Electric cars are beginning to take off. If you need to replace your old car they may be a good choice as maintanence is potentially much less expensive. They're usually a bit more environmentally friendly than a conventional car of the same size, but not by much. There are much more cost effective ways to lower your carbon footprint. One is replacing local commutes and errands with a bicycle.
We may be at the beginning of a third wave of bicycling in the US. This time it's a bit different with pedestrian, human powered, and human-electric hybrid bicycles in a category that's called active transportation. I'm not so sure it will take hold in the US this time - after all, our second wave fizzled in the 70s.
The first wave came with the invention of the safety bicycle in the 1880s. Suddenly cheap transport that could extend your walking range by a factor of three or four appeared and bicycle fever swept the US and much of Europe. I've written about it a few times and won't say much other than it was an important component of women's suffrage in England. It also lead to widespread mass production and engineering leading directly to the automobile and airplane.
The second wave began in the late 1960s - first in the Netherlands, followed by the US, and slightly later by Denmark. None shared a common trigger. The Netherlands was a reaction against the beginning of affluence that came in the mid 60s that flooded the streets with cars. The narrow streets, children playing and cars were a nasty combination and people reacted strongly closing streets and going back to the bicycles they had used since the war. The US boom was fueled by the green movement - particularly in university towns. Denmark's was a reaction to the oil crisis. The Netherlands and Denmark stayed the course building physical and social infrastructure that favored cycling in cities and small towns. Progress was slow, but by the early 90s the bicycle had become an important piece of transportation.
The US started much more aggressively, but fizzled for a number of reasons shortly after the mid 70s. Carlton Reid wrote a piece on the US boom that failed - a short recommended read!
Now something has changed - the ebike.
A first ride is astonishing. They're not motorbikes - you pedal and an electric motor adds power to your muscle power. You can set the level of added power to levels better than any Olympic bike racer. Hills flatten and the distance you're willing to ride doubles on average. The efficiency of a person on a regular bike is amazingly high - an ebike typically improves it by a factor of two. You're still get exercise and it's much more practical than a Peloton if exercise is the goal. Currently there are more customers than bicycles..
So they make sense for you? Probably the most important consideration is safety. Women and children are usually seen as the two indicator species - when at least half of the adult riders are women and most of the children walk or bike to school.. Women and children already dominate bike riding in the Netherlands and Denmark. Bicycle racks were removed from schools in my New Jersey town as bike riding was considered too dangerous by the school board. They were afraid of lawsuits if they encouraged bicycle use. Some of you live in areas with very low traffic densities and safe conditions. For others the question is how to build a safe transportation infrastructure.
You don't want to share the road with drivers who aren't aware of you, don't know what it's like to be on a bike, and may have more legal protections than you. A variety of approaches can create safe cycling - certainly European counties have taken differing approaches. A commonality is traffic calming.. speed limits should be 20 mph or less if bikes and cars share a lane. Bikes on more heavily traveled streets should have physically separated lanes. Paris has shown this isn't difficult or expensive. The most cost effective way to come up with real estate for separate bike lanes is to eliminate car parking and the experiment has been very popular to the point where the changes are becoming permanent. The city is on its way to removing about 70 percent of parking.
Assuming the risk of cycling is low enough for you, it's important to find a good ride as there are a lot of poorly built bikes out there. A good ebike that should last a decade will set you back at least $2.5k. These usually have a similar design to a conventional bike They're great for commuting and just riding around, but consider a cargo bike if you're serious about replacing a car on local trips. The past few years has seen a revolution in properly engineered and practical electric cargo bikes. Good bikes in this class tend to be spendy starting around $4k. I have a favorite, but these are individual choice and spening time at a good bike shop is important.
a promotion video of a very good cargo bike illustrating some use cases - you can easily carry two hundred pounds of cargo without worrying about balance, power or overloading.
Back to that third wave - will it continue or just fade? Many regions in Europe already see a lot of cycling and the trend will only increase as automobile use is minimized in the cities. North America is more difficult as the infrastructure and expectation supporting cars and city layouts are somewhat rigid. Emerging cities, mostly outside of North America and Europe, have a choice of city layout and transportation infrastructure. It will be fascinating to see how and where active transportation fits in. And there are other practical but non-conventional transportation modes - and I'm not talking about self driving vehicles...
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