Cars are the ultimate symbol of freedom because you just get in and go wherever to do whatever.
Pick nanna up? sure. Go buy her groceries? Sure. In the pouring rain? Ok. Pick up her dog from the vet? Yep. Drop by the garden store and grab 50kg of fertilizer? You bet.
You can do all of those things with out any planning or notice. You just get in and go wherever the day takes you.
I’m a bit bonkers about bikes. I have a cargo e-bike. It absolutely could do all of these things in separate trips. Doing all of them together would be a challenge but I am 100% here for that so long as nanna is. The main difference is planning. You need different gear, like a bike trailer for example. You’re also probably going to pick the right time of day, like early before it gets too hot or too windy, provided that it’s not raining.
Taking a vacation road trip from Florida to the Grand Canyon with three kids with only bikes also comes at quite the cost. Bikes are great, but in many practical scenarios they are slow. Not all of us live in Manhattan, or a dense city, or even a well connected and safe to traverse suburb.
If you were to say, ride a bike from Washington D.C. to Portland Oregon, they money saved on gas, maintenance, insurance, and lease payments, would amount to 3 times as many hours of work.
This is a ridiculous example, but, frankly, saying our main mode of transit should be cars because we might want to take a long road trip once a year is absurd. It’s an outlier use case that could be addressed with other systems more effectively.
Cars are the ultimate symbol of freedom because you just get in and go wherever to do whatever.
Pick nanna up? sure. Go buy her groceries? Sure. In the pouring rain? Ok. Pick up her dog from the vet? Yep. Drop by the garden store and grab 50kg of fertilizer? You bet.
You can do all of those things with out any planning or notice. You just get in and go wherever the day takes you.
I’m a bit bonkers about bikes. I have a cargo e-bike. It absolutely could do all of these things in separate trips. Doing all of them together would be a challenge but I am 100% here for that so long as nanna is. The main difference is planning. You need different gear, like a bike trailer for example. You’re also probably going to pick the right time of day, like early before it gets too hot or too windy, provided that it’s not raining.
That freedom comes at quite a cost. Both to the driver and society. Riding a bike puts the “free” in freedom
Taking a vacation road trip from Florida to the Grand Canyon with three kids with only bikes also comes at quite the cost. Bikes are great, but in many practical scenarios they are slow. Not all of us live in Manhattan, or a dense city, or even a well connected and safe to traverse suburb.
Bikes cost time.
If you were to say, ride a bike from Washington D.C. to Portland Oregon, they money saved on gas, maintenance, insurance, and lease payments, would amount to 3 times as many hours of work.
This is a ridiculous example, but, frankly, saying our main mode of transit should be cars because we might want to take a long road trip once a year is absurd. It’s an outlier use case that could be addressed with other systems more effectively.
Sure there are situations where bikes aren’t suitable.
Bikes cost time. You have to think of the time it has cost you to earn the money to buy, run, and maintain a car.
It is much easier to take a bike with you on a train than it is a car.