No room for buses, trains, or regular bicycles? The nice thing about a regular bicycle is the unlimited range. Whereas the nice thing about an electric bike is the speed.
My personal hierarchy is more like this:
0-1 miles: walk
1-10 miles: e-bike or bus or lyft
10-100 miles: regular bike or train
> 100 miles: car
No buses for me. I've given it a try many times but in SF, unless you're on a popular commuting line, it's filled with crazy, aggressive homeless people.
I've given up traveling via bike after losing my wheels to theft. My friend got his u-lock + loop locked bike's seat stolen while grabbing food to go at the Westfield food court around lunchtime.
> 10-100 miles: regular bike or train
SF to San Jose is 55 miles. To think you'd consider biking twice that is... crazy to me. More power to you I suppose.
I used to work with someone who cycled about 40km (25 miles) to work.
I admired his general health and determination. His alternative was a reasonably fast train; including walking at each end it was at most ⅓ of the time.
I think the most I ever cycled is about 80km/day, for a five-day cycling "holiday" in the low countries. It was a great trip, but I was completely exhausted at the end of each day.
The people I know who bike to work probably operate on different calculus than just viewing it as a commute choice. On days where I drive in or WFH, I still end up on my bike for X hours/day - so bike commuting is basically doubling up commuting and exercise for me, meaning
Am normal person, can confirm. Normal people don't use public transit because normal people don't use public transit, therefore normal people shouldn't use public transit.
They are great too, but if you live in a high bike crime area, you don't want to deal with super locking your bike at your destination. Dealing with stolen tires , seats and handlebars is aggravating as hell after the 3rd time.
Also bring your bike on the train, and then going the last 2 miles to your actual destination is pretty annoying too. It's much nicer to just grab a bike at the station and then leave it at work.
That's my situation -- bike to the train on my own bike, leave it in a locker so I don't have to deal carrying it around, then grab a shared bike at the end of my trip and leave it near the office. If I had bikeshare near my home, I'd skip using my own bike for commuting entirely. Not having to worry about whether or not my bike will have all of its pieces is wonderful.
Buses being at the whim of traffic while costing only 15-20% less than Uber Express for 5-10miles while offering none of the live-information means its a no-go for me.
I've spent far too long waiting in various weather conditions, hoping the bus arrives on time. So even up to a 30-40% premium to just hop into a car makes sense to me.
> Buses being at the whim of traffic while costing only 15-20% less than Uber Express for 5-10miles while offering none of the live-information means its a no-go for me.
In Seattle, buses have had GPS trackers for years. A lot of stops use that data for "time of arrival" displays. There is also a publicly available feed of that data, lots of apps out there that remind people when to leave their office to go out and catch their bus.
Most of the busses are GPS tracked, but some less frequent lines still have no GPS, while others mix fixed data with busses that have GPS data. Its a patchwork, better than many other cities bus tracking systems, but still we have a ways to go.
At this point, I think signal prioritization and finishing the planned bus/streetcar jumps should yield significant reliability improvements in Seattle. If the #8 could just be timely, it would be a boon for anyone going from Queen Anne to downtown, Cap Hill, South Seattle or vice versa. Its sad that the I-5 commuters essentially wreck its schedule by parking in the road on Denny.
0-1 miles: walk 1-10 miles: e-bike or bus or lyft 10-100 miles: regular bike or train > 100 miles: car