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Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

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Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#121

Post by Tempest1981 »

zachkatz wrote: post #86
chitowneats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver is trying. But they have so far to go. I wish them luck and success. The driving culture is strong.

Here's a random main street in Denver: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7322582,-104.9861576,3a,75y,... Or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7356145,-104.9873758,3a,75y,... ...or another one: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7383571,-104.9929042,3a,75y,... You can click around to pretty much any street in the city, and 100% of the space is dedicated to cars. A complete bike network that enables mass cycling…

Can bikes ride in the dedicated bus lanes? (Shown in the streetview links) I know there's no raised dividers, but they look empty.

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#122

Post by hifromLA »

Spivak wrote: post #103
chitowneats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver is trying. But they have so far to go. I wish them luck and success. The driving culture is strong.

I think people mistake city planning where 12min Car / 55min Bus / 2hr Walk / 30min Bike is “driving culture” where so much noise is made about encouraging people to not drive while doing nothing and covering your ears when it comes time to make not driving viable. I would love to give up my car, we went down to one because wfh but there is no chance in hell we could go zero. We don’t even have a bus route down my st…

Yeah that’s a very typical spread of travel times. There’s very few cities in America where a majority of trips are not best served by a car. Even cities like SF and Chi which ostensibly have good public transit, mostly have what I would call “downtown shuttles”. Any trip to the CBD is pretty reasonable by transit, but most trips both in the city and greater region are by bus which are by definition slower than a car.

Cities oriented around the car (even relatively dense ones like LA) are very difficult to adapt to transit because there are no logical nodes at which to place the transit.

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#123

Post by alwayslikethis »

krashidov wrote: post #120
wonder_er wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Denver, and find the bike infrastructure to be criminally inadequate. The same is true for the road infrastructure, but the bike lanes are set up to ensure that there's a continuous stream of dangerous and complex interactions where bicyclists would be effortlessly killed by a driver. I ride a scooter around the city full time, like a small motorcycle, and it's so fast and easy and convenient. I used to bik…

I'm curious. Why do you think a bike is more dangerous than a scooter? I find that on a scooter I am more prone to crashing from random bumps

Scooter as in a type of motorcycle with a step through frame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle) They are heavy and stable, unlike the standing type.

They may be less dangerous than a bike because they can go quite fast, matching the speed of cars when riding on the road, which helps you avoid dangerous situations in which car drivers try to pass you without enough space to do so. Good bicycle infrastructure can minimize this, though it doesn't seem like Denver has it.

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#124

Post by sangnoir »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #123
krashidov wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Why do you think a bike is more dangerous than a scooter? I find that on a scooter I am more prone to crashing from random bumps

Scooter as in a type of motorcycle with a step through frame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle) They are heavy and stable, unlike the standing type. They may be less dangerous than a bike because they can go quite fast, matching the speed of cars when riding on the road, which helps you avoid dangerous situations in which car drivers try to pass you without enough space to do so. Good bicycle infrast…

Parent may have been thinking of the other type of scooter with tiny wheels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorized_scooter

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#125

Post by wonder_er »

krashidov wrote: post #120
wonder_er wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Denver, and find the bike infrastructure to be criminally inadequate. The same is true for the road infrastructure, but the bike lanes are set up to ensure that there's a continuous stream of dangerous and complex interactions where bicyclists would be effortlessly killed by a driver. I ride a scooter around the city full time, like a small motorcycle, and it's so fast and easy and convenient. I used to bik…

I'm curious. Why do you think a bike is more dangerous than a scooter? I find that on a scooter I am more prone to crashing from random bumps

u/alwayslikethis nailed it. I'm thinking of a scooter as in "a small motorcycle", with a gasoline engine. mibe is 170 cc, and it's perfect.

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#126

Post by lm28469 »

d_sem wrote: post #4

When you factor in the reduced capital costs, carbon emissions, noise pollution, traffic, wear on infrastructure, health benefits, etc of electric bicycles the opportunity cost of car ownership over e-bike adoption is tremendous. The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year: a figure which blows my mind.(edit: Source bankrate.com, the top hit on google) As a personal anecdote, my household has gone fr…

> The average cost of owning a car in 2022 is $10,728 per year

And then you read stuff like: "The average monthly car payment is $716 for new cars and $526 for used.", which is more than what I pay for my flat in a EU capital

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#127

Post by lm28469 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #52

I’m not exactly sure what counts as an e-bike but here in nyc we have people riding vehicles that are significantly heavier than a typical bike, go 20ish miles an hour, and require no peddling in bike lanes. Can’t say I care for that.

In Europe they mostly solved that through regulation, ebikes can't provide power if you're not actively pedalling, they're caped to 25kph (~15mph) and can't exceed 250w, if they go faster or provide power by another mean they're considered like 50cc mopped or motorcycles depending on the speed/power which means you need an insurance and a license plate

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#128

Post by lm28469 »

avianlyric wrote: post #39
j_walter wrote: post #16

Honestly this is not great efficiency. While getting more people of the road is great, the CO2e avoided per dollar is magnitiudes less than what can be done at the private company level. $4.77M for 2,040 MT CO2e reduced/avoided yearly My company was able to install a abatement unit that reduced >4,000 MT CO2e yearly for ~$150K. We are doing many more of these, but the cost is way better on a per lb level than this wa…

Has it occurred to you that e-bikes provide greater benefits than just CO2 reduction? They also reduce congestion by removing car journeys, they reduce amount of road infrastructure that needs to be built, they reduce the cost of maintaining road infrastructure (e-bike cause effectively zero damage to roads), they reduce healthcare costs by improving rider fitness. In short, for a government getting people on e-bikes…

And less pollution in cities, and more physical activities (lack of it is directly causing the leading cause of deaths in the US), &c.

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#129

Post by lm28469 »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #33

Just today I saw a crazy e-bike kid cruise down a major highway, going back and forth between the north and south lanes on the shoulder at intersections, narrowly missing several tractor trailers. And when I am in major cities I am regularly almost run down by scooter people. What are the stats on injury rates on these things?

Don't forget you're dying a little everyday because your lungs are actively filtering exhaust from cars ;)

Re: Denver’s e-bike subsidy program produced more new riders, fewer car trips

#130

Post by Ekaros »

wonder_er wrote: post #125
krashidov wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Why do you think a bike is more dangerous than a scooter? I find that on a scooter I am more prone to crashing from random bumps

u/alwayslikethis nailed it. I'm thinking of a scooter as in "a small motorcycle", with a gasoline engine. mibe is 170 cc, and it's perfect.

I think in Europe they are defined as max of 50cc and top speed of 45. So slightly under urban speed limit. Not that lower limits aren't coming more common.
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