Public transit would be great if you didn’t have to ride with other people. That’s my real problem with it in America at least; there are always loud and gross people aboard. My town has phenomenal bud infrastructure, but people drive because it’s faster, and because you don’t have to be around undesirable people.
Maybe public transportation where each person or group could ride in their own automated pod, which would be publicly owned. That way you could still go skiing/hiking/etc, since mass transportation to those places is very difficult due to low volume.
or you could bring in headphones to public transport like the rest of us
also lmao “public transportation where each person or group could ride in their own automated pod”, you’re either advocating for taxis or straight up segregation
Someday I am going to get a used adventure bike, and modify it to be a hybrid capable of electric only at low speeds / low acceleration, and charge that with solar panels.
Why not an electric bicycle?
Theyre astoundingly overpriced for what they are.
Why not public transportation?
Well obviously use that whenever possible, but I like the hybrid concept because if you run out of fuel, you can do electric running, or if power goes out, you can charge batteries or run important equipment via the gas motor going through a transformer into a battery yada yada.
That and it’ll be useful to be able to cruise around on said motorcycle when our modern american civilized society finally collapses into chaos.
I am all for urban redesign projects and locally sustainable diverse economies and all that, but i dont have faith enough of that will happen quickly enough to basically make it totally safe to just stay in one particular metro area.
EDIT: I suppose maximum utility apocalypse bike would also be capable of running on ethanol, and maybe even somehow whatever the proper name for the fuel refined from fast food restaurant grease is, forget the name. Ive heard it makes your vehicle smell like french fries though lol.
Ebikes aren’t actually overpriced. Unless you buy them from Specialized. All those components are actually just that expensive. I can tell you this for sure because I compared the cost of building my own electric bike and buying a prebuilt one and I ended up going prebuilt.
I agree with you from the perspective of actual parts costs.
I probably should have specified this a bit better, but when I say they are overpriced for what they are, this is more what I mean:
(disclaimer I do not have total comprehensive knowledge of the entire ebike market, please correct me if I am wrong)
Generally speaking I see ebikes going for something like $1k to $3k, and generally speaking you get a top speed of about 20 to 25 mph, and a fully electric unassisted drive of about 40 miles, unless you pay a good deal more for bigger batteries/more advanced drive train, basically.
Sure, this is neat amd useful for people who do not need to move long distances.
But I guess you could say I dont fall into that use case demographic.
And I can get a used motorbike with significantly greater speeds, range, and greater off road capabilities in that same price range.
That’s fair. I live in a city of 100k people with bike paths or lanes to ~70% of where I’d want to go. So my life is on an ebike. I truly believe they are an important part of the solution to the problems car dependence caused.
I can tell you for sure that my ebike is cheaper in 3 years than a motorcycle in 1 because I first, don’t pay for gas, second, do all my own repairs and maintenance (I can’t do this on a motorcycle - I learned about my bike after getting it), and third, no secret fees like registration, insurance, or licensing. I paid 2,000 upfront for my ebike and with the price of my bike and all of my owning costs combined it isn’t even hitting 3,000 altogether. I’ve been able to save MASSIVELY because of this. Ah, and I take it out in the winter time as well. There’s been a lot less snow this year for us but I still don’t see motorbikes out when I’m on my ebike.
So I will unironically shill for ebikes because I believe in them as car replacements, since I live that life.
Our ebike takes about the same amount of time as driving for most of our trips and nearly halves public transit time to some places we go. It was about 2k, and for that price it has been an actual steal. I think we put about 1.5k miles on it in the first year, and cost wise I think it’ll break even at about double that.
It doesn’t sound like ebikes are overpriced, it sounds like you don’t find value in what an ebike does. And that’s totally ok, especially if you’re advocating for making your community more healthy and doing your best to live that way too.
It is a real shame that ebikes weren’t subsidized like electric cars are, that would have changed the equation a lot for folks who are more on the fence and could have started a shift where more people want safer places to use their new bikes.
Edit: just read your reply to the other folks, you get it. I gotta wake up more before I start commenting
Ebikes are great for a lot of people, but my particular desired use case for a vehicle makes them less than ideal.
That being said I am the kind of person who would also just enjoy the challenge of actually hybridizing some kind of motorbike on both a conceptual amd mechanical level, as well as the skills I can learn from that, and probably a lot of people just want to buy something that more or less just works, which is of course entirely reasonable.
Yeah that’s exactly how human civilization has worked. Little known fact, athens was basically a rural town of about 200 people and each dwelling was about 2 miles apart. The ancient Egyptians are so overrated. There were about 120 of them. TV really lays it on thick with Manhattan. Only about 75 people live there in reality, and most of them live on farms!
Perhaps try giving it up, then? You can start by getting rid of your smartphone, then Internet. Electricity, plumbing… Pretty much every comfort…trade.
Oh what’s that? No, to all that? That’s what I thought. It is not civilization you dislike. You like all the sides that benefit you directly. You just have so little empathy that the idea that another human might inconvenience you for a moment with their existence is just beyond your ability to tolerate. A selfishness so extreme, being a hermit sounds enticing if it were just more convenient, eh?
Gothamist has more info, but passenger vehicles and motorcycles only pay once per day. For other vehicles, the toll is incurred every time the vehicle crosses into the zone below 60th Street/Central Park. There are a bunch of discounts and details for evening hours and tunnel users that already pay a toll, and additional surcharges for rideshare drivers. It’s a little complicated.
Yeah, I hate it when things are more convenient, quicker to accomplish, take up less of the day and allow me to do more in less time! If I can’t spend more than two hours a day stuck in traffic am I even living!?
SUVs and trucks are UNIMAGINABLY worse. I’m not a fan of e-scooters, they need a little bit of training to use safely and are still dangerous compared to an ebike. I would rather have ebikes replacing e-scooters everywhere they are now.
However, they are comparatively a nuisance compared to the menace of SUVs and light trucks killing pedestrians every single day.
I’ve always thought it would be fun to print out a bunch of stickers with sayings like, “I suck a driving,” and slap them on shitty drivers cars. The main opportunity I see for this is when you are trying to cross the street and a car is pulled up in the sidewalk, forcing you to have to walk behind their car. As you are passing you could slap a sticker on their trunk. I think it would be a funny thought of them to find that later and realize they have been driving around all day or week with that thing.
I have an ebike, and I really want an electric scooter/bike once the range can be improved, currently they couldn’t get me to and from work (it’s a long commute)
I have a family car, road bike, ebike and escooter. I really like my escooter the most for traveling around by myself, especially so I can jump on a train or bus, or even get a taxi if needed BUT they are still illegal here so I got pulled over by the police (I wasn’t riding like an idiot so they let me off with a warning) and all the trains and buses have banned them so it’s now useless. They never made them legal so we only have dangerous cheap ones. We could have legalised them like we did with ebikes and would have tackled this problem but only young or poor people use them so no chance. I love my ebike too but prefer the e scooter unless I’m going shopping or much longer trips without getting public transport. My road bike is for cycling trips in nice weather.
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