cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/17684914
Roads and highways would be perfectly fine cycling infrastructure, if we just got the giant motorized death machines off of them.
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
Kinda depend on the manufacturer, but the motor should be waterproof. Throttle, the screen, and the connector though, might not. I’m using a conversion kit on my bike and the equipment is those no name cheapo one, but other than the screen condensation after riding through heavy rain, it’s still going strong. You could identify the stuff that need waterproofing and do it yourself though.
Cycling would also help to reduce the amount of dangerously fat people. Which is an ever increasing problem.
dangerously fat people
This isn’t a particularly nice phrasing - I think the same meaning could easily be conveyed with some slightly kinder choice of words.
Threateningly chubby?
Problematically plus-sized?
suspiciously reddit-worded?
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.)
I would love to be able to ride trains to get places and not have to drive everywhere.
I don’t dislike driving, but if I could fit my schedule around public transit, I think I’d prefer that, most of the time.
Good public transit would be so frequent you wouldn’t need to fit your schedule around it. I live in a place with passable public transit and I never check schedules before leaving the house. I wait 10 mins max (I’m still annoyed sometimes tho)
I used to cycle 7 km to work, but now, after moving to suburban village, there is no way to go other way than car. Especially with small kid. Unless you are fit enough to do 25 km every day by bike and risk your life (and potentially kid’s) on the street between cars. So no, there is not realistic to “fuck cars”. I am speaking from European perspective, probably US has the car things much more fucked up.
