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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@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…? -
Grapeshot for Harrisreplied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@inthehands If they drove a golf cart, it would look like the Villages in Florida.
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Paul Cantrellreplied to Grapeshot for Harris last edited by
@grapeshot
And it’s not the worst model!