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To the response below as to why don't people don't invest energy to reply, I'd reckon it's because comments can be intellectually inconsistent within their own framing constantly here & sometimes you'd wish the original person took a bit more effort into examining the implications of what they're saying. The contention that thinking societies could incentivize and build towards decreased reliance on car infrastructure and that bikes can have a serious role in that is 'utopian nonsense' is obviously entrenched in some 'nothing can ever change' mentality. Yet, interestingly, the point also highlighted that things that have cemented themselves in societies that are maladaptive or wrong have come about for bad reasons 100 years ago. It's almost as if those advocating for making better decisions in society today are acknowledging the previous bad decisions and working towards making better ones now, so that the actual conditions in societies 100 years from now is an improvement, y'anno, not pretending they have a magical history reversing wand to rewrite the past. Guess what, there are even US cities in which a good proportion of the people at the store could have certainly biked, if the future came with dedicated infrastructure and incentivization making it easier to do so over the years. The above doesn't address that, or e-cargo bikes, or the increased mobility that ebikes provide to those that struggle due to physical limitations. I became fit by biking after a lifetime of not being so. Had you looked at me in the hypothetical crowd of incapable of ever biking, you'd make the incorrect assessment of what is possible for the future. And what of people gradually getting more exercise that are able to bike or ebike? who is saying disabled people must bike, rather than we should incentivize those that can, make it easier for all, and have public transit whenever possible. When I had issues for a period that made biking hard, I eventually got a homebuilt ebike for $600 which restored a lot of my freedom and enjoyment, and eventually made it so it was easier to bike unassisted again. Believing we exist in some optimally selected world in which the market or some other magical force has made everything exactly the way it is for a reason and that we have no say in the matter is a pretty prevalent viewpoint around here. It's almost absorbed as naturalistic in people's brains, rather than reflecting as to what immense past and continued vested interests are at play in cementing the sales of large, expensive vehicles to every individual as our only 'utopian solution' to the future of transit or climate crises. |