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

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151–160 of 170 posts

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

#151
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-...

I live in an EU capital also, and pay 2-3 times that for an apartment.

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

#152
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your anecdote mistakes electric motorcycles with e-bikes. In the USA, there are three legal classes of ebikes; with the fastest class having max legal speed of 28mph.

TBH the proliferation of “motorized things on wheels” seemed to happen over night and I have no idea what the classifications are.

Ok, but its an important distinction to be aware of when interpreting safety statistics. Advocates of ebike adoption are not talking about motorcycles.

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

#153
post #71
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you deliver furniture and maintenance machinery to your place?

Fine, delivery vehicles only, in the city center

How much of the "public property" mentioned above the "city center" is?

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

#154
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you deliver furniture and maintenance machinery to your place?

These arguments always follow the same pattern: >> I don't want to be brutally killed by a car on unsafe infrastructure >> Oh yeah? Well how are you going to have a refrigerator delivered or get your sick grandmother to the hospital? I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just hyper-logical thinking that it has to be all-or-nothing and implemented solely by force. But man, grandmothers and refrigerators are going to be just fi…

The idea is just not as obvious as you think. Take, for example, Manhattan in NY. If you compare the ratio of car/bus on its streets to a smaller city (I live in Seattle), it will be significantly lower. To the point that I am unsure removing cars altogether would change road conditions.

Now suppose we take all or majority of Manhattan's roads, let pedestrians in, and only allow buses, trucks, and utility vehicles. Suddenly buses are much slower than they are now, because the pedestrians have the right of the way.

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

#155
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you deliver furniture and maintenance machinery to your place?

Does furniture deliver and maintenance machinery only fit down 6 lane highways, or do you think it might fit down a single lane road?

I don't think the person above is complaining about 6 lane highways.

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

#156
post #66
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you deliver furniture and maintenance machinery to your place?

I mean if you genuinely wanna game theory this out, what's wrong with wheel barrows or carts?

Extreme labor inefficiency. Today Amazon's driver can deliver an order of magnitude more packages than a person with a wheel barrow could. There are 100,000+ Amazon drivers in the US. You'd need at least 1,000,000 people with wheel barrows.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe something like this is technically the law here as well. But it goes completely unenforced.

The NYPD does pretty regular publicity about taking these off the road. Which would be fine if they did anything at all about protecting vulnerable users from motor vehicles. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2021/11/29/nypd-seizes-illegal-m... https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/01/when-seconds-count-nypd... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/the-nypds-new-efforts-to-pol...

I’m looking out my window and see two. I stand by the claim that it’s basically unenforced.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following the links [1] with quotes I've selected, the answers seem to be mainly: 1) You forgot about insurance 2) Your car's value was in 1999 dollars, not 2022 -- $1 in 1999 was worth $1.71 in 2022, so you need to adjust your yearly cost upwards into 2022 dollars 3) You haven't mentioned loan interest, which is additional cost if you financed it, which the average person needs to do 4) If $22K was below average for…

There’s little reason to carry full coverage on a car over 7 years old and, classic cars aside, almost no reason past 10 years.

If you choose to self-insure, that only lowers your true cost by whatever the insurance company's profit margin is, not by the full amount of the payment.

You might come out ahead, you might come out behind, but the risk of losing the car is still, on average, costing you something.

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

#159
post #31

I'm a huge fan of programs like this, but one thing that cities like Denver (especially Denver) need to be wary of are things that actively worsen bike commutes over time. I live nearby, and one of the things that is a frequent topic of conversation is how dangerous certain bike trails in Denver are due to assaults and muggings. This is a new phenomenon, and there are bike trails in Denver I wouldn't go near on an ex…

Denver resident who routinely rides bikes on those trails--mind providing some citations on those so we can know where to avoid? I've never had issues with folks in underpasses while running/biking (mostly early morning hours or commute hours), but could imagine there being issues at different times.

Please see the other comment reply to you. I read articles on this and also heard stories from coworkers but for me to provide citations I would have to Google and then copy and paste links which would end up being more effort than for you to just do it yourself and read what comes up.

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

#160
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you genuinely wanna game theory this out, what's wrong with wheel barrows or carts?

Extreme labor inefficiency. Today Amazon's driver can deliver an order of magnitude more packages than a person with a wheel barrow could. There are 100,000+ Amazon drivers in the US. You'd need at least 1,000,000 people with wheel barrows.

That's true if we decide it's a good idea to continue to deliver millions of packages of small plastic goods every day. A big part of that is probably also due to the USA's massively isolating suburb design and poorly layed out roads.
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