Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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It's a little sad that we need to actually say this, but:
Don't be an asshole or you will be permanently banned.
Respectful debate is totally OK, criticizing a product is fine, but being verbally abusive will not be tolerated.
Focus on discussing the idea, not attacking the person.
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
The largest shareholder of the NYT is Carlos Slim, who happens to also own an oil company.
This is the way.
All of the major newspapers and media outlets are owned by the billionaire class, and it's been that way for over a decade.
It's time to stop clutching your pearls every time your media company of choice does something in service to the billionaire class and stop giving them your clicks.
If every media outlet is owned by billionaires, and I should stop visiting each one that does something in service to that class, am I just ultimately left newsless?
The proper thing to do is to call out this BS and let the NYT know that this is bullshit. Don’t hide from it, fight it.
The proper thing to do is to call out this BS and let the NYT know that this is bullshit.
Use your time as you like. It's yours to waste. Your only real weapon is depriving them of your consumption.
The closest you can get to unbiased is the AP or international sources.
Calling out dumb ideas isn't pearl clutching. It's a core part of our political system.
Totally.
Mf is born in 1940. He will be dead soon, why the fuck he needs more money?
E-bikes are great, the issue is the morons using them.
This is how I feel about cars, except for the "cars are great" part.
except for the “cars are great” part.
Yeah... Excluding moron drivers you have:
I'm probably still forgetting something important...
Yup.
Remember the headlines about the massive pollution drop that occurred in Spring 2020 after most workplaces went remote?
Cars and planes are the problem. Unfortunately, cars and planes make the billionaires a lot of money, so there won't be any meaningful change to our transportation systems.
Interestingly the COVID lockdowns might be what launched the 15min city conspiracy into the mainstream. Climate deniers saw articles about how the covid lockdowns reduced emissions and warped that into the theory that 15 min cities are a plot to restrict personal movement.
Source: climate deniers playbook podcast aka the climate town peeps
cars and planes make the billionaires a lot of money
Isn’t there a billionaire who wishes to make tons of money on railroads and railroad construction? Please, bribe our politicians to spend the hundreds of billions a we need to spend
cars deteriorate air quality and are a leading cause of lifelong chronic injuries
Microplastics. Apparently tire wear is a major cause
Water pollution from oil of gas spills or improper disposal
- main cause of death among those aged 15–29
Is this an American thing? In Australia the leading cause is suicide, with auto accidents a distant second. However, it is the leading cause for 1-14 year olds.
It is at world level, according to WHO
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/road-traffic-mortality
In the linked page the same WHO states that road fatalities are the leading cause of death "for children and young adults aged 5–29 years":
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries
Ah yeah, based off what I read that makes sense with that wider age range.
People are the problem, you say?
How’s that different than anything else that someone operates?
there really is an issue though. it's an unregulated mess and for every ebiker who is a clean energy micro mobility advocate there's half a dozen people who buy them because they don't have a license for whatever reason or are trying to skirt as many road laws as possible.
So what? If someone loses their license they still have the right to be able to pay their bills. Public transport isn't always an option, and Uber/Lift are as expensive as cabs now; how else do you expect an unlicensed person to get to work?
that's not the point I'm making. I'm not saying those who are unlicensed do not have a right to transportation. I'm saying that there are problems in the space where regulations need to be applied.
Like effing infrastructure. E-scooters shouldn’t be in traffic nor on a sidewalk. Having an actual dedicated right of way appropriate to the speed of different types of movement would go a long way toward making it safer for all
Really it’s only three- a car lane, and e-anything plus bicycle lane, and a pedestrian lane. But clearly distinct and protected
That ratio seems a bit high. I bet most ebikers do it for economic reasons.
it’s an unregulated mess
Posting this while I let AI drive my Cybertruck into a lake.
The problem in New York is that the e-bike riders are not replacing car riders. They're just pedestrians who want to go faster.
This isn't a win.
When we start seeing e-bikes go through the tunnel as a replacement for cars, that would be a win.
From the article it sounds like a lot of the complaints are any delivery gig workers, not pedestrians. The gig workers are incentivized to go fast and bike recklessly in a way that pedestrians aren't
Some of the proposals the safety conscious people are suggesting, though, feel a bit harsh to me. I don't want to have to get a licence for a bike that assists me when going up hill. On the other hand, if people are treating these like electric motorcycles then vehicle lisencing makes more sense to me
As for the article, I felt like it was balanced in a way the headline is not
Sounds like a law so gig workers are paid by the hour would solve more.
Are car drivers not just pedestrians that want to go faster? Each pedestrian that wants to go faster and chooses an E-Bike instead of a car is a win to me.
You know what they mean though. This isn't someone who was a car who is now an ebike. This is someone who was feet or four or two wheels who is now doing 25mph on the sidewalk with no insurance. Once again, infrastructure is stuck catching up with technology, and that's normal, but we are in the middle of it now.
I don't live in NY, but I used to drive everywhere because the buses are slow AF (1hr+ to go less than seven miles) and I'm not walking 14+ miles up hills to see friends and family. Ebikes are used here to get up steep 18-28% grade hills. Because of ebikes, I'm able to run errands that I used to have to drive to, for pennies in electricity instead of $70 in gas and $30 in parking. The vast majority of all bikers stick to the bike lanes where available and obey the 15mph limits unless they are in lycra. But lycra types aren't riding ebikes anyways, lol. Incredibly, one of our family friends got pulled over for getting clocked at 40mph on a traditional road bike.
It's really annoying, though. If I ride in the street, I get honked at by cars for "going too slow" as the ebike can only do 20mph sustained. If there are no bike lanes, biking on the sidewalk is the only safe option on stroads and 35mph bridges. There's this massive gap in infrastructure where bikes usually get tossed the scraps of "just use the bridge sidewalk even though it's only 24 inches wide".
Cars routinely park in the bike lanes here, too, forcing most riders into the street because of Amazon drivers or people pulling into hotels and putting their hazards on. Some riders specifically avoid the bike lanes here because they get the worst lights at traffic stops (eg, one 15 second light every few minutes while cars and pedestrians get green lights and crosswalks for much more time, incentivizing people to ride with cars or crosswalks).
I think the most relevant solution is to significantly step up funding to ensure that most roads have wide sidewalks and generous, barrier-protected bike lanes where people cannot get doored and landscaping isolates pedestrians from the bike lanes. If Japan, France, and the Netherlands can do it, so can we.
I don’t see the problem. People can go faster without polluting. That’s a good thing. You can get a lot more people on the road safely this way.
Thanks mate! You're the real MVP!
Don't read the comments unless you want to be depressed and angry.
ITT: old people that have had one bad experience with bikes and ebikes, but know they can't ban bikes anymore so they go after ebikes. Probably knowing several or more people who have either been injured or killed in car accidents.
Pedestrians, bikes, and ebikes are all on the same side: making sidewalks and bikelanes bigger and safer for a more walkable city without cars. Especially in car centric american cities where no normal person will ride a normal bike up steep hills or extraordinarily long commutes where ebikes excel. Or towing gear and groceries.
NYT takes money from companies to run smear campaigns and manipulate public opinion. I have no evidence but I have no doubts either.
It's an open secret they take money from oil companies to write sponsored articles that look like independent opinion pieces.
The Telegraph here has done the same for Ebikes and Escooters. But mostly cyclists. Its been weeks of these articles. They're not alone either, the Mail, Express and Sun have done the same. Its to create the illusion of your Government tackling a problem that doesnt really exist, as ours announced they'd be "bringing in new measures" recently only to launch a General Election a couple of days after.
They're too damned popular. And too damned affordable. And way too much newspaper/tv ad revenue comes from automobiles. Someone's got to put a thumb on the scale and get people back into SUVs.
It's certaily e-bikes that make nyc a nightmare
Just consider all the people annoyed by ebikes. Clearly cars are much more sane and rational. I mean what is a few thousand lives compared to some good old fashioned outrage.
The NYTimes continuing its long and storied tradition of panicking its readership over the prospect of seeing a young or poor person.
Dude, we’re just now getting infrastructure for bicycling, and that’s been like 300 years.
When there's no more petrol cars, this is what most people's "electric vehicles" will look like.
Ebikes would've been great in like 2018 before governments started regulating them to make them not as good. I don't even know what's going on these days in ebikes politics but I dismissed them as something I'll never buy when they started putting remote speed limiters in them. I'll just peddle myself on a cheapo bike.
This is pure pedantry, but the e-bike was actually invented sometime between 1895 and 1987 (depending on the source).
They definitely weren't popular until the 21st century, but the idea's been around a long time (just like electric cars).