> A bike is a great mode of transportation when you don't need to carry anything heavy, bulky, passengers etc. and when weather permits.
My family uses our cargo bikes as our primary mode of transportation year round. It turns out that children were allowed to leave the house prior to the invention of cars and continue to be capable of wearing jackets in the winter. Many even like the snow.
The key thing to understand is that while sometimes you need more than a bike can carry, that's a small fraction of all of the vehicle trips Americans make. The average trip we take has 1.2 people in the car, is a relatively short (half of them are under 3 miles, a distance my son could do on his own as a 2 year old), and carries negligible cargo. Buying a vehicle for your 99th percentile needs is a significant expense for capacity you use only a handful of times a year — the average American spends $11k/year to own a car according to AAA, and for that much money you could buy and discard a new cargo bike every couple of months and still have plenty left over to rent a truck on the few occasions when you need landscaping or building supplies.
I don't really disagree with your points, but your usecase is nowhere near the norm where I live or how I live.
I'm perfectly fine with city dwellers having more bikes (if they so choose), whatever helps the traffic and parking in the cities.
My point still stands that in no way is a bike a replacement for all the utilities of a vehicle, whether you're offloading that by renting, borrowing, etc.
I'll drive my vehicle, you can ride your bike. The power of choice! No conflict needed.
Yes, choice is good - my point was simply that the vast majority of American vehicle miles traveled are not doing things which can only be done by a large, expensive car or truck. I suspect in the future we’re going so see a lot more electric LSVs, too, since an awful lot of trips don’t need to go over 30mph and saving $20-30k plus maintenance is appealing to a lot of people.
In North America in September of 2022, your statement is not wholly wrong. Building cities around the car is a privilege that NA cities have enjoyed in the decades of unparalleled prosperity and abundance that followed WWII.
However, we saw in just the past year the consequences of even a moderate increase in the cost of gas for the average American, how they reacted to it, and how they learned from it. From that, I think I can say with fair certainty that the American brand of city will not cope well with any meaningful shortage. There are other, longer term problems that will begin to show themselves as abundance wanes as well.
A car can only ever be as useful as the roads it drives on, and the same with a cargo bike. If there are copious protected bike lanes that go everywhere you want to go, you would bike everywhere in just the same way you drive everywhere today. The only difference between them is how they deal with black swan events that threaten the abundance that drives driving.
I'm not trying to be a doomer here, but most places can't (and likely none should) build expecting that they're always going to have the resources to sustain excess. This isn't a knock against you either, you don't always have a choice as to where you live and the means available to you to get around. However, it is worth being aware of the narrowness of this perspective.
Yes - I think we broke 14k miles on average last year, and I’d bet AAA’s membership skews above average since people who don’t depend on daily commutes are less likely to join.
A lot of people all over the world get by fine without a car. They have stores in walking distance so they don't need to buy in bulk. They can easily have things delivered and if they really need a car they can hire one for a few hours at a time.
Narrow thinking. Cargo bikes come in a variety of shapes and sizes to carry children, adults, parcels, moving boxes, and more. As for the weather... well, as we say in Denmark: there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
as we say in Denmark: there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
That's easy to say in Denmark, since the weather is virtually always pretty OK. It basically never gets below -10 or above +35. Without looking at the data I would guess 300ish days a year are between 5 and 25.
Yea, we use it Norway as well. However the expression really only works in cool-moderate climates. You can easily dress to be active and comfortable when it's -10 and snowing, you really can't for +40 and humid.
If you're doing something dressy, you need that shower anyway unless you're never spending more than a couple of minutes outside — or you dress appropriately for the weather and it's not an issue.
Florida is also an interesting example given that it's both the southernmost point of the continental United States and at significant risk of catastrophic damages from the climate change caused in no small part by driving cars. Whether or not you prefer the status quo, continuing it isn't an option.
I believe you are discounting the fact that a shower is not always available at the place you are going. Take for example, you need to go to a job interview. I skip the shower at home, bike to the job interview, sweat profusely during the ride, and now I shower where exactly?
What about needing to go multiple places during the day? Should I now shower 4 times because I have 4 stops that require me to interface with people and appear clean?
Biking in Florida (substitute most of the southern US) for 7-8 months of the year is simply not possible unless it is acceptable to be a sweaty mess at each destination.
I grew up in Southern California. You can bike year round, except for a couple of days a year when you have severe rain (which also floods a lot of roads) or wildfires. The primary reason people don’t are that the roads are unsafe by design and opposition to dense housing has pushed people into unsustainable lifestyles.
All vehicles have things that they are better or worse at, but you overstate the case against bicycles. For example, with passengers, you can add a child seat or trailer to an ordinary bike, or you can use a longer bike designed for bringing others.
Cars also have situations they're a poor fit for: places without good parking, if you have to take part of your journey by another mode (bus, train, etc...) and need your vehicle on the other end, if you can't afford them (including fuel, insurance, etc), if there aren't good roads, if you're too young, etc.
All vehicles are better at some things and worse at some things. That is why replacing all cars with bicycles won't work at all, and we should stop pushing this idea.
>It's not a replacement for a vehicle, nor will it ever be.
The majority of my use of a vehicle was commuting to work. After that, it was shopping for groceries. I'm 2.5 years into having no vehicle. I'm 1.5 years into using a cargo bike. There are very few things that are not doable on my cargo bike as it is now. With a few DIY modifiations, I could narrow that even further. The remaining I can settle with ride shares from an app or even more old skool the use of friends.
It only works for short trips. No one rides a bicycle if they have to go to another town, 50 miles away. Also, do not mention: "you can take your bicycle on a train" - if you need to use the train then again you are dependent on public service and traceable.
Passenger cars also don’t work for containers or industrial timber transport. No specific vehicle needs to fit every single use case, if your day to day life involves commuting from a town 50 miles away in the middle of nowhere, so be it.
More people live in cities than rural areas, but it doesn’t mean they’ll come to take away your car.
There are many disabilities which don't allow driving, not to mention that in countries like the United States which don't take care of people there are many disabled people who cannot afford to own a car.
Accessibility doesn't have a single solution but if you look at areas which are welcoming to bicyclists they are also much better for a wide variety of disabilities because they have things like sidewalks, safe vehicle speeds or limited vehicle access, curb cuts, etc. You'll see people in electric wheelchairs or tricycles using bike lanes/paths, blind/deaf people don't have to worry as much about getting hit by a speeding car they were unable to notice, etc.
If you don't like bicycling, think of them as safe mobility lanes — the users certainly do, and we should all back having more of them because if we're lucky we'll live long enough to need them.
Bullshit: a city designed around bikes is a city designed around wheelchairs.
Not to mention asthma never prevented anyone from cycling. Maybe you won't win the Tour, but you can definitely commute cycling with asthma if your city is designed around humans and not cars.
Speak for yourself, if you can bike with asthma I'm happy for you. Mine is exercise-triggered and anything above a walk lays me right out. Being anything other than a pariah on a bike path requires a minimum level of energy output beyond what I can sustain. Or are you my doctor now?
It is possible to cycle with less effort than walking, even with a bike with no electrical assist, what I was saying is that you don't need to exert yourself. Maybe you consider that being a pariah, but that's how in cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen you see people cycling well into their 70s and 80s.
> Or people with asthma or any number of other disabilities. Bike-centric design is transparently ableist.
Don't recumbent electric trikes largely address this issue? Someone unable to operate one of those isn't very likely to be able to operate other types of (larger and faster) vehicles.