this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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The solution is -besides regulations for that - have governments push for much MUCH more bicycle roads and same for public transportation. With great public transportation and bicycle roads, most people won't need cars to begin with.
I mean, if we are imagining government doing it’s actual job, isn’t it easier to pass regulations then to change how North American cities work?
Like I support walkable cities, I’m just convinced (majority of) regular people don’t actually want it.
They don't want it because they haven't experienced it. The Dutch used to be super car-dependent, and now they're known world-wide for good infrastructure, and it improves every year.
The problem is we keep getting half-measures, like a few lanes here and there, and maybe a cycle path for recreation that doesn't go anywhere interesting. We need a big investment into infrastructure to show people what they're missing. But when all you have is a hammer (car), everything looks like a nail (more lanes).
My area is super car-dependent, but people love our train infrastructure and want more. But we only want that because we were essentially forced to build it to host the Olympics (I'm near SLC). Before that, we paved over a lot of our tracks because cars were getting popular, and that was before we had any traffic issues. Now that everyone needs a car to get everywhere, traffic sucks.
Well a few things there:
1: yes they want it, most people don't know what they're missing. Everyone always asks me why the Netherlands is so friggin nice when they go there. Limit cars, bignoaet odnthe answer
2: even if they don't like it, we're at the point of "do or die". Climate change keeps beating expectations in that it's always so much impressively worse than expected. Just now I read that CO2 dumping into the atmosphere actually is increasing, we're actually making it worse faster. Soon we'll be at the point of "where do we get fresh water" and "all our crops are dying". Then the wars start, not for "I want that oil of yours" but "I want that food of yours". It doesn't.need to be that bad, we still can fix it if only we wanted it.
3: bicycle infrastructure and public transportation infrastructure is so so much cheaper than all the car crap we've been building for the past 7 decades. Cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, It's quieter, it's healthier, which lowers healthcare costs for nations, it's prettier, cleaner and solves an enormous part of climate change. If only car and oil companies could stop ~~bribing~~ pushing our politicians
In the USA, that boat sailed long ago... most cities are too spread out to pedal anywhere
My city is just too hilly. Cycling around is one thing, and they just put in new bike lanes (they're not good ones, but still), but doing that with a grocery run or 60lbs of cat food and litter? No thank you.
Wife and I bought e-assist bikes, it makes it so you don't really have to work much even when youre carrying groceries
Weight speeds you up downhill more than it slows you down uphill. The trick is to not coast - keep pedaling downhill, use the momentum to get up the next hill.
Wat? The law of conservation of energy tends to disagree. Commuters are generally starting and ending at the same elevation so there's no trick. We're not going to convince anyone to carry heavy loads on bikes by saying "pedal more downhill to smooth out the power requirements if you hate grinding it out on uphills", the answer is just ebikes.
I'm just relating my experience - when I was younger, I commuted 20 miles round trip every day, and I worked at a bike shop with weenies that were always trying to shave weight off their bikes, so I did whatever I could to add functional weight (so no filling the tubes with lead, that would be cheating) including building up a dually, two rims side by side on a Sachs 3x7 hub. My average speed was higher when commuting (lots of rolling hills, but overall uphill in the morning, downhill going home) than it was on days off, when I was mainly riding around town where it was flat.
And it certainly wasn't because I wanted to go to work...
I appreciate your lived experience, but at the same time the rest of us will seek answers in basic physics concepts, none of which help explain such phenomenon. Is it possible you just got stronger or subconsciously tried harder because you wanted the heavy bike to be faster? Did you add weight but also make sure your bike was well tuned? Tire pressure and a greased chain go a long way. I certainly agree that the weight weenies can go way overboard though.
Nah, it's never too late. All you need is the will, the rest will come.