I’m now a few days into using an electric cargo bike (a Tern GSD) as my primary form of transportation. It’s…awesome.
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Paul Cantrellreplied to Chris Johnson last edited by
@cxj @t54r4n1
I mean…•some• things really will take decades. Fundamentally changing the housing density of a whole city, for example, really can’t happen overnight. (Even Robert Moses, near near-authoritarian power over local development in NYC, took 40+ years to reshape NYC as being as car-centric as it is.)But •some• things could indeed happen really fast: reworking streets for lower-mass vehicles, replacing old HVAC with heat pumps, ending petrochem electricity….
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Paul Cantrellreplied to Jeff Miller (orange hatband) last edited by
@jmeowmeow
Thanks, that’s a good heads up! -
Jeff Miller (orange hatband)replied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@inthehands I figured you might be aware as a mountain dweller, and you had mentioned riding as a change, so it occurred to me. My friend Megan has been on an adventure getting her electric quad cycle repaired recently and probably has thought through long-term accessibility factors for bike as routine transport, so I will point her toward your BikeDiary thread.
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Paul Cantrellreplied to Jeff Miller (orange hatband) last edited by
@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)replied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@inthehands oh oops, why did I misread and think of Boulder? bike town X university town I expect.
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@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.
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Paul Cantrellreplied to Brian Marick last edited by [email protected]
@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.
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@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.
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@donaldball @dimsumthinking @marick
That’s a fair concern! It may be that speed and/or licensure are the right checks, not power mechanism. -
@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.)
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@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 Cantrellreplied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@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. -
dimsumthinkingreplied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@inthehands @marick @donaldball near me some trails have speed limits for bikes.
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Paul Cantrellreplied to dimsumthinking last edited by
@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… -
@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.
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@donaldball @marick @dimsumthinking
Yeah, a lot of things would be a lot simpler if assholes and careless people never operated vehicles. But… -
@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
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@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…?