51–60 of 223 posts
This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Brussels, and that's still quite different from NYC).
We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…
The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually and safely break.
You could still run off with the bike on foot of course. But maybe if the pedals are blocked by the motor, you can use the standard lock without breaking the spokes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work? How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing…
Some people must believe this model can be made to work. I think it might happen via ghost kitchens. Distributed food preparation and couriers picking from small restaurants is inefficient. Larger kitchens, optimized for quick pickups, same people preparing food under many different brands. Maybe one can also rethink how the apps work, to bring bit more efficiency (if you control the larger part of the production cha…
I'd argue that if we went down the rabbit hole of delivery startups to find where the thought originated that these kinds of businesses "must work somehow", we'd find irrationality.
Recently, I've come to realize that maybe all that's bad in the world is simply that at one point in the value supply chain someone favored an irrational over a rational thought. In case that person was very influental, we get cases like this where food is delivered through a permanently unprofitable strategy.
I wish we could just further rationalize the whole business to find the actual product's value and its market fit. Intuitively, it probably lays within canibalizing the actual business heavily and by e.g. not really delivering food on demand anymore. People just want the convenice of getting food quickl yand a wide variety + a threshold of quality.
Delivery drivers are one option to a huge solution space.
But those companies and investors can't afford to backtrack anymore. They now have to die to make space for a more adjusted solution. It's absurd.
We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…
These workers by and large aren't carrying money worth stealing they are being robbed of expensive e-bikes. If these bikes were configured to become inoperable if they couldn't either phone home or talk to the users device then there would be no point in stealing them because nobody would buy them. The end user could authorize their own new devices unless they lost access to both devices and info needed to do so and…
I don't believe you can truly make the bike inoperable. Yes, you can make its electronics inoperable but I don't believe you can feasibly make its battery, engine or the mechanics inoperable. I mean theoretically you could, but not in a safe way.
The problem is that you would need to reach mass adoption of the technology, so that the fact of that specific item not being worth stealing would become common knowledge.
It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…
We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…
Possibly something like the Velo Guard steering locks? They lock the steering in a fixed position (making the bike impossible to ride).
We’ve recently started deploying expensive e-cargo bikes for our food delivery coop[1] to try to whittle down our carbon footprint and increase efficiency in urban areas. We have a similar problem of trying to protect our delivery assets (though not nearly as bad as the plight of the gig workers in the article given that our workers can count on the coop and also because Montreal is generally safer than NYC). Our thr…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ela_Bhatt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_Employed_Women%27s_Associ...
From a systemic perspective (which may run counter to your goals), I believe the best solution, which I know won't soon happen in a nation like the US that values comfort and convenience over health and nature, but it's to return to home cooking over deliveries. While it would decrease these jobs, it wouldn't hurt the economy. People who saved delivery money would still spend it, just not on these dangerous jobs.
It makes sense from a systemic perspective. We say we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans don't want to do, but I believe that view reverses cause and effect. Rather than having job vacancies first and need people second, when people divorced from the actual work see lots of cheap labor, they find ways to use it that no one would choose for themselves.
We once had butchers, grocers, and tailors. Then big box stores drove them out of business and replaced them with slaughterhouses and such, incredibly dangerous jobs increasing the disparity of wealth. I see reversing that trend as helping restore safety and dignity to the work and a middle class to the nation.
My result: I don't think I've ever had something home delivered besides the post office, UPS, and Fedex, which don't have these time limits. Shopping for myself and cooking save time and money, plus I meet and form relationships with my counterparts at the coop, farmers market, and CSAs. I pollute a lot less too, taking two years to fill a load of garbage since I avoid packaging.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
E-bike theft in general is a problem, and battery theft as well.
Which suggests locking it at the battery level might more most profitable. Looks like they cost as much as $900. Crackhead thieves that wave around broken bottles aren't going to be highly inspired to buy a new $900 part to render their $2000 bike that they intend to sell for $1500 serviceable. It takes a one step $1500 profit to a 2 step $600 profit. Might as well rip off the best buy for crack money instead.
It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…