[acdha]

> 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.

[hunterb123]

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.

[acdha]

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.

[hunterb123]

> the vast majority of American vehicle miles traveled are not doing things which can only be done by a large, expensive car or truck.

Source? People get cars because they need one. The first big thing you get for yourself is a car, because it's so useful.

I believe the opposite of your statement is true, biking is only really practical in a very limited bubble.

[gfaster]

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.

[tzs]

That $11k/year figure is based on 15000 miles/year usage which is close to the average annual mileage per driver in the US.

[acdha]

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.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-owne...