A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Unfortunately I live where its cold and raining 99% of the time. They are trying to build a line from where i live to where I work though so it might be bearable to bike the distance to the station in the rain
Summer was unbearably hot, and I decided to commute via a bus with AC instead of a bike, but in september I started using a bike and didn't stop unless there was pouring or there was snow on the ground.
I even in mild rain I just took my bike. First winter season I used a bike at all, not to mention riding in a full face cover, leather or ski gloves with a ski jacket.
I also researched some motorbike rain pants but we're in a decade long drought, so far didn't need them.
One thing tho. If it's raining you better have disk breaks, the clampy ones just slip on wet wheels. I had to re-learn how to stop safely.
Being waterproof is probably the biggest thing I miss from upgrading to an ebike from an old acoustic bike
Ebikes should handle rain just fine though (I know mine does). Just don't ride it into the river.
Yes, I will cycle 15 miles (one-way) to the nearest produce section.
I'm all for bikes in sufficiently urban areas, but they are never going to be reasonable for 90% of America (by land mass, not population).
We need passenger train service (or other mass transit) that can cover lower density areas and still be reliable. (There's active train tracks within 100m of both my driveway and the produce section, so for me a passenger train would be ideal.)
people who live in 90% of the least densely populated land on earth are... not that many people in the grand scheme of things.
And if you live close enough to civilization to have utilities like power maybe it's possible to also have a grocery store that's closer than average distance between towns in germany. Might even be beneficial idk.
Okay, so counterpoint: In a lot of ways, the EU is like a country. And it’s a large one - maybe not quite the US’s size, but big. And much of it is bike friendly.
No, people don’t traverse the mountains in their little hand-me-down red bike. But they don’t often traverse those mountains every month anyway. And when they do, trains exist for that.
So this exposes not a landmass problem, but an urban planning problem. It is the easiest thing in the world to stand in the middle of an 8-lane stroad in the boonies, where people are waiting 5 minutes to traverse two blocks of traffic lights to get to the quarter-square-mile parking lot outside their coffee shop, praying you’re not killed as you wait for the walk signal, and scream at the top of your lungs “What in the everloving fuck is the point of all this?” And it would be a family-friendly exasperation since it would be drowned out by engine noise.
We can build about 8 new walking-friendly cities in the space taken up by one goddamn McDonald’s parking lot.
Why the fuck is the nearest produce section 15 miles away? That's a major planning failure. Most trips that Americans take are less than 3 miles, so planning by population would be a lot more sensible than planning by land mass.
15 mile with an electric bike and good infrastructure that let you go fast is doable. And electric bike is already so much better than a car because it weight much less and as such consume much less. But I agree overall it does not replace a train because people won't cycle when it rains.
Even if you need/prefer an ebike you get about 85 ebike batteries out of one Nissan leaf not even a powerful e-car the most pedestrian one.
All I need now is the knowledge, sense of balance, and confidence to ride a bicycle
My country runs courses for adults to learn how to bike - maybe yours does the same?
The more you ride, the better you get. Try include cycling into your exercise, and within a year you should be better with it.