I’m now a few days into using an electric cargo bike (a Tern GSD) as my primary form of transportation. It’s…awesome.

Paul Cantrell

@jmeowmeow
No mountain nearby here in Minneapolis, alas, but you can’t take the Rockies out of the kid even if you take the kid out of the Rockies!

Jeff Miller (orange hatband)

@inthehands oh oops, why did I misread and think of Boulder? bike town X university town I expect.

Brian Marick

@inthehands @dimsumthinking I might look more carefully. I may be missing discrete assistance.

The Kids These Days all seem to ride powered skateboards or weird balancy things or scooter-type ebikes rather than Real Bikes. Or they ride buses. The city mass transit buses don’t collect fares at campus and nearby stops, so buses are packed between classes and the bike lanes are mostly empty.

Paul Cantrell

@marick @dimsumthinking I’m delighted to hear about the free buses being packed, and honestly I think the powered rental scooters are a brilliant last-mile addition to transit networks. They make mass transit so much more reasonable: if your nearest stop is 3/4 mi away but there’s an e-scooter within a block….

All of this going to require a renegotiation of road layout, rules, and etiquette. That’s a problem I welcome! But we are in the awkward transition time now.

Donald Ball

@inthehands @dimsumthinking @marick I have a hip disability and use a class 2 ebike because I need the throttle backup. Keeping me off of bike trails would make my errands sufficiently dangerous that I wouldn’t be able to do them on my bike.

Totally agree there need to be reasonable limits on speed and behavior. Disagree strongly there should be limits on mobility aids.

Paul Cantrell

@donaldball @dimsumthinking @marick
That’s a fair concern! It may be that speed and/or licensure are the right checks, not power mechanism.

Brian Marick

@donaldball @inthehands @dimsumthinking I don’t know the rules around this. When I read “bike trails”, I thought of the kind of trails mountain bikes are for. Do people try to keep ebikes off of side-of-the-road, in-town bike lanes? That seems wrong.

(And are there jurisdictions that actually *enforce* rules on bike lanes? Here, we all – ebikes, bikes, skateboards, are constantly dodging cars parked in the bike lanes.)

Paul Cantrell

@marick @donaldball @dimsumthinking
The problem I’m thinking of here is e.g. the paved bike/ped trails along the Mississippi here in MSP, ped and bike either separated by a painted line or fully sharing the trail, no parked cars, and people in the bike lane passing pedestrians at close to 30mph only a foot away — when bikes are allowed in the road, and traffic on the road is also only doing 30mph. That’s clearly not reasonable or safe.

Paul Cantrell

@marick @donaldball @dimsumthinking
And yes, there were jurisdictions that try to keep e-bikes off bike trails — even e-bikes of normal bike size going at normal bike speeds, which also is clearly unreasonable. Per another reply of mine here, there’s a whole renegotiation of road layout, rules, and etiquette that we need to work through here.

dimsumthinking

@inthehands @marick @donaldball near me some trails have speed limits for bikes.

Paul Cantrell

@dimsumthinking @marick @donaldball
Many urban trails here have a nominal speed limit of 10mph, which is too low but also everyone ignored it so it didn’t matter. Now, however…

Donald Ball

@inthehands @marick @dimsumthinking Totally, and that’s super selfish and… unnecessary? One of the delights of the throttle is that I can and do always slow to a crawl to pass anyone – costs me nothing to regain speed afterwards.

Paul Cantrell

@donaldball @marick @dimsumthinking
Yeah, a lot of things would be a lot simpler if assholes and careless people never operated vehicles. But…

Jack Norton

@inthehands i use these. There’s a half buff for summer too. Covers the face, ears, and neck. Also, car drivers pause. Funky patterns get stairs and smiles. Dark masks get double takes and deference from drivers. https://www.buff.com/us/neckwear/multifunctional-tubulars-and-snoods/coolnet-multifunctional.html

Paul Cantrell

@jackhistorynorton
Oh, hey there! I love my Buff, and I’m going to be leaning on it heavily in winter, I expect. But I don’t imagine even the cool version is comfortable over the nose and cheeks in hot weather…?

Grapeshot for Harris

@inthehands If they drove a golf cart, it would look like the Villages in Florida.

Paul Cantrell

@grapeshot
And it’s not the worst model!

Whitney Loblaw

@inthehands we hired a GSD for a few months, best ebike I've ever ridden. So powerful, stable, fun, solid and can take really tight turns.

Paul Cantrell

@stragu
It really is magnificent. I suspect I’m being much, much too cautious on turns with it (still), hanging on to my large-wheel habits.

Whitney Loblaw

@inthehands once used to it, it really does feel like complete control and an extension of your body in a way, like being in one of those SF mech suits
We now own a Cube cargo, it's what we wanted for having the two kids at the front (I even had 4 cousins in it once!) + carrying large items (e.g. a mattress or 6 chairs) but I do miss the tiny turning circle and the fabulous kickstand of the GSD, and my partner does not feel confident on it yet.