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Don't forget proper bike infrastructure, trams, subway, busses. Like in most European countries. You'll end up with smaller roads, lower speeds, less accidents, cleaner air, faster transportation, less car parks so more room for development of huises, more jobs, less waste. Or you could widen the roads, remove sidewalks and force people to drive cars on a road crowded with massive trucks which will crush you like a tank when hit. Hard choice.
Sure but one of the problems is North American cities are to sprawled out.
So? Let's compare just one American city to the Netherlands, the entire country. Because an American city isn't bigger then our entire country.
I live in the centre, in Utrecht. I can take a train to Groningen or Maastricht, the 2 cities furthest away from where I live. I can bring my ebike on the train or take a public transit bike (so rental) at the station I arrive. Or I take the bus for the final part. Or when I go to Amsterdam, I take the subway and/or tram. Or when I go to a rural area, I take the strain, then bus or bike. Within 2 hours I can reach any city in my country with public transportation or 3.5 hours for any rural location. I can reach any part of Berlin in 7 hours. This is on the other side of Germany.
It's the layers of public transportation which solves issues of being sprawled out or super dense. Sprawled out? Faster transportation, like trains, bus and subway. Super dense? Tram, bus, bike.
I understand many Americans don't see it as a solution, as they have busses, trains and subways. But these networks are poorly planned. New York for example, all metro lines run to the centre making travel between suburbs a living hell. They have taxis, awesome, but they clutter the already cluttered streets even more. It's so dumb.
See these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zysL_lkdtys on the design of Tokyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-G-inkkDg on the design of The Netherlands
You might say "but it's impossible to change our cities to public transit heavy, walking and cycling friendly cities, we're too far down the drain!". No. You're not. We designed Rotterdam, one of our largest cities, as an American city completely focused on cars (after it was wiped from the earth during the Second World War bombing by the nazis). It was shit. They changed the entire city to car unfriendly with the focus on walking and cycling, with public transit to support that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY
Our cities are fine, they're just governed by shitheads. It's the spaces in between that are the hurdle.
That's one of the amazing things about ebikes is they make the sprawl so much more manageable!
Sure commuting 10 miles by ebike (probably about an hour commute or noticably less if you go faster than the 10mph average of an accoustic bike) isn't as nice as commuting 2-3 miles by ebike (about 15 minutes commute time at 10mph), but chances are you're already commuting between 30-60 minutes by car depending on traffic so what's making that a consistent 45-60 minute commute with no meaningful traffic jams and wonderful fresh air and sunlight?
Some city folks are just as disconnected from the real world as the morons that insisted they need a f350 super duty to run to Costco.
You're gonna take your spouse and kids on that ebike? You're gonna do grocery shopping for a family on it? You're gonna ride an hour in the rain or intense sun?
You cannot manage the American urban/suburban sprawl with an ebike. Maybe you can, but the average family cannot.
That's when you attack a wagon to the back and make sure the ebike has enough power to move all that
To be serious though a bikecar would be better. Plenty of those but we need more affordable options
Actually I live in a town of about 10,000 surrounded by farm communities so I don't think most people would say I live in a city. I did grow up in a much larger city, and I've visited plenty of cities with hundreds of thousands or millions of people in them, but I'm definitely not a "city folk"
Heck I literally have to drive to the next state for some of my less frequent houseware purchases because that's where the closest place to buy that stuff is
I do all of my school pickups and dropoffs by bike. I hook a trailer up that the kids ride in. The trailer was $20 at a garage sale and required a $7 standard hitch that I ordered online (said trailers are sold for about $100-200 on Amazon new too) my oldest is getting a little big for the trailer so I think next season we'll upgrade to a trailercycle for her and hook the trailer up to that.
My weekly grocery shopping for my family of 4 is about 3 paper bags worth, or two reusable bags worth. Plastic bags always make the amount of groceries one buys look like way more than it is, but I worked in a grocery store for several years as a teenager and learned how to really heavily pack paper bags, and cloth bags you can fit even more into per bag.
You can get gigantic paniers that will hold that quantity of food, or again, use a trailer that you hook up for grocery runs
Personally, I love biking to replace car trips, but in the current American landscape it's most realistic to bike as a compliment to driving. We've been a one car family for about 1/4 of the time we've had kids thanks to biking, and most of the time we haven't been a one car family has been due to job changes requiring 40+ mile commutes
So riding in the rain or intense sun? Yeah I do it pretty regularly, but I fully respect folks who decide that's the day they'll drive
If you were talking about an accoustic bike I'd agree. I'm a crazy person and I've been enjoying seeing what my body can do with enough training, so I've been pushing my limits on my accoustic bike, but ebikes are absolutely game changer since they flatten the hills (I live in an extremely hilly area. My school route literally starts with a 100 foot climb!) and allow for one to not work as hard or at all if they're sick, too hot or otherwise just don't feel like putting in as much effort that day
But most importantly more folks should try bikes because they're freaking fun!
Any ebikes you would recommend?
Personally I'm thinking of getting a walking bike instead