The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
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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.