Was the Madison, WI map a random selection (I think not since you cameoed the Hodag) or are you from Madison? If so, I would love to meet up some time in this mad town I call home. (Obviously the rest of the video was clearly not Wisconsin)
I'm a big fan of ebikes. We have two (a regular ebike an a bakfiets cargo bike), and the electric cargo bike is a true car-replacement. When we moved back to Toronto I was literally shortlisting cars because we planned to buy one. But thankfully we bought an electric cargo bike first, and we realized that the car wasn't necessary. That ebike allowed us to live car-free, in Toronto, and with two young kids. We rode it all year 'round. Literally millions of people in North America could do the same, and many tens of millions more could go from two cars to one car, if they got an ebike instead (as you said). Unfortunately safety really is the biggest issue. We never had major issues with rain, snow, or hot summers; only with dangerous streets due to motor vehicles.
I bike commute in NYC. It has ok bike infrastructure, good for North America, laughable compared to the Netherlands. There are a lot of bikes and ebikes here. I have to admit, sharing the bike lane with the ebikes is scary. They whip past me, while passing close, which is very startling. I've had many close calls and one has hit me. You can't hear them! And they don't do a courtesy ring or "on your left/right" as they pass. I don't know what the solution is. I just know I don't feel safe.
Right when you got an extreme weather conditions and less of 1% used it why the rest néed to wasted tax fairs in those fails programs and what I hate think people call it climate emergency. And electric bikes or cars they need a name carbon tax...
@@ChrisPollitt we moved back to Toronto in 2013 because we had two young kids and wanted to be closer to family. And we thought that by living somewhere walkable it could be bearable. I lasted about a year before I started looking to relocate back to Europe and we moved to the Netherlands in 2018. There is no way in hell I would move back to Canada again.
Awesome video. My new studio is 2 miles from home and I've been commuting by bike every day. Central Texas summers are brutal, so I would definitely consider going electric if it were any farther. Even with the heat, it's such a nice way to start and end each day.
I did this in Austin for awhile but yeah, 6 to 7 months out of the year it was too hot and the office didn't have showers. I think the bigger issue was that Texas biking infrastructure was kind of terrible and drivers largely prefer giant trucks and SUVs, making biking dangerous.
Out here in hot, hot El Paso, my office is about a mile away, but all uphill. I use an ebike so I don't arrive sweaty. I also consistently email my city's planning department advocating for better bicycle facilities, because they are terrible.
Try one for 2 weeks.. It is too convenient and we humans always choose convenience. Specially when it is hot, you use half the energy than usual and are refreshed when you arrive. I consider it my moving exercise bike, i dictate the resistance but the scenery changes and wind keeps me cool. Even for 2 miles.. 90% of my commute is less than a mile, but i do live on top of a hill.
@@stockeyyes one of my ascend e bike has extremely good suspension . my fat tire throttle assist bike will go over sand and snow and ice fine. not everyone could maneuver that though lol.
I'm always amazed that electric cars are touted as the solution to transportation pollution problems when older technology like bicycles (including ebikes) and designing walkable dense urban neighbourhoods are a much better solution. One of the main problems with North American and Australian cities is that so much infrastructure is devoted towards cars and driving.
Yeah I agree. I think people like ecars because they are more of a drop in replacement. But in reality we should make cities relay on cars less and make walking and biking more of a thing.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 if the US and Canada replaced most of the infrastructure devoted to cars with cycling and transit infrastructure we would see a reduction in both carbon emissions and would probably a reduction in motor vehicle crashes as well. 2 birds 1 stone. Not to mention since bicycle infrastructure takes up much less room than automobile infrastructure if we took out most car infrastructure like highways, wide roads, parking lots etc much of the land that the infrastructure sits on could be used for wildlife rehabilitation.
There are massive benefits to this outside of just safety and reduction in emissions. Major thank you to “Not Just Bikes” for helping to educate me on this.
Cities (mostly north american ones) still need more bike infrastructure. In my town we don’t have bike lanes except on busy streets, so most people just bike on the sidewalk which is obviously not ideal.
@@giancarlomartini2133 Nah it's definitely a smoke and fire situation. If you don't make safe and effective cycle infrastructure no one will want to cycle, and if you don't deprioritize car infrastructure then people will have no need to cycle. You do both and you get the Netherlands. You won't get a significant percentage of commuters out of their cars and onto their bikes until you make cycling easy, safe and quick, rather than dangerous and awkward that it is in a lot of places currently.
Agreed. My commute is only 11km, but I just went along on Google Streetview to see what it would be like on an E-Bike. There's one stretch where I'd have to go down a hill with 4 lanes of traffic passing at 80+km/h and another where I'd need to make a left turn across 4 lanes of traffic. Once I'm in the urban core, the infrastructure is there, but there's currently too many barriers to feel safe making the trip five days a week.
The biggest deterrent, at least for me, is theft. It would be perfect, and the same goes for electric unicycles and scooters. However, most cities don't have safe storage spaces ruling out the category entirely...
Agreed. I have some areas where I live that I can use an E bike but there’s no safe place to lock it. I can ride a cheap bicycle and not worry so much if it’s stolen because it didn’t cost so much but an e bike that cost $1500 or more that’s a big loss if somebody takes one of those shears to break the lock and just throws it in the truck then your E bike is gone.
Use a kryptonite “new York fughetaboudit” chain lock. It’s like 16lbs (not a big deal on a e bike) you aren’t cutting through that without power tools.
Got myself an e-cargo. I'm car free and now I can get most of the heavier stuff transferred with the bike. Earlier I had to do multiple trips, pay for delivery, or ignore the need.
I live in Portland and they recently replaced the rentable city bikes with e-bikes instead, and that has allowed my roommate with joint pain to ride with me comfortably. E-bikes are a HUGE win for accessibility
this is why i kind of worry about laws surrounding ebikes, such as limiting ebikes on trails, as ebikes make all sorts of bike activities finally accessible to so many people. i hope such legislation includes circumstances like this
Dealing with shitty road surfaces, asshole drivers that honk at you for riding on the road, bugs that stick to your face, the wind and the rain is big awesome
I bought my ebike last July and I've been able to put 1600 miles on it already. I'm not a super fit person and I've not been going out of my way to ride, but for short trips it's significantly faster than my old truck and has cut both gas and maintenance costs on it. If my city had better infrastructure I could do even more of my trips on the bike.
This summer i loved to take trips at night, after the air had cooled down. Never done that before.. and my reason is kind of stupid but kind of not. Planning a bike trip with regular bike includes estimating your own strength and will. With an ebike, you can go as far as you like and know you can always get home without feeling exhausted. It is LIGHT exercise, for sure, but as long as it is exercise it is good for you. Just moving the pedals is already something and taking a few hills along the way.. feels so great, you can take it lightly or hard, it is MY choice of when and how long. With a regular bike, apart from a sort of challenge, hills can easily be bigger than you and you are hitting a cliff before you get to the top. Of course, my situation is aided by having excellent bike infra... There are bike paths all over the place and they do not follow the car infra but cut thru forests, so that you can cycle for kilometers without having to cross but couple of roads. And having to go thru nature makes it therapeutic too. Finnish summers are the best for cyclists...
I think a lot of people don't realize just how much they spend each month on gas and maintenance. Its not even the commutes really. The average person makes 4 trips/day. Switching to public transit started saving me money. But, it wasn't until I totally switched to a bike for everything except bus on worst weather days, that I really saw how much a truck sucks away your bank account. Not to mention, bike parts are cheaper and I can do any of the maintenance tasks on my bike.
Something else worth mentioning is that many ebikes make riding in winter more viable. I bought one with fat tires last winter to ride here in Calgary, Canada. It works great!
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Snow = rolling resistance. Also winter clothes are, even the best of them, are restrictive. Winter biking is more than double the effort from summer. Everything is harder, lubricants are just a bit stiffer, tires deflate when exposed to cold (there is only so much overpressure you can put in them), the rubber is more rigid.. everything is just a tiny bit harder but when compounded make it a LOT harder. Source: experience from cycling 40 winters in Finland. And our bikepaths are plowed very consistently, 4cm of snow is maximum. They do plow the most used paths first and in some places do not plow both sidewalks but they do keep at least one continuous path clear for the whole way from A to B. The main problem really has been ice lately, i will buy studded tires for the next winter that are as thick as i can fit to the frame and rim.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Many ebikes come with fatter tires which do better in the snow. On a regular bike a fat tires are more of a chore to pedal, but on an ebike that extra work doesn't matter because the motor is helping you do that extra work.
Maybe for snow, where I live we rarely get snow but we get a lot of skin-slicing cold and from my experience better weather to bike in than our skin-slicing dry cold doesn't exist. when we did get snow, however, I literally couldn't take a single road that wasn't busy because I had to drive my bike in the ridge left by people's tires
I'm studying urban planning in Cardiff and this is exactly what's happening here, mutiple shops have opened up selling electric bikes and also electric scooters which are really surprisingly popular. The city and surrounding urban area down to Penarth have nextbike (which is like a Boris Bike), but now they are investing in new electric ones too.
Boris Bikes were pretty decent and late for its time in Paris they have such systems for decades. The cycle lane in the London are often only 2m wide and go in both directions and are limited by curbs. Pretty uncomfortable.
@@paxundpeace9970 never been on Boris Bike's in London but from what I know from Jay Foreman video on the bike lanes in London they are awful. The bike lanes in Cardiff a pretty decent though.
@@frankhooper7871 tbh they are all over the place here already and never seen a police officer pull anyone over, I think they are unofficially okay with them
I studied in Cardiff too! They really need to expand the segregated bike network out east along the rumney and west to connect to the ely trail. I think they are definitely doing a better job than most cities though even if it's not perfect yet!
I live in Honolulu, and I always shake my head because it really is the perfect city for public transit, and yet there are almost no bike lanes or bike racks, no road shoulders, no working rail systems, and no ferry network. The bus is great and I rely on it heavily, but it's obvious that we can do better!
For me personally the only challenges of having an E-bike is their weight and size. I love my e-bike but I hate having to take it up and down my complex's stairs everyday and storing it in my apartment can be a challenge sometimes. However, it's still 10-times better than having to drive everywhere.
Ask your building manager to install an indoor bike storage/lock area, this video is kind of elluding to how such change needs to be done. In europe many buildings have such infrastructure, time to bring it across the pond
@@andrewjensen8189 I live in Portland and only really upscale complexes have those. I live in a low rise complex that is really more like converted townhouses so it would be hard to build something like that. It's not too bad though because I actually like my landlord and I only live a 10 min ride from my work and a 3 min ride from the store.
I’ve been seeing more e- bikes and scooters on the streets than I have in past years. For a dense city like NYC, they go just as fast as cars in some cases while taking up less space and costing way less than an automobile.
@@TheRCish Read his message. In saying "solely", he states "for no other reason". In saying "actually caring", he states that whatever "care" has been shown was just for show. What's more cynical than saying a person's concerns, causes, or feelings are just for show?
I live in a rural town in WA state near the border. One of my best friends in santa barbara had a pair of juiced ebikes. I was so amazed by them that my wife and I bought a pair. We have gotten nothing but questions on where people can buy some! They are awesome! Not just for cities, but for rural areas too! I ride mine to my 11 mile work commute at least 3x a week!!
I feel like one big thing with e-bikes that is needed is safe spaces to park. Even a bad bike would totally get pieces stolen off of it once it’s out of eyesight. I couldn’t imagine parking a couple thousand dollar bike is most places in American cities. The rented bikes helps with this but it’s still a big problem. Also glass on roads causes me so many headaches.
Yup. I seriously have nothing to add here. The way people get away with this in most eu cities is buying a beater bike and only using the fancier one if they have safe storage options.
I've actually never had a tire punctured by glass. Personal story time though: I've gotten a 4 inch nail stuck in my tire which instantly blew it out, and also caused it to lock up when the nail got jammed on the brakes. Naturally this was while riding downhill on a 15° incline, so I got to continue riding almost to the bottom with only the back wheel able to actually rotate. I'm still not sure how I managed to stay upright.
I think shops/restaurants should allow them inside and have some kind of bike storage. They're not much bigger than a cart or a stroller and they don't pollute
I have a Rad Runner E-Bike. I dont have a car anymore because after watching your videos i realized 90% or more of my trips are less than 5 miles. I now save $600 a month or $7200 a year not having a car!
@@Bascanska_Ploca in most cases your own (seperated) bicycle path when car traffic is allowed to drive 50km or faster and/or when it is 2 lanes or more per direction wide. Space to park your bicycle at destination like your home, work, shops and public transport hubs.
@@Bascanska_Ploca Smooth asphalt and protected lanes on busy streets (protected from cars and pedestrians). What my city lacks is smart traffic lights and larger bicycle lane widths that reflect the large number of cyclists that use them.
@@Jacksparrow4986 I just got an Urban Arrow cargo bike. Apparently a top speed of 20 mph doesn't preclude an average speed of 23 mph, as it climbs all hills at 20 but goes down them at 25.
@@langhamp8912 you're fast. I'm struggling to get an average spped over 15km/h on my similar bike. Too many crossings with cars illegally parked all over them, lots of cobblestone roads, traffic lights that only make sense for cars, cycling infrastructure that makes my go slower than I could go... however, beeing able to ride faster isn't too on my wishlist: riding safely and ideally more relaxed come first.
I think you've convinced me to get an e-bike. I live in Seattle and my office is about 10 miles from where I live. There's a protected bike connector highway that would make up the majority of my commute, so I would feel pretty safe.
The problem with bike commuting is the lack of secured bicycle parking. Bike theft is a huge problem, and with thefts being so prevalent acts as a deterrent for a would be commuter.
E-bikes help a bit with that since they can assist you up to around 20 mph. Makes it safer around cars since the speed differential is much less. On 25 mph streets, an ebike feels safe in car lanes imo.
It does have bike lanes but it looks like, just like nearly every other city on the face of the earth, the bike lanes are in the stupidest locations they could think of. I'm seeing a lot of bike lanes on streets with parking but parking is ultimately prioritized, even on the ones that carry hella traffic, why? then on 15th avenue they have a bike lane on 1 side but the other side is parking. dearborn street makes sense but as soon as I dropped in on google street view there was a pedestrian in the bike lane, so that sidewalk should be fixed. Well at least it's not as bad as my city, where we have plenty of bike lanes but not one of them can be used by someone who's afraid to bike in car lanes. Bikes in my city are directed to these residential streets that are always hilly and have stop sign spam so bad that it would improve safety to remove some stop signs. the best one in my city is the one on Gravois Avenue which would be better if it wasn't next to parking (why is that a thing on Gravois traffic hauls there) and continued down the whole street
Yes, which is a major problem with the E-bike act. Its ultimately just a give away to manufacturers, not really helping the buyer. The median e-bike cost is around $2000 US. Most daily use city e-bikes would be under the $1500 range and above $4000 you're getting into performance bike territory, so not the target of an act like this. That's the problem. If we want to fulfill the needs of the most people, we should be targeting that sub $2k range. 30% of $8000 is $2400. If we really wanted to get maximum effect to the consumer, and not just throw money at the likes of Specialized, it should be a free purchase voucher for any e-bike under $2000 (or, just any bike, in general).
The biggest problem IMO is that people love stealing or just damaging bikes, so if you got an electric one you will be a target. Kinda sucks but thats just the way it is.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Yeah its so stupid. Like I used to own a bike that was barely rolling and someone stole it, repainted it. But threw it away 2 days later. I've also had 7 bike lights stolen. Police dont give a shit since its so common.
When I was at Michigan state university for a school trip, people just left bikes lying around and if you needed on you just picked a random one and went off, then left it for the next person. There were people who did have bikes and locks too
I own both an e-bike and a regular bike, and there are indeed a few situations where I do feel the e-bike provides real advantages with respect to safety, not just being easier to pedal.. First, with a regular bike, you often face tradeoffs where the flat road has a lot of car traffic and the back road that avoids it requires going up a steep hill. With a pedal bike, you end up putting up with the busy road to avoid the hill. With an e-bike, you can just motor up the hill and avoid most of the cars. Second, due to lack of bike infrastructure, it is often necessary to briefly share a lane with cars on a busy roadway, for example, to connect between two bike trails going different directions. In such situations, an e-bike reduces frustration of drivers behind you compared to a pedal bike which, in turn, reduces the likelihood of them doing something dangerous to pass you. Just being able to accelerate from 0 mph to 15 mph at the same rate as a typical car, and go 20 mph rather than 10 mph up a small incline makes a huge difference. Third, due to increased resistance from motor and upright posture, my e-bike is actually slower than my pedal bike on steep descents, reducing the liklihood of the bike accelerating to a dangerous speed. (Above 20 mph, the motor cuts off, so becomes just a dead weight).
I moved away from Zürich, Switzerland in 2018, and I'm back now for a visit and noticed a lot more bikes. I was a biker living here before, and I see a lot more growth in people using them as well as e-scooters to just get around short distances. It's great.
What's a gamechanger is that E-Bikes also enable much more widespread adoption of cargo bikes, which can carry the kind of cargo you'd normally need a car for!
Trailers work great wIth ebikes too. You get the best of both worlds, extra carrying capacity for errands and a regular bike that's easy to park the rest of the time.
@@bootmii98 The average bike trailer seems to weigh around 20-40lbs (9-18kg) empty. The average golf cart, not even a car, seems to weigh around 500-1100lbs (225-500kg). If your comment is a joke I'm probably missing it though, I'll admit.
I've watched every video on this channel but I want to take this opportunity to articulate something I've felt for all this time. THANK YOU for creating such an informative array of content with great production values on topics relating to city design, planning, use, history, etc. IN A WAY that isn't preachy and nihilistic like other channels with a new urbanist bent. It's a marvelous quality of character to have your values, to back them up with facts and experience, and articulate them to others in a way that doesn't make them feel like crap. You're an absolute legend.
I definitely like my e-bike, since I’m not able to drive and the area I live in makes it somewhat practical to use, especially in tandem with transit options. It even has the ability to recharge the battery so that can help extend my trips if needed. I’ve been seeing more of them lately and that makes me happy!
Switching from normal cars to electric cars is like switching from normal cigarettes to electric cigarettes: they are less harmful to you but still not ideal. I really hope bikes and e-bikes can take off to mitigate traffic and make trips more pleasant.
Nonsense...Tesla cars with self driving and the integrated dash cams prevent a lot of accidents...and in the case of accidents or intentional damage, can point out who is responsible (with video proof) thereby eliminating a lot of the crap that goes on without the dash cams.
@@rajnadar6555 still won’t eliminate traffic public transit, biking, and walking will help to lessen traffic because they actually get cars off the road Secondly there’s serious security concerns with these cars even amateur hackers have been able to control the car not to mention there’s potential for tracking by governments Thirdly the destruction on the environment needed to mine the materials for the batteries are more invasive then any oil well it’s worth when we’ll talking small batteries for lawn mowers or something but unless we end the cultural of a new car every year we’ll do much more harm then good
@@rajnadar6555 if there were less cars it would prevent even more crashes… and those that do occur would be less dangerous. And that has nothing to do with the environmental issues
I got one and I love it! However, I suspect the leaders in my community also own the gas stations and parking lots, because it's ILL-ducking-LEGAL to have any kind of electrically-powered bike or scooter or board in this town. Yep, their mear existance is a crime! It's it's not a (standard) bike or a car they lose their frickin minds!
We can legally use pedal assist e-bikes in the UK but if you want something faster with non pedal action you need to have a driver's licence on you and it's only for use on roads not cycle lanes. Personal e-scooters are not legal to be used on streets and roads. The only e-scooters allowed are for rent through a few companies that require users to be over 18 and have a driver's licence. Police regular stop and seize any personal scooters they see on the roads.
I'm an avid bike commuter in a city where there's no bike lanes. But that doesn't bother me because nobody uses the sidewalks. The main issue, however, is that nobody is clearing the ice and snow during winter.
E-Bikes actually make me feel a lot safer riding next to traffic than a regular bike. Mostly because I can go faster to better match traffic and start faster from a stop. Both ease the anxieties of constantly being passed or feeling like you're holding things up.
The fact that SLO still doesn't have protected bike lanes on Madonna rd is criminal. Or even better, a dedicated bike path separate from the stroad that connects the two sides of the city without going onto traffic
Looking at all that footage of SLO makes me nostalgic. It's also one of the most cycle-able cities in the nation, and Cal Poly is festooned with good bike-racks. I mostly go on foot or regular bicycle, including everywhere you showed. Only in September do you have to worry about sweat whatsoever (unless you ever take that thing up the Cuesta). So this often depends entirely on people's willingness, rather than ability, which seems like quite the nut to crack
@@gaughen my apartment was just a block away from the mission, and it cost $750/mo from 2014-2017, though I had a roommate. I thought it was expensive at the time (having lived in Las Vegas from 1995-2014, though I was born in SLO), but everything is getting crazy lately.
4:26 Not only are E-bikes much less costly to manufacture and recharge than electric cars, but the bicycle as a platform is fundamentally easier (and therefore cheaper) to maintain throughout its lifetime. Almost all of its parts are modular, and many can be easily replaced with some basic tools and rudimentary mechanical knowledge. My hope is that E-bikes and their derivatives (which may or may not feature pedals) will eventually evolve to completely replace motorcycles, mopeds, and gas-driven scooters in everyday use. However, horns or loud bells should become standard equipment on them, as an E-bike can't rely on the noise of its engine to be noticed (unlike a traditional motorcycle).
I once converted a regular Bike to an e-Bike with a of-the-shelf-kit... then i build my own... both were "meh" but not great. Then i rented one of the fancy new ones... the Motor engaged very smooth, electric assist was cut off imedeately when i started to brake and the Batterys seemed to last forever (well at least for a regular day) over all, a really nice Ride. First thing i did when i returned that rental in... I walked into a Bike-Shop and bought a regular Bike with 7Speed Hubshifting, a Hubdynamo - nothing Fancy at all ... now 5 Years old... still love it.
I do food delivery with ebikes/escooters and end up making more money than drivers, because I avoid having to pay car insurance, gasoline, maintanamce, the car price itself etc etc 🙃 also its better than normal bikes cuz the amount of extra food you have to eat is almost as bad as driving a car for the environment.
Is the extra food really that significant for the environment? I find it hard to believe that having to eat an extra few calories from exercise is a significant contribution to climate change compared to burning a gallon of fuel, for instance.
@@andyzhang5201 depends what you eat! There's also the transportation of food, and all the process it goes through which ads up quite a lot. Also the fertiliser crises might be much worse than global warming since when it is used up, which is supposed to happen in less than 100 years, food won't meet the demand for the expected to be 110 billion people. But of course a few thousand food curriers switching to ebike won't make any difference in any way. But extra few calories is misguided, bike delivery uses the most amou t of calories than any job, even more than fire fighters, you will have to eat a whole meal every few hours. Try it out and see ;p it's quite a fun job if the weather is good
I don't think thats true about the food part. It depends what you eat and your body is dramatically more efficient at using fuel than anything thing we have today. If the body could use gas as fuel humans would get close to 1000mpg from a energy standpoint.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 no, that isn't true. The efficiency from growing crops to muscle movingment is orders and orders of magnitude less efficient than combustion engines if you considered per kg. Otherwise, no one would be using cars except for carrying big stuff.
@@12kenbutsuri From what I remember muscles are close to 50%+ which is much better than a gas engine at ~34%, diesel gets closer (but you have to scale it up to cargo ship/power plant levels) but this is before drive train loss which can be up to 20-30%. I also don't think your looking at the whole picture. Your muscles only need to move yourself. A moped gets 100+mpg though it has a less efficient engine than a normal car engine that gets 30mpg because a car needs to move so much dead weight. Also look at Asian countries which have greater population and less food but still use walking, bikes, and mopeds as their main transportation infrastructure and have less of an environmental footprint than a western counterpart. Keep in mind that gas also uses ethanol too which is basically food grown and put into gas, it would be of better use to just eat it.
I have a theory that we could get funding for bicycle infrastructure if they were marketed as being used for senior citizens mobility scooters So they could stay in their homes and not have to go to a residential facility because they no longer can drive a car Or make school districts bike friendly and teach safe street cycling as a gym elective
I FEEL VERY TARGETED BY USING A MAP OF MADISON AND THE EXAMPLE OF WALKING TO THE CORNER STORE TO BUY A PACK OF PKMN CARDS (other than the fact that in Madison there're no corner stores that sell pkmn cards)
The biggest issue beside general maintance is THIEFT. E Bike are considerably more expensive thus they are a bigger target. And in a place such as a campus, parking just like cars are few.
I had a similar scenario in the video, where we had two cars and we downsized to a ebike. I love it! My work is less than a mile away, and I get groceries or errands done with it as well. It was a great investment!
Awesome move. I went from one car to no car over five years ago. Everything I need is only one mile away tops. I ride my bike everywhere. If you already had great health you will find that it's only going to get even better.
I grew up near you over in Davis which really showed me that it doesn't take mega density to make bikes work, some smart bike lanes and paths and it's easy to connect even relatively low density areas.
replace street parking on wide suburban streets and the outer lane of stroads with protected bike lanes. replace car stalls with bike racks at stores and park-and-rides (and build more park-and-rides with better transit connections to downtown). this will allow us to make our existing suburbs more sustainable and not tear everything down
If we look at the example of a bike line at 7:11 in the video those parking spots should be placed between the car lanes and the bike lines adding a protective buffer. Probably needs a concrete curb to keep cars from parking too far over. Would also probably get drivers to slow down too.
I’ve already had two locked bikes stolen here in Pasadena/Los Angeles. Last week, almost had my third one stolen. I ride the bus and place my bike on the front rack, in front of the driver. At a stop, one passenger got off the bus, went to the rack and took my bike to then quickly start riding. Meanwhile, I yelled at the driver to open the door and went running after the thief. What he didn’t know was that I had the front wheel locked to the frame with a cable. When he started riding, the locking cable did its job and sent that asshole flying forward, startling him while I cursed repeatedly at him and could get my bike back safely on the bus.
I have been riding Reise & Müller Load 75 since last year for delivering .In Germany E-Bike/ pedelecs are gaining popularity and many people use them a lot. Picking up kids from school, packing up for picnics , shopping for groceries and so on. The older cities are not yet properly designed for Ebikes though. Protected bike lanes would be great for Ebikes infrastructure.
I was introduced to Electric Bikes during my study abroad in Tokyo. My host mother (and all of her parent friends) had one with seats for both of her toddlers. It completely changed how I saw small commutes and one of the first thing I did when I returned back to the US was get an e-bike. It's helped so much on grocery trips and other small trips.
3:58 we need safer bike lanes for one. I bike everywhere and even I don't find unprotected bike lanes with 4+ lanes of traffic speeding past me particularly appealing. This is really simple also: just extend the sidewalk out to the bike lane and paint a buffer between bikes and pedestrians.
I think we can roll with no protection on alleyways and very slow streets where pedestrians dominate, a buffer zone on normal streets, cones on streets with main street traffic, a short wall on faster roads and a clear zone trench on freeways, perhaps urban freeways could use the median if they have one or add a 2-way bike path on the grass mound they're built either on or depressed into. there's definitely space on every freeway for it to also be a bike route
So weird seeing California Blvd in the opening minutes of the video. I haven't been to SLO in a few years, but this video took me right back to college.
I started biking to my job in downtown Denver (~4.5 miles away) 2 months ago. I love it. I chose not to go the ebike route because I wanted the exercise, but I see them and they look fun. I hope we get more and more cars out of Denver.
There's merit to having both. Use the regular bike for exercise, and use the ebike for shopping, bad weather, or when you're just in a bad shape (injury, illness, exhaustion, etc). You can also just turn an ebike off, and it'll behave as a normal, albeit heavy, bicycle. I have days where I'm feeling great and I set the pedal assist to 2 (5 being highest), which is just about right for offsetting how heavy the bike and load is, and I put in the same amount of work as I would on a street bike. I've also had days where I'm exhausted, irritated, or injured, and so I just use the throttle the whole way, turning the bike into a petty motorcycle.
Great video. You left out a major advantage of ebikes. Another important distinction between electric cars and ebikes is that the life cycle of cars is very long. Coupled with the low percentage of cars sold being electric which means combustion cars won't be replaced by electric vehicles being too slow of a process, when we need to displace use of combustion cars faster than that if we want to save what we can of the planet. With electric bikes we don't have to wait for the life cycle of a car to run its course and for the electric car market to be robust enough to displace combustion car use. Edit: I want people to have good advice for ebike purchases, to save the planet and all, even though this video is trying to make you go behind a pay wall to get info. You can get good ebike shopping advice from Electrek and ebikeschool, also on TH-cam.
E-bikes will continue to play increasingly large role in the future of urban active transportation! Their ease of use makes them an easy option for commuters, parents with young children, and seniors! The major categories of people we need to convince to leave the car keys behind more often. Great video!
Love the stickers you put on your Rad Power Bike. I have a Radwagon V3 and used it to do 20 mile trips every so often. I use it as my main mode of transportation in my city.
Wow, I can't believe that you released this video the very same day as I got my Van Moof S3! You're absolutely right, e-bikes are insanely impressive and I can't wait to see how it impacts my life getting around the city. For anyone looking into e-bikes, I do recommend Van Moof, it feels kinda like the Tesla of e-bikes -- lots of cool tech integration and phone app controls -- although I'd have to update this comment on the longer term ownership hah.
Didn't know there was a possible Ebike credit. My gf and I just did the math on getting an Ebike. Since we wouldn't be able to get rid of a car it didn't make financial sense yet. But if a reliable one was a little cheaper it may.
I rode one to work yesterday. I hadn't been on a bike in about a decade. I felt really unsure of myself at first, but after about ten minutes and a little practice, I was having a blast, I can't wait to do it again! The e-bike made it so easy. I think I would have had a much harder time getting to work on a regular bike after being away from cycling for so long.
I used to think E-Bikes were for older people like my grandparents but I've come to appreciate them as well for hilly trips or when I'm out late to get home faster. For those short length shopping trips some people might depend on the space in the trunk to transport all the groceries, freight bicycles might also be interesting
I bought an E-bike a few months ago, for commuting to work. I love it! Instead of spending 45 minutes on a crowded bus, I spend 30 minutes going through beautiful forests, arriving at work awake and ready!
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Of course I have a water restistant layer for rain, and if it's hot then...I will sweat at work anyway :P So for me, it works well.
I bought an ebike several years ago, when I was completely unfit, and immediately had enough range in combined battery and pedal power to take me on a 30+ km round trip from where I stayed to the beach and back. (The "+" being whatever noodling around once I got the the beachfront, under my own power mostly). It's not just distance. We lived at the bottom of a steep hill (maybe a 30 or 40m climb - which feels like more when you're pedalling a normal bike and you're badly unfit). The house was just about exactly 100m above sea level. So up to the highest point on the journey made the altitude change somewhere round the 150m mark. Anything that can enable an extremely unfit person to just move up and down that altitude creates enormous amounts of mobility. So far, so good. However, then one has to factor safety in. Where I come from the idea of a cycle lane (even a pedestrian footpath) is mostly something not even worth dreaming of. (I suppose if you were naive you could try to get the government to do something, but after a time you realise that's an utterly hopeless cause for anyone needing anything.) We have serious road safety problems here. Probably three times the average death rate for the whole of the USA, for instance (and the USA has pretty bad drivers if you look at the numbers). And then you have to balance your fear of the road with your fear of rough neighbourhoods. Take the route with the lower chance of being robbed at knifepoint (with a threat that is entirely sincere), and you have to gamble on surviving the psychopathic car drivers. (I tended to take my chances of the dangerous neighbourhoods. Drove through a gang once, but I caught them by surprise and moved through too quickly for them to take advantage.) So then Road Safety measures seem to be something we all need, for this kind of future to become viable for people less willing to take chances. Make the roads safer (and that's mainly a matter of getting better control over the psychopathic drivers - and in some cases the same people doing the same thing on bicycles) and you unlock the door. Leave the roads dangerous, and most e-bikes are going to end up like mine, in a dusty corner somewhere. (I'm too far away from the beach, and feel less vulnerable getting my exercise by running. For trips to the corner shop I just use the car. No point in risking your life just to save the Earth a tiny bit.) I have an idea about how to reduce the impact of the more psychopathic drivers (and even cyclists - the ones who buzz you when you're out running). What we need is monitoring devices that "know the rules". We almost have them already, so this is no longer science fiction. Take something with a GPS that can communicate with a driver, program all the various speed limits into it (on a per street basis), and you have the beginnings of what could become a more comprehensive system, with cameras, following distance measuring devices, etc. The innovative part is that you change the LAW. At the moment the law, everywhere says, "You're not allowed to go faster - by an objective measure matching some scientific standard - than say 60 km/h". You can fight speed fines by casting doubt on the trapping equipment, and you only ever end up being prosecuted for speeding if you go through a trap too fast. The coverage is spotty, and people learn where they can get away with attempted murder. So change the law so that "You must obey your car's speed control computer". If your measuring device detects a speed in excess of what's permitted, it beeps or something like that. It warns you, and you get some time to correct yourself. And if you don't? Well I like the idea of a safe-driving-computer that's a snitch. So as soon as you go over into fully committing an offence (like speeding), your snitch computer starts looking for a nice police officer for you to turn yourself over to. :D Of course the main problem with something like this is simply the amount of hate it would receive. It's something that has the potential to be made completely effective (so much so that it might be necessary to start thinking in terms of allowing "high speed licences" in stepped grades for psychopathic drivers willing to become "minders of the road" - creators of the kind of space needed for effective defensive driving in exchange for the right to let rip in those places it would be more rational to "Autobahn" in e.g. the highway system. Maybe if there was a enough new flexibility there would be a big enough reduction in hate for such a system to stand a chance of being implemented. Getting back to bicycles, the main obstacle to these is that current roads are lethally unaccommodating of them. The way to fix that is to figure out ways of ensuring good driving even when the backs of the police are turned. But there are probably enough infantile men with big toys they insist on being allowed to play dangerously with, as if of right, that even with less effective measure than making people fit their cars and bicycles with electronic snitches that require compliance with road safety laws, you face the prospect of massive and dedicated opposition. (Hmm ... for a while we had average speed prosecution on some stretches of highway. However it looks like the motorists who hate this have somehow managed to kill it. I've never met anyone who was prosecuted for average speed speeding. And I've done it myself often enough on such roads - got to keep up with the flow. Might be illegal, but it's safer than getting in the way of those impatient buggers who insist on cutting those 30 seconds off their journey.)
Footage of biking in the US looks so scary. So few segregated bike lanes, with just painted-on badly maintained paths that are intruded upon by the massive amount of car traffic.
I bet dollars to nickles the savings from road maintenance/expansion alone would make just giving everyone in a city a free basic ebike a net-positive for a city's balance sheet overall
I've had an electric bike for about 4 years now. It's amazing how it flattens out the hills here in Seattle. I've recently gotten in to Electric Unicycles (EUCs) which are also a great form of personal transportation. The big advantage with them is they are portable. You can easily walk them into a store with you or put them in a shopping cart and no one looks at you twice. Try walking your expensive electric bike into a store and people get all bent our of shape.
Electric cars really feel like a false profit for saving the environment. They're marginally better than regular cars, but still hugely wasteful for the most part compared with things like public transport or biking, and they do nothing to solve the issues of traffic or road safety. E bikes are a far better alternative where people can use them.
Another reason Europe has a bigger push for e bikes (and scooters) is due to most cities not having the ability to build parking without destroying historical places. Parking a bike is far, far easier, offering an ulterior incentive to adopting them over cars for city wide trips
Never driven a car personally, the last eight years I've averaged about 130 miles a month on my bike. Added a motor In the last. Year after my state finally started allowing ebikes. Love it even more, made a 300 mile trip one way in a weekend recently.
I don't have a driver's licence, don't know how to drive, and I don't plan to ever learn how to drive. There's too much at stake when it comes to the climate catastrophe for me to drive everywhere.
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 ignoring the environmental impact, I wouldn't be able to afford it. I would have to decide between insurance and paying for medical bills because I'm too poor to get insurance.
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 the backward ways of the United States requires one to choose between getting healthcare, paying for rent, or food. You only get medical treatment if you can pay for it as a commodity, and not as a right.
For me the main barrier to non-recreational biking is not how easy biking is, but how secure the bike will be at any destination. My city has fairly good bike paths throughout but not many places provide bicycle parking, and bike theft is a major issue.
I’ve already had two locked bikes stolen here in Pasadena/Los Angeles. Last week, almost had my third one stolen. I ride the bus and place my bike on the front rack, in front of the driver. At a stop, one passenger got off the bus, went to the rack and took my bike to then quickly start riding. Meanwhile, I yelled at the driver to open the door and went running after the thief. What he didn’t know was that I had the front wheel locked to the frame with a cable. When he started riding, the locking cable did its job and sent that asshole flying forward, startling him while I cursed repeatedly at him and could get my bike back safely on the bus.
There's three things keeping me from using my bike, for local trips, at least. 1. Weather and shade. It's really hot and humid here. Most bike lanes and paths have absolutely no shade. 2. Bad road network. Everything is too spread apart, isolated, and connections are rare unless you take the long way on the main roads. 3. Lack of facilities. Buildings with bike lockers, showers, and maybe an electric air pump would do wonders. Bicycle theft is extremely prevalent. I've had my bike stolen before, and many racks + locks are useless against people determined to steal. A secure are with lockers would give me peace of mind.
Ah yes, the unmistakable map of the isthmus in Madison, I can't wait to play laser tag at the Capital building. Also, I love the picture you put in of the Hodag from Rhinelander.
Perhaps tougher penalty for bike theft and bike registration system like Japan will allow more people to commute and leave their bikes locked without fear of some scum bag stealing it.
Awesome video! I didn't know you lived in SLO, but I recognize California Blvd when I see it. SLO has SLOwly become a more bike friendly community and I love it. With all of the hills, the environment is perfect for e-bikes. Biggest change I would like to see is the pedestrian infrastructure on Santa Rosa Street improve. Especially the bridge over the 101
I used to live in Madison, WI. It was very nice to see the city in an unexpected place for an unexpected reason presented in an unexpected way. Thanks for making my day
I cycle 40 minutes to town in my free time quite often as it's good exercise, however I don't cycle to school or to shop because bags and such would make it a much more challenging ride given it's a rural gravel path over hilly terrain. If I had a hybrid e-bike - one that could go both on the road and on gravel - I would certainly switch to cycling to town to go to school or go shopping.
first time I used an e-bike, it was to go and retrieve my car across town after a heavy night of drinking with my comrades. I didn't even realize that I was hungover until I got off the e-bike. 10/10
Nice to talk about safety at 7:08 as you then put yourself in the “coffin corner” by passing that minivan as you approach the intersection. My heart literally started to race as as saw you deliberately and very naively did the most dangerous thing you could ever do on a bike. Then you repeat your potentially deadly mistake at 7:25. Even Jay Foreman of Unfinished London screams not to do this in his Cycle London video.
We had the E-bike Act in Sweden, most people who used it were already bike commuters, they replaced their regular bike with an e-bike. It wasn't a complete failure but the money could have been spent on other more useful things to get non-biking people biking, like infrastructure investments. But Sweden isn't the US so it might work better there.
Same thing is happening in Luxembourg: the government installed a scheme where they reimburse 50% off your bike purchase (ebike or not, up to 600€). Problem is that people are buying more bikes for recreational rides rather than for commuting, and they are very slow with infrastructure projects.
Here in Chicago, I've been car-free (90% by bike) for 9 years. Our bike-share system recently added eBikes, which have an additional benefit of not requiring a dock to park -- I can ride right up to my destination and lock it up and walk away. Plus, I don't worry about the safety of my bike while I'm inside my destination. My partner and I still log dozens of "regular" miles every week, but now almost all of our non-work rides are bike share eBikes.
That's a pretty cool bike path by Madonna Inn. Sadly most bike paths in SLO still look like the shoulder on Madonna Road and Higuera. That is simply not safe enough for me.
Its so cool to see you riding around SLO! You even rode past the last place I lived on Pismo St while going to Cal Poly. I rode my bike to campus every day and DEFINITELY wished I had had an ebike because I was so sweaty by the time I got to campus. San Luis Obispo's bike facilities have improved a lot since I left in 2008.
Love the Madison shoutout! Could you start putting the link to the nebula video in the description? I already have an account, but dislike having to go find the video every time.
One reason we don't bike as much in the US as Europe is the weather. British people think 85f is too hot... that's a lovely springtime day in most of the US, then it's 95f-105f for 3 months, then it's 10-20f for 4 months in the winter. We have seasons here, and most of them suck
As a person living in New York I wish we have more wider sidewalk it annoying when you pass through narrow sidewalk when multiple people are using it and sometimes you can't get pass some people like elderly who go half you pace also would be beneficial to bike as you have more space to add bike lanes
also living in NY we gotta advocate for better bike infrastructure specially for the boroughs not called manhattan and at least turn one of ave's into dedicated bike lanes, manhattan is doing a good job but no where close to the something like amsterdam
I had a major deja vu moment at 1:45! I really enjoy your videos and it's so interesting to discover that you are from my neck of the woods. I used to bike all over when I was in college at Poly. An E-bike would have made it much for feasible to go farther from campus, but considering I and some of my friends lost bikes and bike parts to theft, maybe not a good thing to keep on a college campus :D
Please take the 2021 City Beautiful viewer survey! berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cBbV3WiN3CJnHV4
I did the survey.
ok
4:13
Finally, at least one partially tech channel which is not drifted with greenidiots who simply hate and lie about nuclear power.
Was the Madison, WI map a random selection (I think not since you cameoed the Hodag) or are you from Madison? If so, I would love to meet up some time in this mad town I call home.
(Obviously the rest of the video was clearly not Wisconsin)
In your video you mentioned the benefits of more dense urban design so may be it is time for you to make a video about compact cities.
I'm a big fan of ebikes. We have two (a regular ebike an a bakfiets cargo bike), and the electric cargo bike is a true car-replacement.
When we moved back to Toronto I was literally shortlisting cars because we planned to buy one. But thankfully we bought an electric cargo bike first, and we realized that the car wasn't necessary.
That ebike allowed us to live car-free, in Toronto, and with two young kids. We rode it all year 'round. Literally millions of people in North America could do the same, and many tens of millions more could go from two cars to one car, if they got an ebike instead (as you said).
Unfortunately safety really is the biggest issue. We never had major issues with rain, snow, or hot summers; only with dangerous streets due to motor vehicles.
Why did you move back to Toronto? Seems like a step backwards.
I bike commute in NYC. It has ok bike infrastructure, good for North America, laughable compared to the Netherlands. There are a lot of bikes and ebikes here. I have to admit, sharing the bike lane with the ebikes is scary. They whip past me, while passing close, which is very startling. I've had many close calls and one has hit me. You can't hear them! And they don't do a courtesy ring or "on your left/right" as they pass. I don't know what the solution is. I just know I don't feel safe.
Right when you got an extreme weather conditions and less of 1% used it why the rest néed to wasted tax fairs in those fails programs and what I hate think people call it climate emergency. And electric bikes or cars they need a name carbon tax...
Dt traffic is a nightmare. I live in York region and it feels so much safer than dt
@@ChrisPollitt we moved back to Toronto in 2013 because we had two young kids and wanted to be closer to family. And we thought that by living somewhere walkable it could be bearable.
I lasted about a year before I started looking to relocate back to Europe and we moved to the Netherlands in 2018.
There is no way in hell I would move back to Canada again.
Awesome video. My new studio is 2 miles from home and I've been commuting by bike every day. Central Texas summers are brutal, so I would definitely consider going electric if it were any farther. Even with the heat, it's such a nice way to start and end each day.
I did this in Austin for awhile but yeah, 6 to 7 months out of the year it was too hot and the office didn't have showers. I think the bigger issue was that Texas biking infrastructure was kind of terrible and drivers largely prefer giant trucks and SUVs, making biking dangerous.
Out here in hot, hot El Paso, my office is about a mile away, but all uphill. I use an ebike so I don't arrive sweaty. I also consistently email my city's planning department advocating for better bicycle facilities, because they are terrible.
@@andreww1439 Normal person should run that barely breaking a sweat :D
@@jepulis6674 Lol clearly you've never been to El Paso.
Try one for 2 weeks.. It is too convenient and we humans always choose convenience. Specially when it is hot, you use half the energy than usual and are refreshed when you arrive. I consider it my moving exercise bike, i dictate the resistance but the scenery changes and wind keeps me cool. Even for 2 miles.. 90% of my commute is less than a mile, but i do live on top of a hill.
No insurance, no registration, no licenses, little maintenance, no parking problems, and low cost. I love them!!!
Ultimate subversion
Yep, almost perfect, also you can ride on a lot of places with a Ebike that a car can't.
@@stockeyyes one of my ascend e bike has extremely good suspension . my fat tire throttle assist bike will go over sand and snow and ice fine. not everyone could maneuver that though lol.
Low cost? What are you fucking talking about
I'm always amazed that electric cars are touted as the solution to transportation pollution problems when older technology like bicycles (including ebikes) and designing walkable dense urban neighbourhoods are a much better solution. One of the main problems with North American and Australian cities is that so much infrastructure is devoted towards cars and driving.
Yeah I agree. I think people like ecars because they are more of a drop in replacement. But in reality we should make cities relay on cars less and make walking and biking more of a thing.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 if the US and Canada replaced most of the infrastructure devoted to cars with cycling and transit infrastructure we would see a reduction in both carbon emissions and would probably a reduction in motor vehicle crashes as well. 2 birds 1 stone. Not to mention since bicycle infrastructure takes up much less room than automobile infrastructure if we took out most car infrastructure like highways, wide roads, parking lots etc much of the land that the infrastructure sits on could be used for wildlife rehabilitation.
There are massive benefits to this outside of just safety and reduction in emissions. Major thank you to “Not Just Bikes” for helping to educate me on this.
The car industry is far more powerful than the bike industry :(
Definitely agree. EVs don't solve the problem that most of our urban space is given to cars 😤
Cities (mostly north american ones) still need more bike infrastructure. In my town we don’t have bike lanes except on busy streets, so most people just bike on the sidewalk which is obviously not ideal.
Especially my home city of Semmes, Al. We actually do not any kind of bike infrastructure out here.
Exactly what I was going to say. Doesn't matter how good bikes are if everything is built for cars.
Chicken or the egg situation
@@giancarlomartini2133 Nah it's definitely a smoke and fire situation. If you don't make safe and effective cycle infrastructure no one will want to cycle, and if you don't deprioritize car infrastructure then people will have no need to cycle. You do both and you get the Netherlands. You won't get a significant percentage of commuters out of their cars and onto their bikes until you make cycling easy, safe and quick, rather than dangerous and awkward that it is in a lot of places currently.
Agreed. My commute is only 11km, but I just went along on Google Streetview to see what it would be like on an E-Bike. There's one stretch where I'd have to go down a hill with 4 lanes of traffic passing at 80+km/h and another where I'd need to make a left turn across 4 lanes of traffic.
Once I'm in the urban core, the infrastructure is there, but there's currently too many barriers to feel safe making the trip five days a week.
The biggest deterrent, at least for me, is theft. It would be perfect, and the same goes for electric unicycles and scooters. However, most cities don't have safe storage spaces ruling out the category entirely...
This is my actual worry too
Agreed. I have some areas where I live that I can use an E bike but there’s no safe place to lock it. I can ride a cheap bicycle and not worry so much if it’s stolen because it didn’t cost so much but an e bike that cost $1500 or more that’s a big loss if somebody takes one of those shears to break the lock and just throws it in the truck then your E bike is gone.
Use a kryptonite “new York fughetaboudit” chain lock. It’s like 16lbs (not a big deal on a e bike) you aren’t cutting through that without power tools.
@@3of11 All thieves have power tools in San Francisco
they can lock them on lampposts, gates, poles or any immovable object. however, some don't allow bikes to be locked up but the majority do
Let's not forget e-cargo bikes. They are perfect for delivering small packages which consist the bulk of deliveries.
Got myself an e-cargo. I'm car free and now I can get most of the heavier stuff transferred with the bike. Earlier I had to do multiple trips, pay for delivery, or ignore the need.
Cargo e-bikes*
Lol
Domino's is using mostly e-bikes to deliver their pizza in my town because it is obviously cheaper and sometime even faster.
What about I'm the winter
@@Scrimjer th-cam.com/video/Uhx-26GfCBU/w-d-xo.html
I live in Portland and they recently replaced the rentable city bikes with e-bikes instead, and that has allowed my roommate with joint pain to ride with me comfortably. E-bikes are a HUGE win for accessibility
Hi from Eugene
this is why i kind of worry about laws surrounding ebikes, such as limiting ebikes on trails, as ebikes make all sorts of bike activities finally accessible to so many people. i hope such legislation includes circumstances like this
Cars are big stinky, walking and biking is big awesome.
Honestly it makes me wish I learned how to ride a bike.
@@Exarian a lot of people learn to swim late. its even more worth it to learn to bike late
@@thomasr1051 👍
Dealing with shitty road surfaces, asshole drivers that honk at you for riding on the road, bugs that stick to your face, the wind and the rain is big awesome
How did urban planning and keyboard hobbies mix together- I never thought I'd see you here. Good luck on getting bikes more accepted in your city!
I bought my ebike last July and I've been able to put 1600 miles on it already. I'm not a super fit person and I've not been going out of my way to ride, but for short trips it's significantly faster than my old truck and has cut both gas and maintenance costs on it. If my city had better infrastructure I could do even more of my trips on the bike.
This summer i loved to take trips at night, after the air had cooled down. Never done that before.. and my reason is kind of stupid but kind of not. Planning a bike trip with regular bike includes estimating your own strength and will. With an ebike, you can go as far as you like and know you can always get home without feeling exhausted. It is LIGHT exercise, for sure, but as long as it is exercise it is good for you. Just moving the pedals is already something and taking a few hills along the way.. feels so great, you can take it lightly or hard, it is MY choice of when and how long. With a regular bike, apart from a sort of challenge, hills can easily be bigger than you and you are hitting a cliff before you get to the top.
Of course, my situation is aided by having excellent bike infra... There are bike paths all over the place and they do not follow the car infra but cut thru forests, so that you can cycle for kilometers without having to cross but couple of roads. And having to go thru nature makes it therapeutic too. Finnish summers are the best for cyclists...
if youre not fit then consider getting an ordinary bike so you can get some exercise while you get around
I think a lot of people don't realize just how much they spend each month on gas and maintenance. Its not even the commutes really. The average person makes 4 trips/day. Switching to public transit started saving me money. But, it wasn't until I totally switched to a bike for everything except bus on worst weather days, that I really saw how much a truck sucks away your bank account. Not to mention, bike parts are cheaper and I can do any of the maintenance tasks on my bike.
Something else worth mentioning is that many ebikes make riding in winter more viable. I bought one with fat tires last winter to ride here in Calgary, Canada. It works great!
How does it make it better than a normal bike? Just faster?
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Snow = rolling resistance. Also winter clothes are, even the best of them, are restrictive. Winter biking is more than double the effort from summer. Everything is harder, lubricants are just a bit stiffer, tires deflate when exposed to cold (there is only so much overpressure you can put in them), the rubber is more rigid.. everything is just a tiny bit harder but when compounded make it a LOT harder.
Source: experience from cycling 40 winters in Finland. And our bikepaths are plowed very consistently, 4cm of snow is maximum. They do plow the most used paths first and in some places do not plow both sidewalks but they do keep at least one continuous path clear for the whole way from A to B. The main problem really has been ice lately, i will buy studded tires for the next winter that are as thick as i can fit to the frame and rim.
Hey neighbour!
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Many ebikes come with fatter tires which do better in the snow. On a regular bike a fat tires are more of a chore to pedal, but on an ebike that extra work doesn't matter because the motor is helping you do that extra work.
Maybe for snow, where I live we rarely get snow but we get a lot of skin-slicing cold and from my experience better weather to bike in than our skin-slicing dry cold doesn't exist. when we did get snow, however, I literally couldn't take a single road that wasn't busy because I had to drive my bike in the ridge left by people's tires
I'm studying urban planning in Cardiff and this is exactly what's happening here, mutiple shops have opened up selling electric bikes and also electric scooters which are really surprisingly popular. The city and surrounding urban area down to Penarth have nextbike (which is like a Boris Bike), but now they are investing in new electric ones too.
Boris Bikes were pretty decent and late for its time in Paris they have such systems for decades.
The cycle lane in the London are often only 2m wide and go in both directions and are limited by curbs. Pretty uncomfortable.
@@paxundpeace9970 never been on Boris Bike's in London but from what I know from Jay Foreman video on the bike lanes in London they are awful. The bike lanes in Cardiff a pretty decent though.
And of course, electric scooter sales are likely to soar once they're made legal to ride on the roads/cycle paths/etc.
@@frankhooper7871 tbh they are all over the place here already and never seen a police officer pull anyone over, I think they are unofficially okay with them
I studied in Cardiff too! They really need to expand the segregated bike network out east along the rumney and west to connect to the ely trail. I think they are definitely doing a better job than most cities though even if it's not perfect yet!
I live in Honolulu, and I always shake my head because it really is the perfect city for public transit, and yet there are almost no bike lanes or bike racks, no road shoulders, no working rail systems, and no ferry network. The bus is great and I rely on it heavily, but it's obvious that we can do better!
Needs better leadership, maybe you!
For me personally the only challenges of having an E-bike is their weight and size. I love my e-bike but I hate having to take it up and down my complex's stairs everyday and storing it in my apartment can be a challenge sometimes. However, it's still 10-times better than having to drive everywhere.
Bike parking availability and quality can severely limit your choices when you got them on your list and are looking for a place, even in germany
E scooter is the best option in that case :)
Ask your building manager to install an indoor bike storage/lock area, this video is kind of elluding to how such change needs to be done. In europe many buildings have such infrastructure, time to bring it across the pond
@@12kenbutsuri Well I already spent 1500 on an E-bike so there's no going back lol
@@andrewjensen8189 I live in Portland and only really upscale complexes have those. I live in a low rise complex that is really more like converted townhouses so it would be hard to build something like that. It's not too bad though because I actually like my landlord and I only live a 10 min ride from my work and a 3 min ride from the store.
I’ve been seeing more e- bikes and scooters on the streets than I have in past years. For a dense city like NYC, they go just as fast as cars in some cases while taking up less space and costing way less than an automobile.
What about in February
@@Scrimjer My ebike doesn't do well on loose snow and slush, but with studded tyres icy / hardpacked snow is fine.
I thought average speed of cars is around 6km/h, slightly faster than walking,
why would anyone even drive in nyc?
@@annabelholland I don't know. Maybe they feel unsafe when walking or feel too obese to try?
0:10
ah yes, my favorite, lazer tag at the state capitol building
yas
i love laser tag in there
We do be having the best state capitol in the country
I like the area 51 arena better
Laser
E-Bikes are great solely because they can get more urban voters actually caring about non-automotive infrastructure.
That's a bit cynical. And that's coming from a guy who regularly makes comments that are critical of the videos here.
@@leandersearle5094 How is it cynical?
@@TheRCish Read his message. In saying "solely", he states "for no other reason". In saying "actually caring", he states that whatever "care" has been shown was just for show. What's more cynical than saying a person's concerns, causes, or feelings are just for show?
@@leandersearle5094 you're over analyzing. maybe try not to take things so literal. i'm pretty sure the OP was exaggerating when he said "solely"
@@carstarsarstenstesenn I wasn't overanalyzing. He asked for my reasoning, I provided it.
I live in a rural town in WA state near the border. One of my best friends in santa barbara had a pair of juiced ebikes. I was so amazed by them that my wife and I bought a pair. We have gotten nothing but questions on where people can buy some! They are awesome! Not just for cities, but for rural areas too! I ride mine to my 11 mile work commute at least 3x a week!!
Nice
I feel like one big thing with e-bikes that is needed is safe spaces to park. Even a bad bike would totally get pieces stolen off of it once it’s out of eyesight. I couldn’t imagine parking a couple thousand dollar bike is most places in American cities. The rented bikes helps with this but it’s still a big problem. Also glass on roads causes me so many headaches.
Yup. I seriously have nothing to add here.
The way people get away with this in most eu cities is buying a beater bike and only using the fancier one if they have safe storage options.
I've actually never had a tire punctured by glass.
Personal story time though: I've gotten a 4 inch nail stuck in my tire which instantly blew it out, and also caused it to lock up when the nail got jammed on the brakes. Naturally this was while riding downhill on a 15° incline, so I got to continue riding almost to the bottom with only the back wheel able to actually rotate.
I'm still not sure how I managed to stay upright.
I think shops/restaurants should allow them inside and have some kind of bike storage. They're not much bigger than a cart or a stroller and they don't pollute
I have a Rad Runner E-Bike. I dont have a car anymore because after watching your videos i realized 90% or more of my trips are less than 5 miles. I now save $600 a month or $7200 a year not having a car!
most european cities still have absolutely laughable bike infrastructure. Still better than NA of course, but the bar is just really low
what kind of infrastructure do you need for a bike?
@@Bascanska_Ploca in most cases your own (seperated) bicycle path when car traffic is allowed to drive 50km or faster and/or when it is 2 lanes or more per direction wide.
Space to park your bicycle at destination like your home, work, shops and public transport hubs.
@@Bascanska_Ploca Smooth asphalt and protected lanes on busy streets (protected from cars and pedestrians). What my city lacks is smart traffic lights and larger bicycle lane widths that reflect the large number of cyclists that use them.
We need to take back cities from cars.
@@DarkDutch007 ok thanks
Bought an e-bike last month for a 25 mile each way commute whenever we go back to the office. It's soooooooo fun!
I've never figured out how bmws claim "the joy of driving" applies. My cargo ebike beats any car :-) fun is a thing outside of cars!
@@Jacksparrow4986 I just got an Urban Arrow cargo bike. Apparently a top speed of 20 mph doesn't preclude an average speed of 23 mph, as it climbs all hills at 20 but goes down them at 25.
@@langhamp8912 you're fast. I'm struggling to get an average spped over 15km/h on my similar bike. Too many crossings with cars illegally parked all over them, lots of cobblestone roads, traffic lights that only make sense for cars, cycling infrastructure that makes my go slower than I could go... however, beeing able to ride faster isn't too on my wishlist: riding safely and ideally more relaxed come first.
I think you've convinced me to get an e-bike. I live in Seattle and my office is about 10 miles from where I live. There's a protected bike connector highway that would make up the majority of my commute, so I would feel pretty safe.
It's life changing, for sure
If you need something more portability and easy to store, I would reccomend a E scooter. But E bikes are amazing too!
The problem with bike commuting is the lack of secured bicycle parking. Bike theft is a huge problem, and with thefts being so prevalent acts as a deterrent for a would be commuter.
Laser tag at the capitol sounds fun! 😆Great video!!
:OomOO ur the roadways guy
Haha, I was thinking the same thing!
My issue is speed. Biking in seattle will get you killed with angry car drivers passing you bc the city doesnt have bike lanes.
Seattle totally has bike lanes. Maybe they aren't everywhere you'd want them but Seattle still has them.
E-bikes help a bit with that since they can assist you up to around 20 mph. Makes it safer around cars since the speed differential is much less. On 25 mph streets, an ebike feels safe in car lanes imo.
It does have bike lanes but it looks like, just like nearly every other city on the face of the earth, the bike lanes are in the stupidest locations they could think of. I'm seeing a lot of bike lanes on streets with parking but parking is ultimately prioritized, even on the ones that carry hella traffic, why? then on 15th avenue they have a bike lane on 1 side but the other side is parking. dearborn street makes sense but as soon as I dropped in on google street view there was a pedestrian in the bike lane, so that sidewalk should be fixed.
Well at least it's not as bad as my city, where we have plenty of bike lanes but not one of them can be used by someone who's afraid to bike in car lanes. Bikes in my city are directed to these residential streets that are always hilly and have stop sign spam so bad that it would improve safety to remove some stop signs. the best one in my city is the one on Gravois Avenue which would be better if it wasn't next to parking (why is that a thing on Gravois traffic hauls there) and continued down the whole street
@@Maoilios12 It might help if the city didn't block addition of bike lanes in favor of parking and car traffic lanes
@@beastateverythin I need one that can assist me up to 45 mph.
5:19 "And no hop-ons" That call-back earns you bonus points and an enthusiastic thumbs up!
"30% off an e-bike less than $8000" so there are e-bikes that are MORE than $8k?!
There are cars more than $800,000
Yes sir
Yes, which is a major problem with the E-bike act. Its ultimately just a give away to manufacturers, not really helping the buyer. The median e-bike cost is around $2000 US. Most daily use city e-bikes would be under the $1500 range and above $4000 you're getting into performance bike territory, so not the target of an act like this. That's the problem. If we want to fulfill the needs of the most people, we should be targeting that sub $2k range. 30% of $8000 is $2400. If we really wanted to get maximum effect to the consumer, and not just throw money at the likes of Specialized, it should be a free purchase voucher for any e-bike under $2000 (or, just any bike, in general).
There are regular bikes more than $8.000.
The biggest problem IMO is that people love stealing or just damaging bikes, so if you got an electric one you will be a target. Kinda sucks but thats just the way it is.
I have had so many bikes stole. Locked or not. I'm not sure why people around here love stealing bikes so much
E-bike sharing is key.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Yeah its so stupid. Like I used to own a bike that was barely rolling and someone stole it, repainted it. But threw it away 2 days later. I've also had 7 bike lights stolen. Police dont give a shit since its so common.
When I was at Michigan state university for a school trip, people just left bikes lying around and if you needed on you just picked a random one and went off, then left it for the next person. There were people who did have bikes and locks too
@@tomrogue13 I think they might have created a social network of bike-sharing
I am 56 and I have started biking to work, a little over 2 miles away. Despite the danger, I am addicted to it.
The health benefits offset the danger ....
www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/06/13/bicycling-the-safest-form-of-transportation/
Thanks for mentioning the manufacturing carbon costs of building electric cars, people often overlook that
Gasoline pollution far offsets any production savings. RMI has your data on this.
Do those mostly come from the battery because ebikes have batteries of similar capacities
I own both an e-bike and a regular bike, and there are indeed a few situations where I do feel the e-bike provides real advantages with respect to safety, not just being easier to pedal..
First, with a regular bike, you often face tradeoffs where the flat road has a lot of car traffic and the back road that avoids it requires going up a steep hill. With a pedal bike, you end up putting up with the busy road to avoid the hill. With an e-bike, you can just motor up the hill and avoid most of the cars.
Second, due to lack of bike infrastructure, it is often necessary to briefly share a lane with cars on a busy roadway, for example, to connect between two bike trails going different directions. In such situations, an e-bike reduces frustration of drivers behind you compared to a pedal bike which, in turn, reduces the likelihood of them doing something dangerous to pass you. Just being able to accelerate from 0 mph to 15 mph at the same rate as a typical car, and go 20 mph rather than 10 mph up a small incline makes a huge difference.
Third, due to increased resistance from motor and upright posture, my e-bike is actually slower than my pedal bike on steep descents, reducing the liklihood of the bike accelerating to a dangerous speed. (Above 20 mph, the motor cuts off, so becomes just a dead weight).
The dutch-style ebikes you describe are made for canal bridges and flood control embankments, not hills.
I moved away from Zürich, Switzerland in 2018, and I'm back now for a visit and noticed a lot more bikes. I was a biker living here before, and I see a lot more growth in people using them as well as e-scooters to just get around short distances. It's great.
What's a gamechanger is that E-Bikes also enable much more widespread adoption of cargo bikes, which can carry the kind of cargo you'd normally need a car for!
Check out Tailfin. I have it and it is amazing!
Trailers work great wIth ebikes too. You get the best of both worlds, extra carrying capacity for errands and a regular bike that's easy to park the rest of the time.
@@danielgstohl9993 That's not even a car, that's a truck. Go pull into a weigh station right now.
@@bootmii98 The average bike trailer seems to weigh around 20-40lbs (9-18kg) empty. The average golf cart, not even a car, seems to weigh around 500-1100lbs (225-500kg). If your comment is a joke I'm probably missing it though, I'll admit.
I've watched every video on this channel but I want to take this opportunity to articulate something I've felt for all this time. THANK YOU for creating such an informative array of content with great production values on topics relating to city design, planning, use, history, etc. IN A WAY that isn't preachy and nihilistic like other channels with a new urbanist bent. It's a marvelous quality of character to have your values, to back them up with facts and experience, and articulate them to others in a way that doesn't make them feel like crap. You're an absolute legend.
I definitely like my e-bike, since I’m not able to drive and the area I live in makes it somewhat practical to use, especially in tandem with transit options. It even has the ability to recharge the battery so that can help extend my trips if needed. I’ve been seeing more of them lately and that makes me happy!
Switching from normal cars to electric cars is like switching from normal cigarettes to electric cigarettes: they are less harmful to you but still not ideal. I really hope bikes and e-bikes can take off to mitigate traffic and make trips more pleasant.
Nonsense...Tesla cars with self driving and the integrated dash cams prevent a lot of accidents...and in the case of accidents or intentional damage, can point out who is responsible (with video proof) thereby eliminating a lot of the crap that goes on without the dash cams.
@@rajnadar6555 still won’t eliminate traffic public transit, biking, and walking will help to lessen traffic because they actually get cars off the road
Secondly there’s serious security concerns with these cars even amateur hackers have been able to control the car not to mention there’s potential for tracking by governments
Thirdly the destruction on the environment needed to mine the materials for the batteries are more invasive then any oil well it’s worth when we’ll talking small batteries for lawn mowers or something but unless we end the cultural of a new car every year we’ll do much more harm then good
I agree. Cars are also a lot of wasted space. You can fit many bikes into a spot for a car
yes
@@rajnadar6555 if there were less cars it would prevent even more crashes… and those that do occur would be less dangerous. And that has nothing to do with the environmental issues
I got one and I love it! However, I suspect the leaders in my community also own the gas stations and parking lots, because it's ILL-ducking-LEGAL to have any kind of electrically-powered bike or scooter or board in this town. Yep, their mear existance is a crime! It's it's not a (standard) bike or a car they lose their frickin minds!
Oof
Where?
@@Nicholas-f5 middle of Illinois
We can legally use pedal assist e-bikes in the UK but if you want something faster with non pedal action you need to have a driver's licence on you and it's only for use on roads not cycle lanes. Personal e-scooters are not legal to be used on streets and roads. The only e-scooters allowed are for rent through a few companies that require users to be over 18 and have a driver's licence. Police regular stop and seize any personal scooters they see on the roads.
I'm an avid bike commuter in a city where there's no bike lanes. But that doesn't bother me because nobody uses the sidewalks. The main issue, however, is that nobody is clearing the ice and snow during winter.
E-Bikes actually make me feel a lot safer riding next to traffic than a regular bike. Mostly because I can go faster to better match traffic and start faster from a stop. Both ease the anxieties of constantly being passed or feeling like you're holding things up.
The fact that SLO still doesn't have protected bike lanes on Madonna rd is criminal. Or even better, a dedicated bike path separate from the stroad that connects the two sides of the city without going onto traffic
Looking at all that footage of SLO makes me nostalgic. It's also one of the most cycle-able cities in the nation, and Cal Poly is festooned with good bike-racks. I mostly go on foot or regular bicycle, including everywhere you showed. Only in September do you have to worry about sweat whatsoever (unless you ever take that thing up the Cuesta). So this often depends entirely on people's willingness, rather than ability, which seems like quite the nut to crack
It’s a shame how expensive it is. Rented a crappy studio for 1,200 in 2013. Probably two grand now
@@gaughen my apartment was just a block away from the mission, and it cost $750/mo from 2014-2017, though I had a roommate. I thought it was expensive at the time (having lived in Las Vegas from 1995-2014, though I was born in SLO), but everything is getting crazy lately.
Yes! I immediately recognized the area, I lived in town and walked everywhere, it was awesome!
Getting an electric longboard has saved me so much on gas, and insurance. It's a lot of fun too. You also dont need to worry about parking.
4:26 Not only are E-bikes much less costly to manufacture and recharge than electric cars, but the bicycle as a platform is fundamentally easier (and therefore cheaper) to maintain throughout its lifetime. Almost all of its parts are modular, and many can be easily replaced with some basic tools and rudimentary mechanical knowledge.
My hope is that E-bikes and their derivatives (which may or may not feature pedals) will eventually evolve to completely replace motorcycles, mopeds, and gas-driven scooters in everyday use. However, horns or loud bells should become standard equipment on them, as an E-bike can't rely on the noise of its engine to be noticed (unlike a traditional motorcycle).
I once converted a regular Bike to an e-Bike with a of-the-shelf-kit... then i build my own... both were "meh" but not great.
Then i rented one of the fancy new ones... the Motor engaged very smooth, electric assist was cut off imedeately when i started to brake and the Batterys seemed to last forever (well at least for a regular day) over all, a really nice Ride.
First thing i did when i returned that rental in...
I walked into a Bike-Shop and bought a regular Bike with 7Speed Hubshifting, a Hubdynamo - nothing Fancy at all ... now 5 Years old... still love it.
I do food delivery with ebikes/escooters and end up making more money than drivers, because I avoid having to pay car insurance, gasoline, maintanamce, the car price itself etc etc 🙃 also its better than normal bikes cuz the amount of extra food you have to eat is almost as bad as driving a car for the environment.
Is the extra food really that significant for the environment? I find it hard to believe that having to eat an extra few calories from exercise is a significant contribution to climate change compared to burning a gallon of fuel, for instance.
@@andyzhang5201 depends what you eat! There's also the transportation of food, and all the process it goes through which ads up quite a lot. Also the fertiliser crises might be much worse than global warming since when it is used up, which is supposed to happen in less than 100 years, food won't meet the demand for the expected to be 110 billion people. But of course a few thousand food curriers switching to ebike won't make any difference in any way. But extra few calories is misguided, bike delivery uses the most amou t of calories than any job, even more than fire fighters, you will have to eat a whole meal every few hours. Try it out and see ;p it's quite a fun job if the weather is good
I don't think thats true about the food part. It depends what you eat and your body is dramatically more efficient at using fuel than anything thing we have today. If the body could use gas as fuel humans would get close to 1000mpg from a energy standpoint.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 no, that isn't true. The efficiency from growing crops to muscle movingment is orders and orders of magnitude less efficient than combustion engines if you considered per kg. Otherwise, no one would be using cars except for carrying big stuff.
@@12kenbutsuri From what I remember muscles are close to 50%+ which is much better than a gas engine at ~34%, diesel gets closer (but you have to scale it up to cargo ship/power plant levels) but this is before drive train loss which can be up to 20-30%. I also don't think your looking at the whole picture. Your muscles only need to move yourself. A moped gets 100+mpg though it has a less efficient engine than a normal car engine that gets 30mpg because a car needs to move so much dead weight. Also look at Asian countries which have greater population and less food but still use walking, bikes, and mopeds as their main transportation infrastructure and have less of an environmental footprint than a western counterpart. Keep in mind that gas also uses ethanol too which is basically food grown and put into gas, it would be of better use to just eat it.
I have a theory that we could get funding for bicycle infrastructure if they were marketed as being used for senior citizens mobility scooters
So they could stay in their homes and not have to go to a residential facility because they no longer can drive a car
Or make school districts bike friendly and teach safe street cycling as a gym elective
Get the AARP on board and you can pass anything
@@trent6319 in the Netherlands the cycle network is used a lot by senior people in mobility scooters
I walked/biked to work for 8 years, now I have to commute but we get bikes to use at work since the building is so large
Dude your soooo right! What do you use to make these awesome videos? This was so well put together.
I FEEL VERY TARGETED BY USING A MAP OF MADISON AND THE EXAMPLE OF WALKING TO THE CORNER STORE TO BUY A PACK OF PKMN CARDS (other than the fact that in Madison there're no corner stores that sell pkmn cards)
The biggest issue beside general maintance is THIEFT. E Bike are considerably more expensive thus they are a bigger target. And in a place such as a campus, parking just like cars are few.
I had a similar scenario in the video, where we had two cars and we downsized to a ebike. I love it! My work is less than a mile away, and I get groceries or errands done with it as well. It was a great investment!
Awesome move. I went from one car to no car over five years ago. Everything I need is only one mile away tops. I ride my bike everywhere. If you already had great health you will find that it's only going to get even better.
I grew up near you over in Davis which really showed me that it doesn't take mega density to make bikes work, some smart bike lanes and paths and it's easy to connect even relatively low density areas.
Love Davis! Lived in the dome homes at Baggins End
@@Nicholas-f5 those domes were so fascinating. My dad, the lone conservative of Davis would always bemoan the hippies living there
replace street parking on wide suburban streets and the outer lane of stroads with protected bike lanes. replace car stalls with bike racks at stores and park-and-rides (and build more park-and-rides with better transit connections to downtown). this will allow us to make our existing suburbs more sustainable and not tear everything down
And we can build in between too make it more dense, getting rid of zoning as well.
Another advice for our mayor to ignore 😌
If we look at the example of a bike line at 7:11 in the video those parking spots should be placed between the car lanes and the bike lines adding a protective buffer. Probably needs a concrete curb to keep cars from parking too far over. Would also probably get drivers to slow down too.
One annoyance I have with going places with my ebike is lack of good places to lock it up outside a lot of businesses.
I’ve already had two locked bikes stolen here in Pasadena/Los Angeles.
Last week, almost had my third one stolen. I ride the bus and place my bike on the front rack, in front of the driver. At a stop, one passenger got off the bus, went to the rack and took my bike to then quickly start riding. Meanwhile, I yelled at the driver to open the door and went running after the thief. What he didn’t know was that I had the front wheel locked to the frame with a cable.
When he started riding, the locking cable did its job and sent that asshole flying forward, startling him while I cursed repeatedly at him and could get my bike back safely on the bus.
I have been riding Reise & Müller Load 75 since last year for delivering .In Germany E-Bike/ pedelecs are gaining popularity and many people use them a lot. Picking up kids from school, packing up for picnics , shopping for groceries and so on.
The older cities are not yet properly designed for Ebikes though. Protected bike lanes would be great for Ebikes infrastructure.
I was introduced to Electric Bikes during my study abroad in Tokyo. My host mother (and all of her parent friends) had one with seats for both of her toddlers.
It completely changed how I saw small commutes and one of the first thing I did when I returned back to the US was get an e-bike. It's helped so much on grocery trips and other small trips.
3:58 we need safer bike lanes for one. I bike everywhere and even I don't find unprotected bike lanes with 4+ lanes of traffic speeding past me particularly appealing. This is really simple also: just extend the sidewalk out to the bike lane and paint a buffer between bikes and pedestrians.
I think we can roll with no protection on alleyways and very slow streets where pedestrians dominate, a buffer zone on normal streets, cones on streets with main street traffic, a short wall on faster roads and a clear zone trench on freeways, perhaps urban freeways could use the median if they have one or add a 2-way bike path on the grass mound they're built either on or depressed into. there's definitely space on every freeway for it to also be a bike route
So weird seeing California Blvd in the opening minutes of the video. I haven't been to SLO in a few years, but this video took me right back to college.
I started biking to my job in downtown Denver (~4.5 miles away) 2 months ago. I love it. I chose not to go the ebike route because I wanted the exercise, but I see them and they look fun. I hope we get more and more cars out of Denver.
👏
There's merit to having both. Use the regular bike for exercise, and use the ebike for shopping, bad weather, or when you're just in a bad shape (injury, illness, exhaustion, etc). You can also just turn an ebike off, and it'll behave as a normal, albeit heavy, bicycle. I have days where I'm feeling great and I set the pedal assist to 2 (5 being highest), which is just about right for offsetting how heavy the bike and load is, and I put in the same amount of work as I would on a street bike. I've also had days where I'm exhausted, irritated, or injured, and so I just use the throttle the whole way, turning the bike into a petty motorcycle.
Great video. You left out a major advantage of ebikes. Another important distinction between electric cars and ebikes is that the life cycle of cars is very long. Coupled with the low percentage of cars sold being electric which means combustion cars won't be replaced by electric vehicles being too slow of a process, when we need to displace use of combustion cars faster than that if we want to save what we can of the planet. With electric bikes we don't have to wait for the life cycle of a car to run its course and for the electric car market to be robust enough to displace combustion car use.
Edit:
I want people to have good advice for ebike purchases, to save the planet and all, even though this video is trying to make you go behind a pay wall to get info. You can get good ebike shopping advice from Electrek and ebikeschool, also on TH-cam.
E-bikes will continue to play increasingly large role in the future of urban active transportation! Their ease of use makes them an easy option for commuters, parents with young children, and seniors! The major categories of people we need to convince to leave the car keys behind more often. Great video!
Love the stickers you put on your Rad Power Bike. I have a Radwagon V3 and used it to do 20 mile trips every so often. I use it as my main mode of transportation in my city.
Wow, I can't believe that you released this video the very same day as I got my Van Moof S3! You're absolutely right, e-bikes are insanely impressive and I can't wait to see how it impacts my life getting around the city. For anyone looking into e-bikes, I do recommend Van Moof, it feels kinda like the Tesla of e-bikes -- lots of cool tech integration and phone app controls -- although I'd have to update this comment on the longer term ownership hah.
Didn't know there was a possible Ebike credit. My gf and I just did the math on getting an Ebike. Since we wouldn't be able to get rid of a car it didn't make financial sense yet. But if a reliable one was a little cheaper it may.
I rode one to work yesterday. I hadn't been on a bike in about a decade. I felt really unsure of myself at first, but after about ten minutes and a little practice, I was having a blast, I can't wait to do it again! The e-bike made it so easy. I think I would have had a much harder time getting to work on a regular bike after being away from cycling for so long.
I used to think E-Bikes were for older people like my grandparents but I've come to appreciate them as well for hilly trips or when I'm out late to get home faster. For those short length shopping trips some people might depend on the space in the trunk to transport all the groceries, freight bicycles might also be interesting
I bought an E-bike a few months ago, for commuting to work. I love it! Instead of spending 45 minutes on a crowded bus, I spend 30 minutes going through beautiful forests, arriving at work awake and ready!
and you have don't have to go to the gym after work for your excercise!
@@DarkDutch007 haha, I mean I would anyway, I love going to the gym. But biking on an E-bike is far from excercise :P
I think it depends. If the weather is bad or its really hot you end up at work sweaty or wet. Its not the end of the world but its not for everyone.
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 Of course I have a water restistant layer for rain, and if it's hot then...I will sweat at work anyway :P So for me, it works well.
I bought an ebike several years ago, when I was completely unfit, and immediately had enough range in combined battery and pedal power to take me on a 30+ km round trip from where I stayed to the beach and back. (The "+" being whatever noodling around once I got the the beachfront, under my own power mostly).
It's not just distance. We lived at the bottom of a steep hill (maybe a 30 or 40m climb - which feels like more when you're pedalling a normal bike and you're badly unfit). The house was just about exactly 100m above sea level. So up to the highest point on the journey made the altitude change somewhere round the 150m mark. Anything that can enable an extremely unfit person to just move up and down that altitude creates enormous amounts of mobility.
So far, so good. However, then one has to factor safety in. Where I come from the idea of a cycle lane (even a pedestrian footpath) is mostly something not even worth dreaming of. (I suppose if you were naive you could try to get the government to do something, but after a time you realise that's an utterly hopeless cause for anyone needing anything.)
We have serious road safety problems here. Probably three times the average death rate for the whole of the USA, for instance (and the USA has pretty bad drivers if you look at the numbers).
And then you have to balance your fear of the road with your fear of rough neighbourhoods. Take the route with the lower chance of being robbed at knifepoint (with a threat that is entirely sincere), and you have to gamble on surviving the psychopathic car drivers. (I tended to take my chances of the dangerous neighbourhoods. Drove through a gang once, but I caught them by surprise and moved through too quickly for them to take advantage.)
So then Road Safety measures seem to be something we all need, for this kind of future to become viable for people less willing to take chances. Make the roads safer (and that's mainly a matter of getting better control over the psychopathic drivers - and in some cases the same people doing the same thing on bicycles) and you unlock the door. Leave the roads dangerous, and most e-bikes are going to end up like mine, in a dusty corner somewhere. (I'm too far away from the beach, and feel less vulnerable getting my exercise by running. For trips to the corner shop I just use the car. No point in risking your life just to save the Earth a tiny bit.)
I have an idea about how to reduce the impact of the more psychopathic drivers (and even cyclists - the ones who buzz you when you're out running).
What we need is monitoring devices that "know the rules". We almost have them already, so this is no longer science fiction. Take something with a GPS that can communicate with a driver, program all the various speed limits into it (on a per street basis), and you have the beginnings of what could become a more comprehensive system, with cameras, following distance measuring devices, etc.
The innovative part is that you change the LAW. At the moment the law, everywhere says, "You're not allowed to go faster - by an objective measure matching some scientific standard - than say 60 km/h". You can fight speed fines by casting doubt on the trapping equipment, and you only ever end up being prosecuted for speeding if you go through a trap too fast. The coverage is spotty, and people learn where they can get away with attempted murder. So change the law so that "You must obey your car's speed control computer". If your measuring device detects a speed in excess of what's permitted, it beeps or something like that. It warns you, and you get some time to correct yourself. And if you don't? Well I like the idea of a safe-driving-computer that's a snitch. So as soon as you go over into fully committing an offence (like speeding), your snitch computer starts looking for a nice police officer for you to turn yourself over to. :D
Of course the main problem with something like this is simply the amount of hate it would receive. It's something that has the potential to be made completely effective (so much so that it might be necessary to start thinking in terms of allowing "high speed licences" in stepped grades for psychopathic drivers willing to become "minders of the road" - creators of the kind of space needed for effective defensive driving in exchange for the right to let rip in those places it would be more rational to "Autobahn" in e.g. the highway system. Maybe if there was a enough new flexibility there would be a big enough reduction in hate for such a system to stand a chance of being implemented.
Getting back to bicycles, the main obstacle to these is that current roads are lethally unaccommodating of them. The way to fix that is to figure out ways of ensuring good driving even when the backs of the police are turned. But there are probably enough infantile men with big toys they insist on being allowed to play dangerously with, as if of right, that even with less effective measure than making people fit their cars and bicycles with electronic snitches that require compliance with road safety laws, you face the prospect of massive and dedicated opposition.
(Hmm ... for a while we had average speed prosecution on some stretches of highway. However it looks like the motorists who hate this have somehow managed to kill it. I've never met anyone who was prosecuted for average speed speeding. And I've done it myself often enough on such roads - got to keep up with the flow. Might be illegal, but it's safer than getting in the way of those impatient buggers who insist on cutting those 30 seconds off their journey.)
Footage of biking in the US looks so scary. So few segregated bike lanes, with just painted-on badly maintained paths that are intruded upon by the massive amount of car traffic.
Dave Amoss has published a guide how cyclane projects can look like even in the US you have to check it out.
lol I should upload by ebike driving footage in India
I bet dollars to nickles the savings from road maintenance/expansion alone would make just giving everyone in a city a free basic ebike a net-positive for a city's balance sheet overall
I've had an electric bike for about 4 years now. It's amazing how it flattens out the hills here in Seattle. I've recently gotten in to Electric Unicycles (EUCs) which are also a great form of personal transportation. The big advantage with them is they are portable. You can easily walk them into a store with you or put them in a shopping cart and no one looks at you twice. Try walking your expensive electric bike into a store and people get all bent our of shape.
Electric cars really feel like a false profit for saving the environment. They're marginally better than regular cars, but still hugely wasteful for the most part compared with things like public transport or biking, and they do nothing to solve the issues of traffic or road safety. E bikes are a far better alternative where people can use them.
*prophet
Another reason Europe has a bigger push for e bikes (and scooters) is due to most cities not having the ability to build parking without destroying historical places.
Parking a bike is far, far easier, offering an ulterior incentive to adopting them over cars for city wide trips
The US just destroyed all their historic places in the 60s compared to Europe where people fought against it
Never driven a car personally, the last eight years I've averaged about 130 miles a month on my bike. Added a motor In the last. Year after my state finally started allowing ebikes. Love it even more, made a 300 mile trip one way in a weekend recently.
I don't have a driver's licence, don't know how to drive, and I don't plan to ever learn how to drive. There's too much at stake when it comes to the climate catastrophe for me to drive everywhere.
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 ignoring the environmental impact, I wouldn't be able to afford it. I would have to decide between insurance and paying for medical bills because I'm too poor to get insurance.
@@splicetape9435 what's a medical bill?
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 the backward ways of the United States requires one to choose between getting healthcare, paying for rent, or food. You only get medical treatment if you can pay for it as a commodity, and not as a right.
For me the main barrier to non-recreational biking is not how easy biking is, but how secure the bike will be at any destination. My city has fairly good bike paths throughout but not many places provide bicycle parking, and bike theft is a major issue.
I’ve already had two locked bikes stolen here in Pasadena/Los Angeles.
Last week, almost had my third one stolen. I ride the bus and place my bike on the front rack, in front of the driver. At a stop, one passenger got off the bus, went to the rack and took my bike to then quickly start riding. Meanwhile, I yelled at the driver to open the door and went running after the thief. What he didn’t know was that I had the front wheel locked to the frame with a cable.
When he started riding, the locking cable did its job and sent that asshole flying forward, startling him while I cursed repeatedly at him and could get my bike back safely on the bus.
There's three things keeping me from using my bike, for local trips, at least.
1. Weather and shade. It's really hot and humid here. Most bike lanes and paths have absolutely no shade.
2. Bad road network. Everything is too spread apart, isolated, and connections are rare unless you take the long way on the main roads.
3. Lack of facilities. Buildings with bike lockers, showers, and maybe an electric air pump would do wonders. Bicycle theft is extremely prevalent. I've had my bike stolen before, and many racks + locks are useless against people determined to steal. A secure are with lockers would give me peace of mind.
Ah yes, the unmistakable map of the isthmus in Madison, I can't wait to play laser tag at the Capital building. Also, I love the picture you put in of the Hodag from Rhinelander.
I thought the same thing, haha
was just like "oh shit... I'm moving into that map in a couple days" lol
Just charge in there with laser tag gear and see what happens.
Another great video. And thanks for the e-bike tour of SLO
Perhaps tougher penalty for bike theft and bike registration system like Japan will allow more people to commute and leave their bikes locked without fear of some scum bag stealing it.
Agreed, can always register bike with your city.
Awesome video! I didn't know you lived in SLO, but I recognize California Blvd when I see it. SLO has SLOwly become a more bike friendly community and I love it. With all of the hills, the environment is perfect for e-bikes. Biggest change I would like to see is the pedestrian infrastructure on Santa Rosa Street improve. Especially the bridge over the 101
I used to live in Madison, WI. It was very nice to see the city in an unexpected place for an unexpected reason presented in an unexpected way. Thanks for making my day
I cycle 40 minutes to town in my free time quite often as it's good exercise, however I don't cycle to school or to shop because bags and such would make it a much more challenging ride given it's a rural gravel path over hilly terrain. If I had a hybrid e-bike - one that could go both on the road and on gravel - I would certainly switch to cycling to town to go to school or go shopping.
Fat Tire bike ! More safe feeling riding and comfortable .I use a Burley flat bed trailer ,can hold 100 lbs and only weights 13 lbs .worth a look 😋
first time I used an e-bike, it was to go and retrieve my car across town after a heavy night of drinking with my comrades. I didn't even realize that I was hungover until I got off the e-bike. 10/10
Thanks for using Madison WI as the map in your video 🥰
Nice to talk about safety at 7:08 as you then put yourself in the “coffin corner” by passing that minivan as you approach the intersection. My heart literally started to race as as saw you deliberately and very naively did the most dangerous thing you could ever do on a bike. Then you repeat your potentially deadly mistake at 7:25. Even Jay Foreman of Unfinished London screams not to do this in his Cycle London video.
Yup. Children even prob would know not to be in blind spots on intersection approaches for those potential right turn accidents lol
Right hook as well
Never thought I'd see a Hodag in a City Beautiful video
We had the E-bike Act in Sweden, most people who used it were already bike commuters, they replaced their regular bike with an e-bike. It wasn't a complete failure but the money could have been spent on other more useful things to get non-biking people biking, like infrastructure investments. But Sweden isn't the US so it might work better there.
Nothing works better here, it's a waste of time and money to think ebikes will be embraced here
Not true. According to a study 50% replaced car trips.
Same thing is happening in Luxembourg: the government installed a scheme where they reimburse 50% off your bike purchase (ebike or not, up to 600€). Problem is that people are buying more bikes for recreational rides rather than for commuting, and they are very slow with infrastructure projects.
Here in Chicago, I've been car-free (90% by bike) for 9 years. Our bike-share system recently added eBikes, which have an additional benefit of not requiring a dock to park -- I can ride right up to my destination and lock it up and walk away. Plus, I don't worry about the safety of my bike while I'm inside my destination. My partner and I still log dozens of "regular" miles every week, but now almost all of our non-work rides are bike share eBikes.
That's a pretty cool bike path by Madonna Inn. Sadly most bike paths in SLO still look like the shoulder on Madonna Road and Higuera. That is simply not safe enough for me.
Its so cool to see you riding around SLO! You even rode past the last place I lived on Pismo St while going to Cal Poly. I rode my bike to campus every day and DEFINITELY wished I had had an ebike because I was so sweaty by the time I got to campus. San Luis Obispo's bike facilities have improved a lot since I left in 2008.
Love the Madison shoutout! Could you start putting the link to the nebula video in the description? I already have an account, but dislike having to go find the video every time.
One reason we don't bike as much in the US as Europe is the weather. British people think 85f is too hot... that's a lovely springtime day in most of the US, then it's 95f-105f for 3 months, then it's 10-20f for 4 months in the winter.
We have seasons here, and most of them suck
Not a single republican has signed onto the bill. Goes to show where their loyalties are.
Nowadays the max range is about 160 km(100 miles), on eco mode...
Yes they are absolutely super but we need to think about issues such as theft, stairs and where they can be stored while not in use.
Where we currently store cars? As for theft, maybe we could make police actually do their job.
I don't know if Ebikes will change cities forever. The Bike market is a small segment. Most people want shelter from the pollution and fog, wind ect.
As a person living in New York I wish we have more wider sidewalk it annoying when you pass through narrow sidewalk when multiple people are using it and sometimes you can't get pass some people like elderly who go half you pace also would be beneficial to bike as you have more space to add bike lanes
also living in NY we gotta advocate for better bike infrastructure specially for the boroughs not called manhattan and at least turn one of ave's into dedicated bike lanes, manhattan is doing a good job but no where close to the something like amsterdam
I had a major deja vu moment at 1:45! I really enjoy your videos and it's so interesting to discover that you are from my neck of the woods. I used to bike all over when I was in college at Poly. An E-bike would have made it much for feasible to go farther from campus, but considering I and some of my friends lost bikes and bike parts to theft, maybe not a good thing to keep on a college campus :D