Electric bikes are generally pedal assist. They require you to pedal, but make it as easy to pedal up a hill as to go on a flat street.
They’re less exercise vs a regular bike, but you still get a good bit of exercise. Perhaps more exercise, if the e-bike causes you to bike something you would have driven instead.
Robotaxis? Probably not. But autonomous vehicles that can communicate and drive as a group? Yes that will help. Then induced demand and all that, but it will increase capacity.
Robust public transportation will help a lot more. But go ahead and argue with the MIT scientists who wrote this article if you like. Their research seems to show you’re wrong.
Public transit has been lacking in my city even before the pandemic. They are still paying off for a light rail system from a decade ago that they are not maintaining. Also all the ticket machines smell like piss, which should not be a surprised considering for years there’s been some guy who has been urinating at almost all the station.
Regardless of anything else, there are no circumstances under which companies like Uber would decrease traffic. This is because of two effects: Firstly, any regular car ride replaced with an Uber ride will result in more road-hours, since there is now a car travelling to your pickup point as well travelling on the road after dropping you off.
Secondly, the convenience of Uber can cause more travellers taking a car instead of public transport, again increasing the total number of road-hours.
Is there even a hypothetical scenario under which any of these private hire companies would reduce traffic? The only theoretical benefit is that less parking spaces are needed.
We have this speed limit in the Netherlands, mostly in areas with housing. It doesn’t really affect busses because they stay on the bigger roads that are 50 kmh (about 31 mph). In my opinion it’s fine to drive 20 mph on the more local roads, as long as there are collector roads where you can go a bit faster.
I think the main problem here is for folks forced to drive every day in the dervish of death that is rush hour.
If you can’t afford to live near where you work (as is often the case in the UK), and you’re already looking at a 1 hour commute both ways, current public transport isn’t an option. You can either give up on sleep, or you will have to drive.
A lot of these changes are coming in the wrong order - first you improve public transport, create affordable housing near city centers, and drastically reduce the price (and let’s be frank, increase the quality of) public transport, and THEN you hit car users to push them on to these options. In the current order, they just introduce further hardship to folks who already have a bad time.
Yeah, the current approach globally - at least it seems to be the same in Germany - is to make the “experience”, if you want to call it that, for car users worse to the point that it’s worse than public transport in order to force people onto it. There are some minor improvements being made to public transport, but it’s of course a lot faster to put up signs for a speedlimit everywhere or even blocking access to certain roads completely than to increase the capacity of a rail network. And as you said, this hits the already disadvantaged parts of the population more, since they more often than not have manual labor type job that requires going into the “office” everyday, that are living further from work, …
That's not some "approach" but a symptom of conservatives fighting change tooth and nails. And it's always easier to destroy something. So while one side is trying to improve public transport and create proper bike infrastructure at the same time, the other side is sabotaging.
Disadvantaged parts of population usually don’t have cars. For example in Moscow total amout of cars is about 20% of population, in regions it’s even less.
I agree here, a larger push towards remote working would definitely help, though such a move would likely come at the expense of privacy (teams is already a privacy nightmare as it is, with wider home work adoption no doubt Microsoft would implement more “features for employers”).
A lot of these changes are coming in the wrong order - first you improve public transport, create affordable housing near city centers, and drastically reduce the price (and let’s be frank, increase the quality of) public transport, and THEN you hit car users to push them on to these options. In the current order, they just introduce further hardship to folks who already have a bad time.
It might be a little different in the UK, but in North America step #1 needs to be “first you abolish the low-density zoning restrictions that displace almost everybody far away from the city center to begin with.” It’s not just that walkable housing isn’t affordable; it’s that it’s not even allowed by law to exist.
There is another substantial difference. In Europe you have private spaces to park your car and then roughly as many public parking spots as there are cars. In the US you have about 8 times as many public parking spots as cars exist. The amount of concrete wastelands just for potential cars is incredible.
You could basically scrap ¾ of your parking spaces to create walkable areas with small shops beside the big malls or oversized markets, then do some public transport to those areas (or still drive by car there), just to establich the idea of walking while shopping.
That's no replacement for getting rid of zoning regulations but a realistic start, where changing the zoning (even when the regulation vanish) would need a generation or more to change.
Tons of European cities already set-up speed-limit to 30 km/h. It's not just large cities, I've seen villaged limited at 30 too.
it's basically less nuisance for the residents
One of the better features of e bikes is that you won't get into sweating or exhaustion as easy as with a regular bike. This means you can just cover yourself in some plastic poncho to stay dry while riding without getting damp inside from sweating.
To add to this you won’t sweat as much in heat either because you can wear breathable clothing and the wind from your movement really cools you off substantially on a bike even without pedal assist so with it I’d imagine you’d barely break a sweat barring high humidity.
One of the problems is that a lot of cars have trouble driving at that speed. It’s really difficult to get them to remain at a constant speed under 25 mph or so, which can end up being extremely frustrating for the driver and encourages them to go faster than the speed limit. I realize this is a car design problem, but it’s still a problem at present until that is fixed.
Is this a European car thing or a driver skill issue? As an American I’ve never had a problem maintaining slow speeds in any vehicle I’ve driven - manual or automatic.
Edit: I am starting to realize that some drivers are startlingly dependent on cruise control to maintain a target speed.
As an American, I sure have. Including my current Prius which doesn’t drive consistently between about 5 and 25 mph. And that was true of my previous Honda Civic as well.
Are these newer models or in poor condition or something? I’ve driven well maintained older Prius, Civic, and Accord vehicles without these issues and I LOVED how the Civic handled all around.
2006 Civic traded in for a 2016 Prius. Maybe you’re better at handling a car than other people, but my subdivision is 20 mph the whole way through and I have never myself or been behind anyone who can drive that speed consistently. It’s always plus or minus 5 mph, usually wavering between them. I don’t think all of the dozens of drivers in this large subdivision are bad drivers.
That still sounds like a design problem if it requires skill to just drive consistently at 20 mph. Why should that require skill any more than driving consistently at 30 mph?
You actually think it requires skill to drive at 30 mph? Because I was able to do it pretty well the first time I ever stepped behind the wheel of a car.
Yes I do believe it takes skills to safely hurtle serveral thousand pounds of steel through a neighborhood. You must keep the vehicle between the lines, maintain adequate following distance, look for and follow signs and signals, and have a high reaction time for anything that may cause a potential collision like another car, cyclist, or pedestrian. There is a lot of hand-eye coordination, a knowledge base, and physical capabilities required to drive safely. Driving is a skill. It is something someone learns to do through experience like any other skill.
Now you are moving the goalposts. We are talking solely about driving at a consistent speed. That is something novices can do without a problem at 30 mph.
Driving at a consistent speed requires skills to do it safely. Unless you are exclussively driving under controlled conditions where nobody else has access to use the street, you need a base set of skills.
I can’t believe you’re actually saying driving 20 mph takes significant skills. That’s ridiculous and if it’s true, then 20 mph shouldn’t be expected of anyone.
Yup it is a skill and one that studies show people tend to overestimate their abilities with. All the more reason to invest as a society in alternative transportation and heavily cut down on the overall number of drivers behind the wheel.
I don’t see why it’s a big deal. The streets near me that are 20 mph are all residential streets with stop signs, driveways, and street parking. You’re almost never going a consistent speed for more than couple hundred feet anyway.
This is almost certainly not a European thing. A lot of people here still drive manually and just idling in 1st gear gives you a steady 7-10km/h... or "walking speed" as used in really dense and mostly pedestrian areas cars are still allowed to use. Idling in 3rd gear is around 30km/h (~19mph).
You answered your own question. So I can concentrate on my surroundings rather then having to try to precisely control the speed of a car that's not in TCC lockup.
You don’t have to precisely control the speed, just keep it between 0-20mph. Your speed should be dynamic based on what is coming up anyways. Are you just turning on cruise control from the intersection and leaving it until you brake the next time?
I have never even considered using cruise control on anything other than a highway. Am I the one driving wrong?
No, it’s just a different style. It’s like 1 pedal driving with the brake pedal. It would work particularly well with an electric car where the first part of the brake pedal is regen braking.
Skill issue! I have no problem maintaining low speeds in my car lol. Honestly, for the safety of those around you, please take a driving course so you can safely practice driving at low speeds.
I envy your commitment to saving fuel. I would be on the gas in 2nd so I don’t have to faff around changing down when I hit a hill or have to slow down for whatever reason.
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