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France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

cyclingweekly.com

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Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#171

Post by tomcooks »

aidenscott2016 wrote: post #103
tomcooks wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can save further by patching air chambers with other air chambers, or better yet fit a ring of old air chamber between you tire and the air chamber, creating a thicker wall that it's harder to penetrate by debris, glass, nails, etc. You can get your tires pumped for free at most bike shops, gas stations, public bike repair stations. Use your saved up 50€ for beers or better yet give it to someone else so she can…

Is 'air chamber' the literal translation from French? I like it better than 'inner tube'

Camera d'aria in Italian. Câmara-de-ar in Portuguese. Cámara in Spanish.

And so on and so forth.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#172

Post by Fricken »

com2kid wrote: post #121
NicoJuicy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop In Belgium, Belgian people buy mostly new ones in the range of 500-1000. People who don't earn much or students, buy the cheap/used bikes you mentioned. Electrical bikes are > 2000 € and pretty popular. In general, a whole family can bike together and it's very popular during the summer. We can bike were-ever we want during Covi…

One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all. I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home! I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will g…

I've been commuting by bike my whole adult life and I get a bike stolen once every 3 years on average. I typically spend around $1000 on my bikes, and the cost is still dick-all compared to transit or driving.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#174

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

input_sh wrote: post #148
com2kid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all. I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home! I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will g…

What I've learned while I lived in Amsterdam is that you want to invest ~30% of the value of your bike to purchase a bike lock. Basically make it not worth the effort to break the lock. Also second-hand and rusty ones are better than new ones. Some Dutch cities have a free-of-charge engraving mechanism where you basically engrave a serial number on a bike to make it easier to track down stolen bikes, as well as to kn…

> What I've learned while I lived in Amsterdam is that you want to invest ~30% of the value of your bike to purchase a bike lock.

That advice predates the battery-powered angle grinder, which many bike thieves in Western Europe now use. Even the toughest, most expensive U-lock can be broken in about a minute with an angle grinder.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#175

Post by nie100sowny »

Instead of €50. The government could make €70 tax relief. Then there would be no need to transfer (€50 x millions of bike owners) through the government's hands and to waste peoples effort on serving the whole operation.

The only reason why it is not like that is because politicians like to have our money which gives them power and makes the state bigger and bigger.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#176

Post by ORioN63 »

zxexz wrote: post #111
smeyer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that $50 shouldn't be trivialized. That being said, in America that's well below the standard for a month of groceries for one person (unless they're eating all of their meals out or something like that). Here[0] are the USDA food plans with budgets for "food at home". The cheapest category is "thrifty", and even there they budget about $100 per month for a one year old through about $190 for an adult male (t…

Thanks for the link! Perhaps I should have said $50 is a sizable chunk of a monthly grocery budget. For about a year when I was 19ish I managed to get by on $50-ish/month for groceries, by mainly living off rice and beans, with some eggs and other items thrown in. I don't know if that counts though because I got a lot of goods from dumpsters as well; Whole Foods throws out a lot :O Now I'm way less frugal when it com…

Not sure why you were downvoted.

When I was in college, I also didn't have much more than 50€ for groceries. I did fine, but I also lived in walking distance to everything. Not everyone is as lucky.

Do people think poor people don't commute? 50$/€ is def. a lot for a myriad of people.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#177

Post by gambiting »

wolco wrote: post #58
gnarbarian wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things here, wd40 actually accelerates the wear on your bike's drivetrain. It's sticky and will attract grime which chews away at your chainring and cassette. It also gets all over your pants and stains your leg. Use some proper chain lube and your drivetrain and clothes will last longer. If you ride your bike a decent amount you'll need to do morem maintenance. Per mile ridden, cheap Walmart bikes require more…

A lot of people would just get a new bike before repairing.

Where do you live that's so rich that people get new bikes instead of repairing the ones they have???

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#178

Post by Ma8ee »

BurningFrog wrote: post #140
com2kid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all. I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home! I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will g…

When I lived in Sweden, on average one bike would get stolen per year. My experience in California is similar. Once you accept that, it's not that much money. The bad part is that you can never buy that Really Nice bike you'd really want.

I’ve have used bicycles as my main mean of transportation most of my 43 years of life in Sweden. I’ve had exactly one bicycle stolen during all those years. But I’ve always been very careful to lock my bike to something with a good lock.

Re: France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends

#180

Post by cko »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #135
com2kid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all. I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home! I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will g…

I’m from America, but I visited Copenhagen a few years ago and was amazed by how many bikes there were. On top of it, most bikes were parked with only a wheel lock and not chained to anything.

I was in a suburban ward in Tokyo two years ago and it didn't look like any bikes had locks on them. They were all identical bikes with large kickstands.
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