keep pedaling and reach 30 km/h with your own leg power without too much effort. [...]

Is Enviolo the best internally geared hub for eBikes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob5Rb4IKsw

@2:32> But another nice thing about this system is that you can shift it when you're stopped. And that's something that's pretty consistent throughout all internally geared hubs. This is considered an internally geared hub because the gears are on the inside, not on the outside, as you normally might find on a derailleur system.

>And in an urban environment, it's really helpful, because you come to a stop, and you can shift down, and you're ready to go!

>Because you might not necessarily remember to do it, or maybe in one of the common applications, like a cargo bike, you're worrying about the kids in the front, or your cargo that you're carrying, and you forgot to shift when you came to a light.

>You suddenly have to stop in an urban environment. You can easily shift down and get back into that lower gear and prepare yourself to start out again.

>And that's really helpful. So I think that's one of those things where people really appreciate it. Outside of that, I think that there's a lot of people that are just not so used to shifting gears specifically.

>The idea is that you can just twist it away from you to go into a lower gear and towards you to go into a higher gear. And the idea, because it's a continually variable transmission, you don't have steps to it.

>Normally a transmission on a car, like a five speed manual transmission, which I know maybe people in the States are not as comfortable or familiar with that sort of thing, but basically you shift into those five individual gears.

>Or on a bicycle you can shift seven, eight, nine, ten, they even go up to thirteen on a traditional derailleur, and some of them have even more than that, on the internal hub, like the Rollup. But it has a similar range as the traditional derailleur as far as the gears, now this one has 380%, but you basically have an infinite number of steps in between that.

>So as they say, for the Enviolo hub, it's an infinite number of gears. There's a couple ways of shifting the system. This one is a cable version on here, so you have two cables, and one cable will push it into a lower gear, and one cable will push it into a higher gear. And you shift it up on the handlebars.

>But you also have automatic versions, which can be fully automatic, and actually you don't have to shift it at all. You just program in what assistance level you want, and it's going to shift up or down.

Enviolo Stepless Shifting: A smart range of hubs for different riders needs.

https://enviolo.com/products/

>AUTOMATIQ: Why bother switching gears manually? The stepless automatic technology takes the ride experience to the next level with its ‘set it and forget it’ approach. Riders only need to set up the desired cadence, and the stepless automatic technology will adjust the enviolo system so they can always pedal at the same pace, even up or down hill.

>Integrated system: As part of the “integrated system”, the technology can be merged into the e-bike’s control unit. Simplifying the handlebar and the ride experience.

Even after the kids are big enough they get their own bikes to ride, the Bakfiets is also extremely useful for shopping, groceries, recycling, picnics, hauling cargo, and pets.

And most kids bike themselves to and from school, so swarms of frustrated helicopter parents don't need to all take time off work at once and all jam the streets at the same time twice every day to drop them off and pick them up from school.

And on top of that, the educational system and health care system in the Netherlands doesn't even suck, in fact are actually quite good, and as a result, the teen pregnancy rate is the lowest in Europe, and the teen suicide rate is much lower than the US, because they actually teach sex ed and accept people for who they are instead of shaming and brainwashing them into changing who they love and how they identify!

You should move to a better location or at least elect better leaders, if you live in such a drab dangerous car infested dystopian hellscape, that you think reality necessarily can't be any better than that. Don't your kid deserve better than that living in a world where people go out of their way to be hostile to bicyclists just to make a mean divisive political statement?

"It Tastes Like America" -MAGA Rednecks Rolling Coal On Bicyclists, Electric Cars, Pedestrians, Protesters, BlackLivesMatter, Trump Haters, Tree Huggers, Elderly, Children, Minorities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPMbLO4pAY

You and your kids are really missing out of what parents and kids in the Netherlands and other less backwards countries than the US delightfully and safely experience every day, and you'll all be much healthier and happier, less angry and frustrated, with more exercise and fresh air and less pollution and stressful driving in jammed traffic in your life.

Re: Remote work’s toll on cities

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s funny. Do you have kids? That picture is quite cute but reality is different.

Your misconceptions about reality and kids are sad and badly misinformed. Bakfiets are quite common and extremely popular in the Netherlands, and people carry their kids around in them all over the place all the time. They even have transparent hoods and windshields for the rain. And the kids and parents absolutely love the delightful experience of safely biking all around the beautiful parks and ubiquitous well main…

The Urban Arrow is a great example of a big cargo bike that can carry 4 small kids -- over 200 pounds -- in the box, with a sturdy roll cage, optional sun and rain canopies, rear rack, child seats, belt drive, that comes with the heavy duty automatic Enviolo hub and Bosch motor, that's available in the US.

Urban Arrow Family Cargo Bike Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ2f08RHD1Y

>I've been really anticipating doing the review on this bike, but there's been a new version pending which is finally here. This is the new Urban Arrow Family UA4. This bike has always been very popular in our shop and it's just a good all around bike for carrying your kids and includes a bunch of different accessory options to fit your needs. Thanks for watching!

Why cities are better with cargo bikes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ-fch1LRWk

>We visited Nijmegen, the oldest city in the Netherlands, to ride with avid cargo bike advocate Jos Sluijsmans. Sluijsmans is an organizer of the International Cargo Bike Festival (https://cargobikefestival.com/), the Cargo Bike Expertise & Innovation Center and is a member of the Dutch Cycling Embassy. Join us as we chat about why cargo bikes have so much potential, how Sluijsmans got involved with cargo bike advocacy and stay for the bike-centric infrastructure and lovely views (yes, there are goats). A big thank you to Urban Arrow (https://urbanarrow.com/) for supporting this video.

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