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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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Exactly. Which is why people who ate on the opposite end of the extreme, insisting that all cars of all kinds must be banished, are so annoying.
There's no one size fits all system, so stop with the "everyone should just ride the bus or train you don't need cars" rubbish. Neither extreme are correct. We live in the real world.
Let's look at the reasons car-owning motorcyclists (me) don't ride their motorcycles:
-Weather exposure. Piling on gear in the cold sucks, sweating through your clothes sucks, and riding in the rain sucks. In addition to this: tempurature changes are really annoying because your gear needs change.
-Effort. Getting ready to leave takes more effort and longer than hopping in the car. Also driving a car is effortless compared to riding a motorcycle.
-Utility. Simply hauling my boots to work is super annoying because i don't currently have my box installed.
Solutions:
-Weather. Having the proper gear. Better, high-end gear will be better adaptable to wearher changes. Expensive, though.
-Effort. Preparing in advance due to not deciding at the last minute would help here. Riding will always take more effort than driving.
-Utility. If i didn't own a car i would simply have a sporty moto and a cargo moto so hauling the basics wouldn't be an issue however obviously hauling anything sizeable would still be an issue.
How do these apply to cycling?
-Weather. Cycling in the cold and rain is not as bad as moto in the cold and rain howver cycling in the heat is much worse. Proper gear for cold and wet will make it suck less (it still sucks) but I would rather die than cycle in the heat.
-Effort. Cycling takes the same effort to get ready and more effort to ride (especially mentally due to the current road situation)
-Utility. Cycling and moto offer similar utility but there are less opportunities to strap boxes and bags to a random bicycle. You would probably need a large pannier or a cargo bike for most things. Hauling anything sizeable is, again, not realistic.
The final problem: travel time. Cycling takes like triple the time to get anywhere in my situation and experience.
Seems most of the complaints are related to comfort.
This was a thought experiment done for my own benefit for my specific situation that i decided to share. Obviously other situations would lend similar yet different results.
I'm aware travel time in large cities is highly dependent on traffic—traffic is not something that I personally deal with.
This comes from my experiences as a car driver, motorcyclist, and former cyclist.
Cool but I still am stuck in a car-only area for now. I wish it was better. Anything would be better.
I'm stuck in Houston, but we do still very occasionally succeed in implementing walkable/bikeable/mass transit improvements here and there. Whenever we do, the economy in that corner of the city balloons.
But then the state government steps in and quashes any effort to expand or improve on these developments, and we're back to spending $10B to wiggle the I-45 a bit so trucks can travel faster.
The 4 down votes are from Tesla, GM, Ford and that guy in a denim tank top at a BBQ that says that bikes are just for children.