I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear.
What model of eBike should I get?
Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.
It is probably 40 km and through a major tunnel and over a substantial bridge to the nearest “light rail”. I do not live in the country.
Now, not everyone has my situation. That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.
Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground. Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.
I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear. What model of eBike should I get?
That’s a valid question, and it’s one that anybody who advocates for better urbanism, like I do, needs to be able to address. Fortunately, there are multiple answers.
The most direct answer to your question on its face is that you could get a bakfiets, or what the English-speaking world calls a cargo bike/cargo ebike. These are available from brands like Orbea, Aventon, Tern, Co-Op, Specialized (that’s Specialized with a big S), and more, they have been showcased as potential car replacements capable of carrying people and large amounts of stuff on Youtube channels like GCN, Not Just Bikes, Oh The Urbanity, Propel, Shifter, and others, and some specialized (that’s specialized with a small S) models have even been deployed as low-footprint urban delivery vehicles in so far highly successful trials by companies like UPS and FedEx.
However, to address the frankly incredibly frustrating assumption underlying your question, neither I nor the vast majority of other urbanism advocates will actually try to take away your car, even if we were given dictator-like control, because I for one am not interested in controlling people, I’m interested in having multiple viable choices for how to get around. You would still be able to have your car. Driving it in the city center would be inconvenient and expensive enough that you wouldn’t want to do it, but it’d be trivially easy to get there by transit or cargo bike instead. Plus, while the drive to your work would be largely unaffected, that road wouldn’t be the only way to get there, either. Speaking of which,
Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.
This is a systemic problem, not a you problem. As such, you shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for solving it, least of all by just protecting yourself. You mention a port: most ports have existed for longer than cars have been the dominant urban species, and as such, that road you describe might have either replaced or run parallel to a railway that would have also gotten you there. The fact that that railway is no longer a viable option for you means that an option has been taken away from you, and that’s what you should actually be angry about. That, and the lack of artificial lighting on said road. Allow me to refer you to the second half of my earlier comment:
Of course, this does also require development patterns to support it, i.e. roads that aren’t fucking death traps for anyone outside a car and stuff being close enough together that you can actually get to it in a reasonable amount of time, but hey, there are also non-car-related reasons we should be doing those things too.
Emphasis added. Anyway:
Now, not everyone has my situation.
Yes. Hi, it’s me.
That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.
That is exactly the problem I’m talking about. They have those needs because our infrastructure has been built to create them, and that causes far more harm than just switching to EVs will ever solve. EVs are like trying to wallpaper over the hole in the Titanic: better than doing literally nothing, but won’t actually fix anything.
Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground.
Sounds like communism to me.
Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.
Adam Something has a thing he does where he takes some kind of pie-in-the-sky techbro gadgetbahn idea, like AVs, and gradually addresses all the design flaws with it until he’s invented trains again, then ends with his catchphrase “just build a regular fucking train.” And I think that’s where I’m going to leave off.
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I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear.
What model of eBike should I get?
Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.
It is probably 40 km and through a major tunnel and over a substantial bridge to the nearest “light rail”. I do not live in the country.
Now, not everyone has my situation. That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.
Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground. Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.
That’s a valid question, and it’s one that anybody who advocates for better urbanism, like I do, needs to be able to address. Fortunately, there are multiple answers.
The most direct answer to your question on its face is that you could get a bakfiets, or what the English-speaking world calls a cargo bike/cargo ebike. These are available from brands like Orbea, Aventon, Tern, Co-Op, Specialized (that’s Specialized with a big S), and more, they have been showcased as potential car replacements capable of carrying people and large amounts of stuff on Youtube channels like GCN, Not Just Bikes, Oh The Urbanity, Propel, Shifter, and others, and some specialized (that’s specialized with a small S) models have even been deployed as low-footprint urban delivery vehicles in so far highly successful trials by companies like UPS and FedEx.
However, to address the frankly incredibly frustrating assumption underlying your question, neither I nor the vast majority of other urbanism advocates will actually try to take away your car, even if we were given dictator-like control, because I for one am not interested in controlling people, I’m interested in having multiple viable choices for how to get around. You would still be able to have your car. Driving it in the city center would be inconvenient and expensive enough that you wouldn’t want to do it, but it’d be trivially easy to get there by transit or cargo bike instead. Plus, while the drive to your work would be largely unaffected, that road wouldn’t be the only way to get there, either. Speaking of which,
This is a systemic problem, not a you problem. As such, you shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for solving it, least of all by just protecting yourself. You mention a port: most ports have existed for longer than cars have been the dominant urban species, and as such, that road you describe might have either replaced or run parallel to a railway that would have also gotten you there. The fact that that railway is no longer a viable option for you means that an option has been taken away from you, and that’s what you should actually be angry about. That, and the lack of artificial lighting on said road. Allow me to refer you to the second half of my earlier comment:
Emphasis added. Anyway:
Yes. Hi, it’s me.
That is exactly the problem I’m talking about. They have those needs because our infrastructure has been built to create them, and that causes far more harm than just switching to EVs will ever solve. EVs are like trying to wallpaper over the hole in the Titanic: better than doing literally nothing, but won’t actually fix anything.
Sounds like communism to me.
Adam Something has a thing he does where he takes some kind of pie-in-the-sky techbro gadgetbahn idea, like AVs, and gradually addresses all the design flaws with it until he’s invented trains again, then ends with his catchphrase “just build a regular fucking train.” And I think that’s where I’m going to leave off.