FWIW - one of my sources on the bike story, Prof. Ralph Buehler, thinks dockless bikes have some potential. He just did a preliminary study on dockless bikes in DC and found that they attract more diverse riders and they are more accessible. vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2018/05/ncr-docklessbikes.html
There is another report to be done here, on the story of the systematic marginalization of bike infrastructure in the US... If there were separated bike lanes that cars couldn't reach, a huge amount of people would find cycling attractive according to studies... One other note: you need to work on your lighting! ;-)
Lou- Thank you (or your editor) for using that clip! I'd love to chat about an idea I have for Beme News. Also, is that VT study ongoing? Seems like they have some strong leads. Shoot me an email if you'd like to talk- deanbog@gmail.com -Dean Bog
Louis Foglia if our cities weren't built around needing cars.. We put everything so far away, that driving is typically the only logical choice. If our cities were more centralized, we could use bicycles and busses to easily get around. But instead we have a gridlocked, money making system. Because at the end of the day, cars make cities/states so much money from things like parking tickets or registration fees.
In my city (Groningen, the Netherlands) traffic lights for bikes turn green faster when it's raining. There's also heated bicycle lanes so there's no ice on the roads in winter.
Mārtiņš Kaktīts It depends, they dont have to heat them very hard to keep them over the freezing point. And it might save more energy from people biking instead of driving a car than it consumes.
It's not as much a "bike" issue as it is a "people" issue. The guy who wants to throw all the scooters into the bay is annoyed at inconvenience. Those inconveniencing him are oblivious to his annoyance or simply don't care. People who vandalize bikes that are not their property are doing something they aren't supposed to do. People heaving their bike up onto a pile of other bikes are doing something they shouldn't be doing. People are shitty. Bikes are great. I think this is one of a very small number of cases where I don't really think the issue lies with greedy corporations. People need to be more considerate.
I work as heavy laborer 12 hours a day. If I had to bike home 10+ miles from a job site I would simply kill someone so I could rest in a nice cold jail cell.
Please. I can function fine after work. It's not like a 12 hour manual labor job = suddenly sleep deprived and drunk. Public transport means 3x longer trip time.
Plenty of videos of thieves breaking gold standard (£100) locks in seconds. I'm a cycle commuter and build bikes for a living but I wouldn't leave my bike outside in a city in the UK.
@@gerardmontgomery280: Perhaps many Muslim cultures were onto something. In those societies, if someone was convicted of theft; their hands would be amputated./sarcasm
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. This was interesting as it highlighted a lot of issues I didn't know about before. But bikes and bike infrastructure are overwhelmingly good things when you compare the alternatives, especially in the long-term.
Bikes are causing so many problems. The government should regulate them out of existence. Cars are the answer. Who wants to go anywhere on a bike anyway? it's not even fun. I want to stay at home on weekends replacing my timing belt, and changing oil/brakes. I love buying lots of gasoline. you meet the nicest people at the gas station. bikes are so efficient. it's almost not American. Sarcasm I love bikes
FPVREVIEWS more regulation is never the solution. Enjoy $6 per gallen gas when the city pass more regulation, and safety regulation is the reason why sport cars are getting so damn expensive in the first place. If cars are cheap, more ppl will drive cars. If factory’s are allowed to build more cheap cars, ppl will sell their old cars and buy new ones.
FPVREVIEWS I love filling up my Hummer. Since most of my income goes to fill it up, I stopped wasting money on bad habits like alcohol, girls, gym membership
I love bikes. Living in a big city, I can get quickly everywhere and it's fun! (+ Healthy and good for the environment) and I hate being stuck in traffic, I feel like a sheep.
s/sometimes/often. I regularly ride past the cars parked on the highway into the city on the bikepath next to it, about the same time every morning. The only way to beat me door to door is to do it out of peak hour, but the great thing about a bike is it always takes the same time, give or take a minute or two. Even in heavy traffic.
Like over half of women in the USA are classified as obese now. I think we need to start limiting their access to cars and get them using their legs for once.
Raleigh and Cary aren't that bad in my experience, with decent sidewalks and wide roads with shoulder on each side. Were you really need bike lanes is in downtown areas of major cities where sidewalks are full, and roads are most of the time wide enough to add bike lanes, without restricting parking www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/pedbike/05085/chapt15.cfm
I personally enjoy Casey´s method... if done right. There has to be more light, a different angle to film at the map. A Worldmap (cause sadly many have a hard time realizing where it is otherwise) ...
You'd be surprised how geographically challenged some people are. I witnessed someone looking for NYC on a USA map, asking where "New York State" was for reference.
Exactly Jeff Hollis, you cannot assume everyone knows as much as you do, no matter how basic it seems. I live in Belgium and one of my friends does not know where Poland and Finland are.
I am 48 years old and started riding a bike for the first time 2 years ago. Now I ride an e-bike to work everyday. My commute is 40 miles a day and I have put 11,000 miles on my e-bike. I live in the greater Seattle land area and without an electric motor the hills would be impossible for me as I have a health condition that restricts my breathing. I do not own a car and to get 20 miles to work involves 3 buses and up to an hour wait in total at transfer points. The bus can take from 2 to 3 hours depending on traffic and bus promptness ( a late bus can cause me to miss all of my transfers). The driving here is notoriously bad as is the infrastructure. On my e-bike (which is governed at 20 mph max) I can get to work in 1 hour 30 min but it usually takes me longer because I ride slow and enjoy the experience. I have been hit by a school bus and a mini-van (the driver took off....but i caught up #ebike).
I take public transportation to work which includes a 20min walk to just one bus 🚌 stop. I’ve been reviewing the #ebike option. Which one do you have? Or any suggestions would be great 👍🏾
I live downtown in a city in the Netherlands, a car is a pos to have then. I'm riding my bike and it gave me the most beautiful legs and butt. It's only a 20 mins ride to where i work. A lot of you Americans will have to ride a lot more. It's not fun riding to work for more than an hour. American culture & infrastructure is completely different.
watchingponies you are completely right. I'm from the us. So much of how our country is designed simply requires a car. I really don't know that bikes work for most people, except for the wealthy people who can afford living in the most central areas of cities. It almost seems like a solutionless problem-there is nothing that Currently exists that will really fix American congestion. We have cursed ourselves with having too much space.
That's it. The core. You were build with all the space in the world when it all started. Better public transport would work for some cities, but overall it is a pretty big problem without so many solutions. It's here in the Netherlands too tho. Jam packed trains and busses. But at least you can get from A to B without a car. I'm just lucky with my personal situation. I've travelled in the US almost every other year for the last 20 years. I def can tell the difference between our cities. Lived in Miami for almost 3 years. I had my bike there. It was perfect. A little dangerous, and drivers just kinda hate bikers on the roads lol.
dude chill out. clearly you've not been to a whole lot of america. i have no idea where your random 5km number came from, but thats just not true. and regardless, the difficulty of biking is that if you arent in the city, biking is DANGEROUS. Even if you are in the city, you are at risk from stupid danger. There is nowhere that isnt car oriented, hence danger.
As a Danish guy, this is extremely funny how you guys can't figure out how to incorporate bikes into your infrastructure. I get the dock less problem, lucky everyone here has a bike so there is no market for it.
zCausper I'm sure that the urban sprawl in Denmark isn't as large as the ones in the US. Most of the streets are built for cars, most of whom are large and wide, compared to the tiny cars in Europe. Plus, it'll take a ton of money and time to simply rebuild US infrastructure to accommodate bike lanes.
you can tax cars on gas,registration ,tires ,batteries and car insurance i spend 10k for 2 cars yearly . yes but government would lose heavily on taxes if they make bike lanes and bike laws .
As an example, many people (thousands is a good guess) live in San Francisco and work in Cupertino. That is a distance of 50 miles (80 km). 50 miles is a common distance for traveling to work in the San Francisco Bay Area. This would be a bicycle trip of 4 and a half hours. No one is going to make that trip to work and back every day. (Some one may, but that’s beside the point.) Any bicycle trip of more than 5 miles (ok, 10 miles) is outside of the practical limits for daily, commute bicycling anywhere in the US. Therefore, many people have cars. The infrastructure has been built for cars. When bicycles begin paying road taxes and begin following the rules of the road, then maybe there will be more emphasis on bicycle infrastructure. Don’t plan on it.
In the Netherlands you can hire straight from the train station. The good part is you can do with the bike what you want, as long as you bring it back. You are charged for every 24 hrs for a very small fee. Another good part is that they fix the bikes when something is broken.
Im an American in Copenhagen Denmark and let me tell you that here the bike reigns supreme. Nobody is fat and there are bike paths absolutely everywhere. The majority don't own cars and electric assist bikes abound. Also there are many cargo bikes I use one everyday because I have an elderly dog who loves riding in my Nehola cargo bike.
paxwallacejazz The Netherlands is worth a visit as well. Great bike infrastructure everywhere in litteraly every village. We even built bike lanes all over our huge dams such as the Afsluitdijk and the Oosterscheldekering.
Huh I dont remember that during my visit to copenhagen but I just stayed they're for two hours in an airport and one time when I was 5 I went across the öresund bridge.
=false cars are great, just not in cities with 4 or more story buildings. Cars are convenient and cheap if you live in the suburbs and are 5 miles from home, office, bank, post office and shopping. To make a blanket comment like cars or public transport are better is just dumb.
cars are only convenient because they're heavily subsidized and prioritized in sprawling american cities that have yet to go through any growing pains a'la induced demands. Once induced demand comes about, cars are ultimately worthless hunk of steel. The average car in a city of 1 mill people goes around 11mph. Guess how fast the average bike commuter is? 12.5mph. And it's a fraction of the cost. Wanna do grocery haul? Hitch a trailer. Or if you don't want to do that, then get rid of archaic zoning laws that pit residential and commerce separate from each other and the only way to get to them is via highway. Promote mixed development, walkable cities, complete streets you SPEND YOUR TIME ON, not save time on. If you get what I mean. We need to spend time on our streets, not use our streets to save us time to get somewhere. It's about time we stop using cars (cages) for everything. I know it's a pipe-dream but it is possible and hell i'll advocate it as much as I can until we get some damn decent public transit and everything I just mentioned because single family homes and the private car is killing our cities and communities. It may have worked in the 50's, but just like everything else we have learned about our advancement in society (look at the industrial revolution) it is time to scale back and think smarter. CARS ARE WORTHLESS (for the most part/in the long run)
Adnan Omeragic You talk like +4 story towns are inevitable. I don't want to live in a +4 story town. The rent is +50% higher. The cost to just buy cereal is +20% higher. Screw +4 story towns. I live 5 miles or 15 minutes tops, from movies, work, shopping, bank, post office, basically everything but my dentist. And it cost 10 bucks a day. (20 if I wanted a nicer car) Even a place like China has all the land they would ever need to have everyone live like this. But the economy is localized along the coast. Maybe progress for china is less public transport and more suburbs being built.
kkknotcool I doubt it costs you ten dollars a day including rent, car payments, gas, food and electricity. If that's the case I'm moving to where you live. Either way, I live in the second largest city in Canada and have one of the lowest costs of living in the country. But I get that like New York or London is crazy expensive.
Adnan Omeragic Look at it this way. If we gave everybody a lot that's 5000 square feet(more than big enough to build an apartment sized house) That would be about 60 square miles. Road island = 1,212 mi² America has the land for the population of the world to live in the suburbs.
Bikes are cool, but it's kinda scary riding a bike on the road, especially with vague bike lanes. Speaking from Taipei, Taiwan. One of Lou's examples. You just beep a card(that you can also use in convenient stores, buses, mrts), and you can use a bike. It's convenient, but just a bit scary to use.
in the UK. my city (southampton) has a dock-less system.. but there is only one company doing it, so we don;t have loads of bikes everywhere yet (I would imagine the local government would make sure that no more than a couple of operators could use the system, and they'd charge them for disposal of their bikes if they started piling up, probably under fly tipping laws).. also in the UK we have laws in place that date back years, any motorized bike has to have a top speed of no more 15.5mph (you can go fast but the engine won't drive faster that that) to qualify as a bicycle .. if the engine gets you over 15.5mph it's classed a motorbike and you need all the stuff that goes along with that like insurance, vehicle tax, ect.
This video is poorly researched. Only the problematic sides are being shown. Where I live Cologne, Germany biking infrastructure is worse than in most big US-Cities. The semi-public company providing bike-sharing here has a dockless system and it works very well. Little vandalism and little clutter because the company understands that in the long run it will make them less profitable to lose many bikes. Also many people in Europe (second largest E-Bike market in the world, remember?) don't ride E-Bikes shown in the video but pedal-assisting E-Bikes. Most customers are older people who cannot ride longer distances on a normal bike. These E-Bikes are much less dangerous and also many countries have restrictions in place for top speed and sometimes even top pedal-assisting rate.
In the USA higher powered motors are allowed for E-Bikes up to 750 watts under Federal law and it varies amongst states. In my particular state 1,000 watt motors are allowed as long as the motor only limits speeds to 20 MPH (32 KPH). In Europe you're probably limited to maybe a 200 watt or 250 watt assist motor is that correct?
In germany there is a 250W & 25km/h (15mph) maximum. Anything over that you'll need a licence, a helmet, insurance etc. Also it has to be pedal-assisted to be classified as a bike not a "motor"bike.
About the Ebikes: At least in Germany they can only help up to 25 km/h, and you need to peddel. Anything going faster or that works without you working is a motorized bike and dosn't fall in the same catagory.
One of the best informed vid on this topic, I say as European (living in Netherlands for past 10years) and person who often discusses this with my nerdy expat colleagues. Well done.
Haha I just showed a friend the original 'bike lanes' video from Casey last week.....and yes, *my biggest problem when riding in the bike lane on my skateboard, is that there's always a goddamn Uber or Lyft pulled over into it!*
TBH, I'd rather a boosted be in the bike lane than the footpath, though slow skateboards generally don't really belong there. Having said that, we expect cars to slow down for us, so...
One mayor problem to integrate bikes in North America is the terrible public transit. In Europe, if you use a bike regularly, you know that when you need to go further away or carry something that doesn't fit in your bike, you can take a train or bus. In North America, that option often doesn't exist or is highly deficient, so even if you bike, you still need a car. Having a car at your disposal makes you lazy and you end up using the bike much less than you originally planned.
I live in Dallas and I see these lime green bikes flung around everywhere! I don’t see to many people actually riding them though. It’s become a joke how far away from downtown you’ve seen the lime green bikes.
Louis Foglia It is! Dallas has a moderate biking community, but nothing to warrant that many bikes. I mostly see homeless people riding them consistently.
Great eye opening video, thanks for making it! Been a bicycle commuter for all my adult life, I've been lucky enough to live for periods longer than 2 years in 3 different cities: Buenos Aires, San Jose(CA) and New York. These are quite different infrastructure wise. I've commuted on e-bikes, skateboard, bicycle, car, scooter, etc... Cities need to be more more aggressive with traffic violations, red lights, pedestrian right-of-way, collisions, walkway violations, cell phone use... All these things need to be punished with what hurts people the most, which is their wallet. Make tickets so high people are really careful about their riding. In turn, take that ticket money to hire more traffic agents... It may sound a little extreme but people don't learn quickly in another way. It would also be important to educate walking people of the hazards of walking on bike lanes. I've seen very bad accidents with people and their walking dogs, I've seen parents with strollers on a high speed bike lane getting near-missed...
Amsterdam indeed banned them, so now we can buy those bikes for 150 euros :) But we already have a problem there... bikes already end up everywhere. A lot of them go swimming ;)
In the enormously wide cities of the south like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte. It is laughably impractical to get rid of a car. Also cars are great for doing anything outside of the city or travel to nearby states. Great to have both.
Ian Blythe i hope thats a joke! Opening a dim-lit map in the background doesnt scream smart design hahaha o wel. I hope they clean up and light things a bit better
In my city there is even a electric car share like in Paris, France. As the gaps in the systems become joined they will gain popularity and users just as when bike lanes finally get joined. It's happening, keep up the good work everyone!
Docked sharebikes are the proper solution. We have Bixi in Montreal (designed here, used by Citibikes in NYC and all over) and I live within 2 blocks of 3 different docking stations. It's easy, doesn't cause clutter/nuisance, no chance of them getting stolen (extra security features in the bike itself if so), and also easier to maintain for the company. If a dockless company tried to start here it wouldn't even get to the point where people would throw them in the river, they'd never get off the ground.
100% agreement. London's docked bike system is brilliant. Dockless bikes just aren't working out. Stockholm is attempting to have dockless ebikes bikes starting in 12/2017, but they seem to have disappeared as of 05/2018. For all the Swedish adherence to rules, dockless bikes aren't manageable, I suspect a lot of them ended up in Lake Mälaren.
Copenhagen has a great bike program. And their infrastructure is second to none. I still prefer riding my own bike to work and has a safe dry place to park it.
I agree if it's well executed. I live in DC and in my opinion the bikeshare docks are just a little too far from eachother to really be able to hop on whenever you need. I recently visited Montreal and was amazed by how many docks there were, and not having my own bike was barely an inconvenience at all that way!
There's definitely a getting used to each other process that takes a while between cars and bikes. One of the concerns with ebikes, is that people in cars aren't used to their speed, so will have a harder time figuring out how to avoid them...
Louis Foglia Bikes and pedestrians aren't used to their speed either. You aren't allowed to use e-bikes in bike lanes or bike paths here, yet many still do and it can be quite stressful.
Huh, I don't see a problem with ebikes in bike lanes, but then in Australia they're limited (legally) to 25km/h. Having said that, tell that to the guy I was drafting at 45km/h up a slight rise the other day. Occasionally I see someone doing something stupid, but then I see that from guys on regular bikes too (and have done the occasional silly thing myself). ebikes are not the problem, it's rider education. I don't think we need licences, that would be stupid, but I wouldn't be against a public education program for regular riders. I ride a non e-bike fast, sometimes up to 60km/h in a sprint, and I find at >40km/h it's actually easier because I can integrate with general traffic on the road more easily when the lanes get narrow. And last but not least, drivers need to be aware that some bikes are fast, and to not be impatient and try to get across in front of the 'slow' bike doing 50+km/h. A couple of guys I know have ended up in hospital that way, and I've had a couple of VERY close encounters myself, though I take the approach that every driver is a dickhead and ride accordingly. Just means I'm often pleasantly surprised by the vast majority who aren't dickheads.
Thanks for talking about the lack of infrastructure. Most complaints I hear don't make it that far. We don't need to start manufacturering new products that are too slow for the street and too fast for the sidewalk. Bikes, scooters, cars, taxis and Lyft, and buses and trains work and the infrastructure is there. Instead of adding something new, we should invest in improving what we have.
I think part of the reason people are resistant to bike lanes is that they usually coincide with gentrification...In NY, you've lost your neighborhood when a Starbucks, a Chase, and a bike lane arrive.
Louis Foglia why is gentrification a bad thing? The literal definition of the word in part is to improve. If all of those things are good (which they are), then they should be added to an area. Hanging on to old and outdated ways is what the left is against right? So why would they not be in favor of gentrification...seems like a hypocritical stance.
I would argue that a starbucks replacing a mom and pop business is not good. Gentrification raises prices and creates uniformity - two things I find unappealing.
Louis Foglia I would have to say that gentrification lowers prices. Walmart is more efficient than a mom and pop. Just like Starbucks and amazon. It’s great to say let’s buy local and support the small businesses...but when a small business can be beat by nothing other than economies of scale, then I see no real value in trying to support that small business.
Beau hard to argue with your logic, but for some reason it still just *feels* wrong. I'd much rather support local businesses that are owned by people in my community with families and friends than a faceless and cold company like Walmart.
Awesome reporting. Really shows the difficulty of city planning and organizing all these new and emerging technologies. Not to mention growing populations, this is a tough issue.
"Isn't slowing down and enjoying the ride part of the process?" Emphatically NO. I'm a full-time cyclist. I bike 365 days a year to get around my city. I bike almost 10 miles just to get to work along very bike-unfriendly roads. There's a lot of reasons why I choose to do this, mostly economic, but when it comes to commuting, my primary goals are expedience and safety. Slowing down to enjoy the ride compromises both of those principles. And there's a simple answer to this whole debate: ban cars in city limits. If it isn't an emergency vehicle, public transit, registered livery, or some other commercial vehicle, it shouldn't be on the road. If people can't handle an hour-long bus ride or 10 mile bike ride to get to work, maybe we will fix the problems we've spent decades creating by installing highways through the middle of cities and neighborhoods (a practice, I might add, that has been used to deliberately dispossess ethnic minority populations who worked in the city center and wanted to live nearby). "Oh, but we've spent all these decades creating this expensive infrastructure! It would be a waste to shut them down and let them be huge bike and pedestrian roads!" Nonsense. This is 2018 America: our infrastructure is shit because we haven't invested anything more than the bare minimum into it for half a century. A large number of traffic problems result from outdated design and a combined inability and unwillingness to fix them, to say nothing of ever-decreasing infrastructure budgets. And there's the problem of how dangerously most people drive. My city did a road diet, reducing a certain street from 4 lanes through a residential area that people would regularly speed at 55 MPH along, to a 2-lane street with a (unprotected) bike lane and parking lanes. The result? I've been deliberately hit for daring to use the bike lane and have had a lot of hyper-aggressive drivers get in arguments about how I'm ruining the street because now they have to go the posted speed limit. The bike lane had nothing to do with the road diet, but it's 2018 America, so facts don't matter anymore. So, again, ban private cars. Our grandchildren will look back at the notion of privately owned, privately driven, incredibly dangerous vehicles in much the same way we look at medieval cities that used open sewers to transport human waste.
Ban private cars..... You'll never ever get your dirty SJW hands on my pride and joy. I was with you till that point. Sure let's have cars park outside city limits and have public transport and bikes to get around, but don't you dare come after my car.
Avoid fascist lingo, it makes anything you say easily ignorable. But, sure, if folks want to have a vehicle that they use to drive between cities, that seems sensible. As someone who occasionally bikes on country roads, I find it galling how many people don't even pretend there's a speed limit or regard for other cars, much less farm vehicles, Amish buggies, or cyclists, but that's still a fairly small risk. And I get that some people like cars, in the same way that some people really like methamphetamine. But urban infrastructure is a complete mess due to private vehicles on city streets and I'm glad you do see that.
+Patrick Lewis "And I get that some people like cars, in the same way that some people really like methamphetamine." There is absolutely no equivalency. If you're trying to make a serious argument, you've just destroyed it.
More trains, more tramways. Tramways are very cool, I love them. But it's not as individual as a car or a bike so we need a lot of them to satisfy our needs. I think that tramways with lots of stops is a good idea
As a cyclist, I hate the biking revolution. The more the average person bikes, the more solid the stereotypes about cyclists become. The average person does not research the rules of the road, or chooses to ignore them at their own convenience. One of the worst types are those who go against oncoming traffic. As a fairly fit cyclist, this is EXTREMELY dangerous as I'm almost always travelling over 25km/h. In that situation it's likely that both me and the other cyclist will sustain serious iniury. There's also the stop sign and red light running ones. Although that's common among drivers, cyclists seem to be more visible in these situations
Hm pretty good status quo video, I would have hoped to see some potential solutions presented for the problems you laid out. Just saying we should pump the brakes and take it slow was not very satisfying
Don't think he's saying take it slow, more like taking a considered approach on how to make them more effective rather than just dumping them in the city and seeing what happens.
I went from taking public transport to work to driving to work. My God, driving is so much better. In the comfort of your own car you are in complete control of your environment: You can have your car at whatever temperature you want, you can have it as quiet or as loud as you want, you can take whatever you want with, you can take whoever you want, you can take any route or go anywhere that you want. With the doors locked you're perfectly safe. This is why parking issues, nightmare traffic and fuel prices will not convince most people to get out of their car unless it gets very extreme.
I got hit by a lyft pulling into the bike lane while riding my bike. Luckily, I was uninjured. Car drivers have had it to good for too long, it's time for them to share the road.
Everybody tends to forget the terrain they will use the bike. In the Netherlands it is quite easy as all the country are flat and its making it really good for normal bikes. This is turning when you live in countries with hilly areas such as Germany or England where the uphills can be a real challenge for anyone and a barrier for many people. In the UK the bike lanes are really fragmented and unattended in many parts of the country. No wonder as 6 miles constant 60degree uphill just scares away anyone to try with a bike. Damn even weaker cars struggle to climb some of the roads we have here. And if you willing to use your bike for get to work in the morning the last time you want is arriving tired and sweaty. Here comes the electric bike. It can solve this issue. You can easily use it even in the Alps and have all the merit what the bikes have (easy to park, easy to maintain, and take the same space on the road as a normal bike does). You constantly have the flat road feeling and "thanks" for the restrictions it's mostly fixed 16miles/hour while normal bikes do more especially if it's driven by a guy dressed as a scubadiver. So wahts the fear off?
One thing I have noticed about driving in general is that it tends to give people a false sense of isolation. Many people feel like they are alone when they are driving and forget that their actions affect those around them. That is one thing I like about biking, it doesn't do that.
I am from Prague (Czech Rep.) and here the bikes are not so common BUT just because of terrain of the city. Lets say hill is not a friend of dry armpits :D
Right, but ebikes are a great solution to that! I live in a city with it's share of hills, and while I generally where bike kit while riding (I ride fast), there are lots of people using ebikes that just wear everyday clothes - skirts, dresses, business attire, etc. Yes, I have been to Prague, but it was a while ago.
Matthew Jenkinson: True! This is solution to this. E.g. Xiaomi produce electric scooter which is somehow more and more popular here (I guess because of price).
but it's still mostly flat when compared to other cities, apart from ebikes a great thing is also to combine bike + funicular in very hilly cities. huge amount of cobbled streets does not go well with bikes though.
Yea, the terrain in Prague isn't perfect, but with decently wide tires it's okay. The general lack of bike lanes and driver intolerance is the real issue. As well as places to lock them on the street, sometimes. Still, been biking almost everywhere in Prague for 3 years now. Be proud of your bike sweat xD
I know that my city is not prepared for bikes. They do have one bike lane along the side of one roadway, but there are no crossing zones along the most heavily trafficked roadway in the city. You have to cross two lanes of fifty MPH traffick to reach the other side. If you try to cross at the corner there's always cars turning the corner and there's no safe time to get across. I try to avoid that road, but it's the main business area for retailers. When you shop that's where you go.
LoL. None of those bike's problems can't even be compared with car's problems. Take a single land being used as a car parking lot and you could put a all mountain of bikes that "causes problems" in cities. Each bike is one car less. It's not about waiting for the Great Solution. Bike is part of it now.
I was going to buy a car in my country. But did the maths of owning a car for where I need to travel. My country has rising oil prices, costly insurance, costly regostration fees, parking fees in the city, toll fees, maintenance costs, etc. But now I'm getting a bike. I will save so much money, and get fit at the same time.
While riding my bike today, following the rules, someone in a car pulled up next to me, and told me to get off the road. Thanks for the video. I feel a little more normal
Have you ever seen a movie where the protagonist uses a bicycle troughout the movie instead of a car? Have you ever seen commercials for bicycles on T.V. or just car commercials? As long as the medias associate "cycling" with "being broke" or "its a hobby" we are doomed. If everybody used their own intelligence we would have as many differents vehicules and types of transportation as there is people.
In the Neterlands we often buy good bikes form like 150-200 Euros and if you don't crash a lot they will survive for a minimum of 5 years. I have my current bike for like 8 years now, and only had one flat tire, that you can fix by yourself. I never had any more problems, so if you can spread the 200 euros over 5 years it will become so much cheeper than a car or the bus.... and here is the steriotype that if you don't own a bike you're weird, and if you don't bike the short distances in bad weather you're weak, so everyone has their own stereotypes i guess...
Elyne van Opzeeland I will have to come live in the Netherlands because I assure you here in Canada the mentality is different. If you're on a bike you're a looser who just hasn't enough money to buy a car. When people see me take my bike they are worried and they offer me lifts and stuff. I'm telling you dude, you live in a special place with open minded people. In North America the bike is for the lowest, not the highest
PapierPanierPiano I am indeed very happy to live here. I always despised my country a bit, but right now thx to the internet i see how happy i should be, and i am, with my little country.... And i'm proud to say that the netherlands is a country full of open minded people since the 16th century in comparison with other countries!
Baptiste De Jonghe Are you sure? That's quite a bold claim. I know plenty of people are cycling in Belgium Limburg and in cities like Antwerpen and Gent, but probably only 1990s China was able to outnumber the Netherlands when it comes to cycling.
The EU researched (quality of transport report 2014) the mode of transport most often used on a typical day. The bike usage results: the Netherlands 36%, Denmark 23%, Belgium 13%. So yeah... you're talking BS.
I like riding on converted train right of ways. They don't intersect traffic and cut right through town. I think we could get city planners to design separate trails for bikes, away from cars. And these could have separate lanes for faster electrics, and small scooters. I'm also very interested in pre-planned communities where there is a lot of green space, and golf cart paths. If you think of a community that is designed around how people get from place to place, you might try several of these areas, like a small suburb, but one of them could mainly use bikes, another community could use mainly scooters, another mainly golf carts. These burbs could be interconnected by normal streets and highways. People could choose their style of getting around in the local area, and all the cars would face outwards toward other neighborhoods and cities, not crossing the bike lanes at all. Also, I think all bikes could have a subsidy, just like many other industries are subsidized. And if you design the bike trails to have a buffer of grass and trees and flower beds, people would enjoy the ride more. And falling onto grass is way safer than falling onto a parked car. Trails could follow waterways. We could strategically place air pumping stations, to refill tires, a few public bathrooms, a few small bike shops or kiosks, to sell spare parts along the way, along with public drinking fountains for water, benches for resting, a few picnic tables for meeting at, kiosks for putting up posters of local events, open bike shelters with bike racks that are out of the rain, and security cameras. I think everyone should get a bike riding license, even those that can't ride, because everyone needs to know the guidelines for safe riding, so they can agree on it, and teach it to the little ones. Our city is doing a lot of this. We are building lots of bridges and rain shelters that are only for bikes and pedestrians. There are lots of plants, trees, rain gardens, statues and artwork, and places to play music. It's not as expensive to build and maintain as you might think, and it makes bike riding way more interesting than riding in a car or on a highway.
When I moved to the pacific northwest, I was totally broke and didn't have a car, so I bought a bike, while that got me to work, I was having near death experiences on a daily basis almost always from cars pulling into the bikelane to turn into the main road. Now part of this is shrubbery and trees frequently make it hard to see traffic without pulling forward, but they almost never look before they pull into the bikelane. The infrastructure really just isn't here, shared bikelanes seem too dangerous to me. I ended up buying a 2011 Honda PCX, so I am still on two wheels but, being able to flow with the traffic pattern of the cars around me has dramatically reduced the "I have to slam on the breaks because you just pulled in front of me" moments. It seems to me, that if E-bikes were faster and integrated into the existing traffic pattern, they too might have far fewer conflicts with cars.
my only response is: look at the Netherlands for solutions. Honestly if you don't own or are able to ride a bike in this country people will think you are weird
I guess it depends where you live and how the city or town is set up. Where I live most people don't work close enough to commute by bike. And even fewer would want to in the heat, cold or rain. The bike lanes aren't really a concern to the city when more and more cars are on the road. They do promote riding bikes downtown and we have the docked rental bikes; they mainly seem to be used by tourists. Fortunately we also have nice greenway paths for biking, running, and walking...that most people have to drive to.
Nkanyiso Innocent Khwane I like your post. I think beme is crap. This guy saying you can go now to that girl is a nice way to talk to someone. Kind of like, all you are good for is pulling down a map. This edit is crap. Well done beme dream team, go back to sleep.
I live in Tokyo, Japan which is often forgotten when people talk about cities with a lot of bicycles (there's really tons of them here). They began to have problems in the 80's because people were parking around train/metro stations and the sidewalk was getting crowded, so now they just take them away in trucks, park them very far away and you need to pay to get them back (depends on the municipality, Tokyo being a cluster of "cities"). Tokyo didn't need any incentive for people to ride bikes.
Minh Le -- Do you also like to drop the soap in a shower? This was painful to watch. I like Lou, but this was bad. CNN is like having Joe Biden around your nieces. Don't do it.
I've seen regular docking bikes and the new dockless bikes in Mexico City. The city government gives regular maintenance to docking bikes and the docking stations are everywhere, and always well illuminated and with surveillance cameras. Just looking at the new, dockless bikes, I was already imagining how people will either begin riding them into their homes (thus making the "sharing" part almost worthless), or idiots will begin putting them up on trees. And of course, they will be abandoned anywhere whenever they get a flat tire or something (rather than the card - holder at least having to walk them to the nearest dock), so the actual fleet will plummet. Thankfully, I have my bicycle, and will soon have my electric micro car.
Bike lanes actually have another benefit. Which is they actually accommodate transportation in between pedestrians and cars in general. For anything that needs flat surfaces and goes 10-30 km/h and isn't all to large, bike lanes are the more ideal transport lane. This matters because some of the mobility assist devices for the elderly or handicapped fall in side this range. Having such medium sized vehicles on pedestrian sidewalks is problematic, especially if busy, but also because sidewalks can have extra clutter on them hindering easy passage. They also may not also always have smooth on-off ramp areas, which bike lanes do as they cater to a wheeled vehicle. And lastly, sidewalks can be quite limited in where they run, even when properly built up; in comparison bicycle lanes when properly built up will even connect to nearby cities. As such for people with disabilities (or even a person out of a hospital operation) bicycle paths allow them a greater range of freedom, combined with making it easier and faster to get around as well. Basically in summary, there's a host of different vehicles that don't go together well with cars, but can be of great benefit to many people in general. Having a specialized lane for these vehicles will help for all these people, not just the cyclists.
Great overview! At the same time with the bicycle revolution I feel there's a silent personal electric vehicle (PEV) revolution. I moved from a bicycle to an etwow electric kickscooter and I couldn't be happier. But there's so many options! Electric kickscooters, onewheels, skateboards, longboards, segways and more configurations than I can imagine.
It is almost like capitalism's profit motive doesn't lead to the most socially optimal solution to transportation problems. Private transportation companies are more interested in making money than improving the communities that they operate, regulation can help alleviate these problems but it is slow to adapt.
You make it seem like seeking profits is bad. I offer you this in rebuttal. If these companies make profits more profits with less regulation and as a result can hire 20-30% more people. Would the nuisance of a non-optimal transportation environment be worth it. A little aggravation for you could mean 10-20 more people get new jobs or keep their job...fair trade off if you ask me.
Regulations are set by big oil OR other corporation's that are more powerful than our government therefore using regulations to avoid competition, lobbied by big corporations to increase their domination. (Enjoy the poetry) As a small example, who do you think put the 250W limit on electric bikes? Was it really necessary? Regulations create monopolies and slow down free enterprise that would create better and less costly solutions. Let people vote with their dollars for the solutions that they want instead of letting special interests deciding for the people. Be careful with what you wish, seems like you might have underestimated the complexity of this situation and got the solution backwards, just food for thougts...
A huge issue, mainly talking about the US, is that cities were designed with the car being the main mode of transportation. As much as I would love to get rid of my car, it's effectively not possible in many areas due to the lack of public transportation and the fact that residential and commercial areas are spaced so far apart. 5-10 minute bike ride, fine. 30+ mins bike ride, ain't nobody got time for that. Furthermore, public transportation is actually more expensive than getting a cheap used car, so the math doesn't work out even in places with decent public transport.
E-bikes are NOT bicycles. They are motorcycles. If it has a motor, is a motorcycle, it does not matter if the motor runs on gas, coal, nuclear, or electricity, if it has a motor it is a motorcycle.
Ebikes should have plates, insurance and a license requirement, its not like poor people are going for those expensive beasts and they allow non experienced riders to go much faster than they should.
Depends if its pedal assist, if it uses a throttle i'd agree but the pedal assists only assist when you pedal and they cap out at 15mph I think it is, so its more for assisting people less capable but doesn't provide the same silly speed ability you are talking about. In a lot of cases they will actually be slower, because they cap out the speed, anything above that you have to pedal yourself...and the bike will be heavier due to the battery and motor etc. I think it's worth letting them be classed as bikes as it helps people get into cycling, if it has a throttle and isn't speed capped though then yea, no way it should be classed as a bike.
Sure, but the suggestions you are already putting forward apply to those vehicles? For it to still be classed as a bike in the US it needs to meet the following "fully operable pedals, a top speed when powered solely by the motor under 20 mph (32 km/h) and an electric motor that produces less than 750 W (1.01 hp)".
Many people do not leave thier house unless they drive. *What happened to just walking somewhere?* Or bicycling to destinations? It's like we are addicted to driving. This changes our posture. Now we are "tri-pedal" using three limbs to transport ourselves (legs for driving and one or more arms for steering). Because we drive more than we walk, our psiology has changed.
Lucas Kerper Because American cities are a pain in the ass to walk. In my case for example it’d take me an hour to walk downtown and reach the nearest place that has commercial buildings. Wouldn’t imagine the situation being different for most other people.
Except in big cities, America is too spread out to walk or cycle, thanks to the car. Car transportation still works well outside big cities and metro areas, and the infrastructure built for it makes bicycling and walking difficult in the U.S. Summer and winter temps often make walking and cycling difficult and dangerous, too.
I really don't like the set design. I get you want to keep it casual, but the mess on the table is really distracting. Just organising the papers would make it a lot easier on the eyes
In Austria(central Europe) biking was almost always considered more sth as a sport rather than transportation. Probably also the reason why many roadbikers(such as myself) can be quite elitist-like and behave"I'm better than you"-like. It's almost considered a luxury, I mean many roadies spend more than 2000€ on a roadbike, which is fine, but they don't consider using them for commuting. Simply because they fear that they get stolen. Although many attempts were made to commute on bikes in my city like from the public insurance companies. You could make as many commuter kilometers as possible and win some very nice prizes. That's all good, but rarely do i see sth like "New bike lane in plan". People simply aren't fully commited here to actually want to ride to work, except a few people. And these are almost always considered "sporty" "enviromental concious" etc. They think that they need to be fit to commute on a bike. WHich is very wrong. I see so many old ladies cruising around town on their 19whatever old bikes and not care about their speed. If you want to ride to work, you really gotta get up earlier to not get completely smacked trying to be as fast as possible. That's also not as popular as it could be. When i was commuting to school it took me around 35 mins on my cheap ass MTB. On a proper commuterbike probably less than 30mins. The bus about 25mins. So in my case riding was almost always a better solution since i would never be stuck in traffic jam(had a bike route that never crosses a road) AND train a little bit. But that's also a problem. People often think of training when riding a bike. And let's be honest not many do actually want to work out. You would have to really emphasize on getting from A to B and not race the distance as fast as possible
Laura Moraes And that's why I think he is actually digging for secret a government programs projects or for private investors, because his tunnels are clearly not a credible solution to traffic.
Ali Fraiha Yeah if it's a conspiracy but no theory yet, the idea has not even reached that stage yet. But lighten up mister grumpy... Is there something so sinister in our world that keeps you from enjoying theorising about things you don't know? Why so serious. It's satire, he can dig holes as much as he wants, I don't care if the city is still standing. But you tell me Mr serious, why do you think Mr Musk is digging holes according to YOU. Use your imagination it's harmless and good fun, nobody is going to die if you say something really stupid ;)
I live in Colorado Springs and the main problem I see is how much urban sprawl there is and to get anywhere on a bike can take awhile. The stores versus the neighborhoods are a way off from each other. It’s just easier and in some cases safer in the car.
There will never be a "peak" car trend. You may see different energy source running cars, but they will always exist as long as people need to cross large distances. For example, the US is a *must* for a car if you want to get from one State to another. Good luck getting rid of that, especially when the US doesn't have a good transport service.
Make elevated metal structures with rubber material to ride on. Construct them in a controlled environment and deploy them everywhere. Many areas will need to have them specially designed for said area. It has few problems that can be solved with other things we already have at our disposal.
The problem with biking in areas like LA is distance, The vast majority of people don't live within biking distance of their places of work. This makes it much more desirable to drive to work.
It was fascinating to see the level of the growth of bicycle usage particularly with bike sharing. I appreciate understanding some of the problems with it. The video did a great job helping visualize the use and its problems. While there may be problems integrating bike sharing programs, and in general I consider profit to be sludge in the machine of society, but you can't get bike usage up far enough and fast enough for me, even if profit motive is the driving force. Profit motive has been the driving force for personal fossil fuel driven transportation to the destruction of a functional transportation landscape for society and even worse for the environment to the degree that our existence is threatened. It's threatened not only by global warming but by pollution and resource depletion on a massive scale. Combustion engine personal transportation is responsible for one third of our carbon pollution. Also in a very short one hundred fifty years we've used up more than half of the planet's oil reserves that took hundreds of millions of years to develop. We're heading off a cliff of consumption and pollution at lightning pace with no slowing in sight. Our future generations will have 11 billion people with a fraction of the petroleum resources we have now and magnitudes more pollution. Then global warming gets added to that. Last but not least masses of people seem to ignore the political upheavals of a world dependent on and running out of fossil fuel spawning the travesty of endless wars. Complaining about the problems of bicycle integration's growing pains defies the scale of our problems with combustion engines used for personal transportation.
They should make semi-dockless bikes, where there are stricter rules on parking, some docking stations, and possibly a motion activated camera that turns on when locked
Jump bikes have a good compromise between docked and dockless. They have a U-lock built into the frame and you are supposed to lock them up at bicycle racks. They seemed to be parked more responsibly than there dockless counterparts. They electric assist helps riders keep with the flow of traffic and virtually flattens hills.
![[Part 1] รักมาไม่ทันตั้งตัว❤ หนุ่มสาวโสดถูกจับมาแต่งงานกันกะทันหัน แถมเธอยังเป็นหัวหน้าของเขา?!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2pOOMkuFI0/mqdefault.jpg)
FWIW - one of my sources on the bike story, Prof. Ralph Buehler, thinks dockless bikes have some potential. He just did a preliminary study on dockless bikes in DC and found that they attract more diverse riders and they are more accessible.
vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2018/05/ncr-docklessbikes.html
The meme that Americans don't know geography is true, or are you just trolling us ? lmao
There is another report to be done here, on the story of the systematic marginalization of bike infrastructure in the US... If there were separated bike lanes that cars couldn't reach, a huge amount of people would find cycling attractive according to studies...
One other note: you need to work on your lighting! ;-)
Lou-
Thank you (or your editor) for using that clip! I'd love to chat about an idea I have for Beme News. Also, is that VT study ongoing? Seems like they have some strong leads. Shoot me an email if you'd like to talk- deanbog@gmail.com
-Dean Bog
The message doesn't suck, but the messenger does. Try someone new
Louis Foglia if our cities weren't built around needing cars.. We put everything so far away, that driving is typically the only logical choice. If our cities were more centralized, we could use bicycles and busses to easily get around. But instead we have a gridlocked, money making system. Because at the end of the day, cars make cities/states so much money from things like parking tickets or registration fees.
In my city (Groningen, the Netherlands) traffic lights for bikes turn green faster when it's raining. There's also heated bicycle lanes so there's no ice on the roads in winter.
That's cool....
That is fucking sick
Have lived in Groningen, The Netherlands for 2 years and I've driven a car like 3 times and ridden a bus like twice, always on my bike!
Heated bike lanes? Holly shit, that is like the opposite of green transportation, isnt it?
Mārtiņš Kaktīts It depends, they dont have to heat them very hard to keep them over the freezing point.
And it might save more energy from people biking instead of driving a car than it consumes.
It's not as much a "bike" issue as it is a "people" issue. The guy who wants to throw all the scooters into the bay is annoyed at inconvenience. Those inconveniencing him are oblivious to his annoyance or simply don't care. People who vandalize bikes that are not their property are doing something they aren't supposed to do. People heaving their bike up onto a pile of other bikes are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
People are shitty. Bikes are great.
I think this is one of a very small number of cases where I don't really think the issue lies with greedy corporations. People need to be more considerate.
Fresh air, some exercise = Less stress and less hostile city
People underestimate the power of endorphins.
polluted air + some exercise = cancer
I work as heavy laborer 12 hours a day. If I had to bike home 10+ miles from a job site I would simply kill someone so I could rest in a nice cold jail cell.
In that state of fatigue you are more likely to kill someone or even yourself while driving. Use public transport.
Please. I can function fine after work. It's not like a 12 hour manual labor job = suddenly sleep deprived and drunk. Public transport means 3x longer trip time.
I love having an extra $500 in my pocket not having to pay the huge money sink that people call a "car" Bikes are the best.
In my area that is true unless you have to go anywhere in the dead of night or anytime you have to carry something large or heavy.
The problem with cycling in the UK is that if I leave my bike locked up in a busy place then I'm walking home
Tom Cox buy a good lock
Plenty of videos of thieves breaking gold standard (£100) locks in seconds. I'm a cycle commuter and build bikes for a living but I wouldn't leave my bike outside in a city in the UK.
Tom Cox and Australia
@@gerardmontgomery280: Perhaps many Muslim cultures were onto something. In those societies, if someone was convicted of theft; their hands would be amputated./sarcasm
Caleb Wilson you should checkout the lock picking lawyers channel. He breaks into the best bike locks in seconds.
Don't let the best be the enemy of the good.
This was interesting as it highlighted a lot of issues I didn't know about before. But bikes and bike infrastructure are overwhelmingly good things when you compare the alternatives, especially in the long-term.
Funny - literally had "don't let perfection be the enemy of the good" in an earlier draft of this script....
Bikes are causing so many problems. The government should regulate them out of existence. Cars are the answer. Who wants to go anywhere on a bike anyway? it's not even fun. I want to stay at home on weekends replacing my timing belt, and changing oil/brakes. I love buying lots of gasoline. you meet the nicest people at the gas station. bikes are so efficient. it's almost not American.
Sarcasm I love bikes
FPVREVIEWS ..... we know.
FPVREVIEWS more regulation is never the solution. Enjoy $6 per gallen gas when the city pass more regulation, and safety regulation is the reason why sport cars are getting so damn expensive in the first place. If cars are cheap, more ppl will drive cars. If factory’s are allowed to build more cheap cars, ppl will sell their old cars and buy new ones.
I understand the sarcasm but I'm a car guy and I like my cars lol
FPVREVIEWS I love filling up my Hummer. Since most of my income goes to fill it up, I stopped wasting money on bad habits like alcohol, girls, gym membership
The solutions is more Hummers and trucks. Make you sure you run people off the road to show you are dominant!
I love bikes. Living in a big city, I can get quickly everywhere and it's fun! (+ Healthy and good for the environment) and I hate being stuck in traffic, I feel like a sheep.
NikoxD93 Yep, bikes are the best in dense urban areas. Absolutely the way to go. Sometimes you can end up even faster than traffic.
s/sometimes/often. I regularly ride past the cars parked on the highway into the city on the bikepath next to it, about the same time every morning. The only way to beat me door to door is to do it out of peak hour, but the great thing about a bike is it always takes the same time, give or take a minute or two. Even in heavy traffic.
I wish Rome could be more bike friendly, right now you should ride with the other cars all the time!
Wish we had more bike lanes in North Carolina
Like over half of women in the USA are classified as obese now. I think we need to start limiting their access to cars and get them using their legs for once.
Raleigh and Cary aren't that bad in my experience, with decent sidewalks and wide roads with shoulder on each side. Were you really need bike lanes is in downtown areas of major cities where sidewalks are full, and roads are most of the time wide enough to add bike lanes, without restricting parking
www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/pedbike/05085/chapt15.cfm
come try joburg, we got a few but they go no where and none of the major roads have em
Miguel Quinto true, but its hilly.
Jamie MacDonald ugg, no thx
Pointing to a dark map in the background was useless, I think it is time to get rid of Casey's non-practical decore and way of presenting for good
I personally enjoy Casey´s method... if done right. There has to be more light, a different angle to film at the map. A Worldmap (cause sadly many have a hard time realizing where it is otherwise) ...
Kamel Labiad u for real? That was obviously sarcastic. Everyone knows where those two countries are and is not important info
You'd be surprised how geographically challenged some people are. I witnessed someone looking for NYC on a USA map, asking where "New York State" was for reference.
They could move it a bit to the center of the screen, and focus when it's needed. That'd look nice with editing maybe?
Exactly Jeff Hollis, you cannot assume everyone knows as much as you do, no matter how basic it seems. I live in Belgium and one of my friends does not know where Poland and Finland are.
I am 48 years old and started riding a bike for the first time 2 years ago. Now I ride an e-bike to work everyday. My commute is 40 miles a day and I have put 11,000 miles on my e-bike. I live in the greater Seattle land area and without an electric motor the hills would be impossible for me as I have a health condition that restricts my breathing. I do not own a car and to get 20 miles to work involves 3 buses and up to an hour wait in total at transfer points. The bus can take from 2 to 3 hours depending on traffic and bus promptness ( a late bus can cause me to miss all of my transfers). The driving here is notoriously bad as is the infrastructure. On my e-bike (which is governed at 20 mph max) I can get to work in 1 hour 30 min but it usually takes me longer because I ride slow and enjoy the experience. I have been hit by a school bus and a mini-van (the driver took off....but i caught up #ebike).
You should get a used car off of craigslist.
What, to live in?
I take public transportation to work which includes a 20min walk to just one bus 🚌 stop. I’ve been reviewing the #ebike option. Which one do you have? Or any suggestions would be great 👍🏾
I live downtown in a city in the Netherlands, a car is a pos to have then.
I'm riding my bike and it gave me the most beautiful legs and butt.
It's only a 20 mins ride to where i work.
A lot of you Americans will have to ride a lot more.
It's not fun riding to work for more than an hour.
American culture & infrastructure is completely different.
watchingponies you are completely right. I'm from the us. So much of how our country is designed simply requires a car. I really don't know that bikes work for most people, except for the wealthy people who can afford living in the most central areas of cities. It almost seems like a solutionless problem-there is nothing that Currently exists that will really fix American congestion. We have cursed ourselves with having too much space.
That's it. The core.
You were build with all the space in the world when it all started.
Better public transport would work for some cities, but overall it is a pretty big problem without so many solutions.
It's here in the Netherlands too tho. Jam packed trains and busses. But at least you can get from A to B without a car.
I'm just lucky with my personal situation.
I've travelled in the US almost every other year for the last 20 years.
I def can tell the difference between our cities.
Lived in Miami for almost 3 years.
I had my bike there. It was perfect.
A little dangerous, and drivers just kinda hate bikers on the roads lol.
dude chill out. clearly you've not been to a whole lot of america. i have no idea where your random 5km number came from, but thats just not true. and regardless, the difficulty of biking is that if you arent in the city, biking is DANGEROUS. Even if you are in the city, you are at risk from stupid danger. There is nowhere that isnt car oriented, hence danger.
Liam Tahaney www.greencarreports.com/news/1071688_95-of-all-trips-could-be-made-in-electric-cars-says-study
I bike 35 miles a day to DC and Back to Maryland. 17 to 20 Miles each way depending on the route I take. It is fun.
Dude you make great videos and present both sides. I see so much on TH-cam that is biased for one side or the other yet you show it all.
As a Danish guy, this is extremely funny how you guys can't figure out how to incorporate bikes into your infrastructure. I get the dock less problem, lucky everyone here has a bike so there is no market for it.
zCausper
I would have been laughing at your earlier experimentation.
zCausper
I'm sure that the urban sprawl in Denmark isn't as large as the ones in the US. Most of the streets are built for cars, most of whom are large and wide, compared to the tiny cars in Europe. Plus, it'll take a ton of money and time to simply rebuild US infrastructure to accommodate bike lanes.
More people on bikes most mean that less people are in cars, so maybe use some of the car space for bikes?
you can tax cars on gas,registration ,tires ,batteries and car insurance i spend 10k for 2 cars yearly . yes but government would lose heavily on taxes if they make bike lanes and bike laws .
As an example, many people (thousands is a good guess) live in San Francisco and work in Cupertino. That is a distance of 50 miles (80 km). 50 miles is a common distance for traveling to work in the San Francisco Bay Area. This would be a bicycle trip of 4 and a half hours. No one is going to make that trip to work and back every day. (Some one may, but that’s beside the point.) Any bicycle trip of more than 5 miles (ok, 10 miles) is outside of the practical limits for daily, commute bicycling anywhere in the US. Therefore, many people have cars. The infrastructure has been built for cars. When bicycles begin paying road taxes and begin following the rules of the road, then maybe there will be more emphasis on bicycle infrastructure. Don’t plan on it.
In the Netherlands you can hire straight from the train station. The good part is you can do with the bike what you want, as long as you bring it back. You are charged for every 24 hrs for a very small fee. Another good part is that they fix the bikes when something is broken.
Im an American in Copenhagen Denmark and let me tell you that here the bike reigns supreme. Nobody is fat and there are bike paths absolutely everywhere. The majority don't own cars and electric assist bikes abound. Also there are many cargo bikes I use one everyday because I have an elderly dog who loves riding in my Nehola cargo bike.
paxwallacejazz The Netherlands is worth a visit as well. Great bike infrastructure everywhere in litteraly every village. We even built bike lanes all over our huge dams such as the Afsluitdijk and the Oosterscheldekering.
Can I visit
Koninkrijk der Nederlanden Right haven't visited ghe Netherlands in about 10 years but it's just like Denmark absolutely
Huh I dont remember that during my visit to copenhagen but I just stayed they're for two hours in an airport and one time when I was 5 I went across the öresund bridge.
xXsniperXx roblox you have stayed at the outskirts of Copenhagen then. Most of the biking happens closer to centrum.
Imo bikes + public transit > cars
=false
cars are great, just not in cities with 4 or more story buildings.
Cars are convenient and cheap if you live in the suburbs and are 5 miles from home, office, bank, post office and shopping.
To make a blanket comment like cars or public transport are better is just dumb.
cars are only convenient because they're heavily subsidized and prioritized in sprawling american cities that have yet to go through any growing pains a'la induced demands. Once induced demand comes about, cars are ultimately worthless hunk of steel. The average car in a city of 1 mill people goes around 11mph. Guess how fast the average bike commuter is? 12.5mph. And it's a fraction of the cost. Wanna do grocery haul? Hitch a trailer. Or if you don't want to do that, then get rid of archaic zoning laws that pit residential and commerce separate from each other and the only way to get to them is via highway. Promote mixed development, walkable cities, complete streets you SPEND YOUR TIME ON, not save time on. If you get what I mean. We need to spend time on our streets, not use our streets to save us time to get somewhere.
It's about time we stop using cars (cages) for everything. I know it's a pipe-dream but it is possible and hell i'll advocate it as much as I can until we get some damn decent public transit and everything I just mentioned because single family homes and the private car is killing our cities and communities. It may have worked in the 50's, but just like everything else we have learned about our advancement in society (look at the industrial revolution) it is time to scale back and think smarter.
CARS ARE WORTHLESS (for the most part/in the long run)
Adnan Omeragic
You talk like +4 story towns are inevitable.
I don't want to live in a +4 story town.
The rent is +50% higher.
The cost to just buy cereal is +20% higher.
Screw +4 story towns.
I live 5 miles or 15 minutes tops, from movies, work, shopping, bank, post office, basically everything but my dentist.
And it cost 10 bucks a day. (20 if I wanted a nicer car)
Even a place like China has all the land they would ever need to have everyone live like this. But the economy is localized along the coast.
Maybe progress for china is less public transport and more suburbs being built.
kkknotcool I doubt it costs you ten dollars a day including rent, car payments, gas, food and electricity. If that's the case I'm moving to where you live.
Either way, I live in the second largest city in Canada and have one of the lowest costs of living in the country. But I get that like New York or London is crazy expensive.
Adnan Omeragic
Look at it this way.
If we gave everybody a lot that's 5000 square feet(more than big enough to build an apartment sized house)
That would be about 60 square miles.
Road island = 1,212 mi²
America has the land for the population of the world to live in the suburbs.
Bikes are cool, but it's kinda scary riding a bike on the road, especially with vague bike lanes.
Speaking from Taipei, Taiwan. One of Lou's examples.
You just beep a card(that you can also use in convenient stores, buses, mrts), and you can use a bike.
It's convenient, but just a bit scary to use.
in the UK. my city (southampton) has a dock-less system.. but there is only one company doing it, so we don;t have loads of bikes everywhere yet (I would imagine the local government would make sure that no more than a couple of operators could use the system, and they'd charge them for disposal of their bikes if they started piling up, probably under fly tipping laws).. also in the UK we have laws in place that date back years, any motorized bike has to have a top speed of no more 15.5mph (you can go fast but the engine won't drive faster that that) to qualify as a bicycle .. if the engine gets you over 15.5mph it's classed a motorbike and you need all the stuff that goes along with that like insurance, vehicle tax, ect.
This video is poorly researched. Only the problematic sides are being shown.
Where I live Cologne, Germany biking infrastructure is worse than in most big US-Cities.
The semi-public company providing bike-sharing here has a dockless system and it works very well. Little vandalism and little clutter because the company understands that in the long run it will make them less profitable to lose many bikes.
Also many people in Europe (second largest E-Bike market in the world, remember?) don't ride E-Bikes shown in the video but pedal-assisting E-Bikes. Most customers are older people who cannot ride longer distances on a normal bike. These E-Bikes are much less dangerous and also many countries have restrictions in place for top speed and sometimes even top pedal-assisting rate.
In the USA higher powered motors are allowed for E-Bikes up to 750 watts under Federal law and it varies amongst states.
In my particular state 1,000 watt motors are allowed as long as the motor only limits speeds to 20 MPH (32 KPH).
In Europe you're probably limited to maybe a 200 watt or 250 watt assist motor is that correct?
In germany there is a 250W & 25km/h (15mph) maximum. Anything over that you'll need a licence, a helmet, insurance etc. Also it has to be pedal-assisted to be classified as a bike not a "motor"bike.
About the Ebikes:
At least in Germany they can only help up to 25 km/h, and you need to peddel.
Anything going faster or that works without you working is a motorized bike and dosn't fall in the same catagory.
Love that map, reminds me of school in the 1980s!
AdventureSportFlashlights I could see the map from the back of the class though
One of the best informed vid on this topic, I say as European (living in Netherlands for past 10years) and person who often discusses this with my nerdy expat colleagues. Well done.
Haha I just showed a friend the original 'bike lanes' video from Casey last week.....and yes, *my biggest problem when riding in the bike lane on my skateboard, is that there's always a goddamn Uber or Lyft pulled over into it!*
skateboarding in the bike lane???
It's a boosted board
TBH, I'd rather a boosted be in the bike lane than the footpath, though slow skateboards generally don't really belong there. Having said that, we expect cars to slow down for us, so...
Same here I hate it when Uber or Lyft pull over when I jog in the bike lane. It is soooo frustrating!
Lindsay Daly a person misusing a bike lane complaining about others misusing it. Oh, joy
One mayor problem to integrate bikes in North America is the terrible public transit. In Europe, if you use a bike regularly, you know that when you need to go further away or carry something that doesn't fit in your bike, you can take a train or bus. In North America, that option often doesn't exist or is highly deficient, so even if you bike, you still need a car. Having a car at your disposal makes you lazy and you end up using the bike much less than you originally planned.
I live in Dallas and I see these lime green bikes flung around everywhere! I don’t see to many people actually riding them though. It’s become a joke how far away from downtown you’ve seen the lime green bikes.
It seems crazy and nonsensical.
Louis Foglia It is! Dallas has a moderate biking community, but nothing to warrant that many bikes. I mostly see homeless people riding them consistently.
I live in Dallas too last week I saw I lime bike on the side of 35
Yep, those goddamn things are everywhere.
Well I stand on some roads and do not see cars driving on them, does this mean the road is useless?
Great eye opening video, thanks for making it!
Been a bicycle commuter for all my adult life, I've been lucky enough to live for periods longer than 2 years in 3 different cities: Buenos Aires, San Jose(CA) and New York. These are quite different infrastructure wise.
I've commuted on e-bikes, skateboard, bicycle, car, scooter, etc...
Cities need to be more more aggressive with traffic violations, red lights, pedestrian right-of-way, collisions, walkway violations, cell phone use... All these things need to be punished with what hurts people the most, which is their wallet.
Make tickets so high people are really careful about their riding. In turn, take that ticket money to hire more traffic agents...
It may sound a little extreme but people don't learn quickly in another way.
It would also be important to educate walking people of the hazards of walking on bike lanes. I've seen very bad accidents with people and their walking dogs, I've seen parents with strollers on a high speed bike lane getting near-missed...
Amsterdam indeed banned them, so now we can buy those bikes for 150 euros :) But we already have a problem there... bikes already end up everywhere. A lot of them go swimming ;)
In the enormously wide cities of the south like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Charlotte. It is laughably impractical to get rid of a car. Also cars are great for doing anything outside of the city or travel to nearby states. Great to have both.
great set design !
Ian Blythe i hope thats a joke! Opening a dim-lit map in the background doesnt scream smart design hahaha o wel. I hope they clean up and light things a bit better
Switzerland also has great bike paths, at least in certain places like Basel.
If only a few city planners in the world visited Copenhagen or Amsterdam...problem solved.
Alexander Browne Or Maastricht if they want to see a city with hills.
Alexander Browne those are flat cities, einstein
In my city there is even a electric car share like in Paris, France. As the gaps in the systems become joined they will gain popularity and users just as when bike lanes finally get joined. It's happening, keep up the good work everyone!
Docked sharebikes are the proper solution. We have Bixi in Montreal (designed here, used by Citibikes in NYC and all over) and I live within 2 blocks of 3 different docking stations. It's easy, doesn't cause clutter/nuisance, no chance of them getting stolen (extra security features in the bike itself if so), and also easier to maintain for the company. If a dockless company tried to start here it wouldn't even get to the point where people would throw them in the river, they'd never get off the ground.
100% agreement. London's docked bike system is brilliant. Dockless bikes just aren't working out. Stockholm is attempting to have dockless ebikes bikes starting in 12/2017, but they seem to have disappeared as of 05/2018. For all the Swedish adherence to rules, dockless bikes aren't manageable, I suspect a lot of them ended up in Lake Mälaren.
Copenhagen has a great bike program. And their infrastructure is second to none. I still prefer riding my own bike to work and has a safe dry place to park it.
I agree if it's well executed. I live in DC and in my opinion the bikeshare docks are just a little too far from eachother to really be able to hop on whenever you need. I recently visited Montreal and was amazed by how many docks there were, and not having my own bike was barely an inconvenience at all that way!
Dockless bikes work in kind societies. But in places like France with a lot of "urban youth" they will get destroyed.
Dockless bikes work in kind societies. But in places like France with a lot of "urban youth" they will get destroyed.
my rule of thumb for fast commuting in big cities (ignoring all other aspects):
0 - 2km walking
2 - 10 km cycling
more than 10 km public transport
Montreal has a ton of bike lanes going every which way and drivers seem to have finally gotten used to them. Though winter riders still get harassed.
There's definitely a getting used to each other process that takes a while between cars and bikes. One of the concerns with ebikes, is that people in cars aren't used to their speed, so will have a harder time figuring out how to avoid them...
Louis Foglia Bikes and pedestrians aren't used to their speed either. You aren't allowed to use e-bikes in bike lanes or bike paths here, yet many still do and it can be quite stressful.
Huh, I don't see a problem with ebikes in bike lanes, but then in Australia they're limited (legally) to 25km/h. Having said that, tell that to the guy I was drafting at 45km/h up a slight rise the other day. Occasionally I see someone doing something stupid, but then I see that from guys on regular bikes too (and have done the occasional silly thing myself).
ebikes are not the problem, it's rider education. I don't think we need licences, that would be stupid, but I wouldn't be against a public education program for regular riders. I ride a non e-bike fast, sometimes up to 60km/h in a sprint, and I find at >40km/h it's actually easier because I can integrate with general traffic on the road more easily when the lanes get narrow.
And last but not least, drivers need to be aware that some bikes are fast, and to not be impatient and try to get across in front of the 'slow' bike doing 50+km/h. A couple of guys I know have ended up in hospital that way, and I've had a couple of VERY close encounters myself, though I take the approach that every driver is a dickhead and ride accordingly. Just means I'm often pleasantly surprised by the vast majority who aren't dickheads.
25 KPH? I exceed that regularly on my pedal bicycle. What's even the point of having a motor then?
I will never forget watching people bike through Montreal. It was kinda crazy...soooo many people
Thanks for talking about the lack of infrastructure. Most complaints I hear don't make it that far. We don't need to start manufacturering new products that are too slow for the street and too fast for the sidewalk. Bikes, scooters, cars, taxis and Lyft, and buses and trains work and the infrastructure is there. Instead of adding something new, we should invest in improving what we have.
I think part of the reason people are resistant to bike lanes is that they usually coincide with gentrification...In NY, you've lost your neighborhood when a Starbucks, a Chase, and a bike lane arrive.
Louis Foglia why is gentrification a bad thing? The literal definition of the word in part is to improve. If all of those things are good (which they are), then they should be added to an area. Hanging on to old and outdated ways is what the left is against right? So why would they not be in favor of gentrification...seems like a hypocritical stance.
I would argue that a starbucks replacing a mom and pop business is not good. Gentrification raises prices and creates uniformity - two things I find unappealing.
Louis Foglia I would have to say that gentrification lowers prices. Walmart is more efficient than a mom and pop. Just like Starbucks and amazon. It’s great to say let’s buy local and support the small businesses...but when a small business can be beat by nothing other than economies of scale, then I see no real value in trying to support that small business.
Louis Foglia give me some value and innovation for spending more money with a small business rather than just a “feel good”.
Beau hard to argue with your logic, but for some reason it still just *feels* wrong. I'd much rather support local businesses that are owned by people in my community with families and friends than a faceless and cold company like Walmart.
Awesome reporting. Really shows the difficulty of city planning and organizing all these new and emerging technologies. Not to mention growing populations, this is a tough issue.
0:56 - I'm not sure if woman shows Scandinavian countries or just Baltic Sea...
Please never stop making videos beme I really enjoy them
"Isn't slowing down and enjoying the ride part of the process?" Emphatically NO.
I'm a full-time cyclist. I bike 365 days a year to get around my city. I bike almost 10 miles just to get to work along very bike-unfriendly roads. There's a lot of reasons why I choose to do this, mostly economic, but when it comes to commuting, my primary goals are expedience and safety. Slowing down to enjoy the ride compromises both of those principles.
And there's a simple answer to this whole debate: ban cars in city limits. If it isn't an emergency vehicle, public transit, registered livery, or some other commercial vehicle, it shouldn't be on the road. If people can't handle an hour-long bus ride or 10 mile bike ride to get to work, maybe we will fix the problems we've spent decades creating by installing highways through the middle of cities and neighborhoods (a practice, I might add, that has been used to deliberately dispossess ethnic minority populations who worked in the city center and wanted to live nearby).
"Oh, but we've spent all these decades creating this expensive infrastructure! It would be a waste to shut them down and let them be huge bike and pedestrian roads!" Nonsense. This is 2018 America: our infrastructure is shit because we haven't invested anything more than the bare minimum into it for half a century. A large number of traffic problems result from outdated design and a combined inability and unwillingness to fix them, to say nothing of ever-decreasing infrastructure budgets. And there's the problem of how dangerously most people drive. My city did a road diet, reducing a certain street from 4 lanes through a residential area that people would regularly speed at 55 MPH along, to a 2-lane street with a (unprotected) bike lane and parking lanes. The result? I've been deliberately hit for daring to use the bike lane and have had a lot of hyper-aggressive drivers get in arguments about how I'm ruining the street because now they have to go the posted speed limit. The bike lane had nothing to do with the road diet, but it's 2018 America, so facts don't matter anymore. So, again, ban private cars.
Our grandchildren will look back at the notion of privately owned, privately driven, incredibly dangerous vehicles in much the same way we look at medieval cities that used open sewers to transport human waste.
lol cook confirmed. one order of snobby hipster roadkill, coming right up
I like your style, Patrick my boy.
Ban private cars..... You'll never ever get your dirty SJW hands on my pride and joy. I was with you till that point. Sure let's have cars park outside city limits and have public transport and bikes to get around, but don't you dare come after my car.
Avoid fascist lingo, it makes anything you say easily ignorable. But, sure, if folks want to have a vehicle that they use to drive between cities, that seems sensible. As someone who occasionally bikes on country roads, I find it galling how many people don't even pretend there's a speed limit or regard for other cars, much less farm vehicles, Amish buggies, or cyclists, but that's still a fairly small risk. And I get that some people like cars, in the same way that some people really like methamphetamine. But urban infrastructure is a complete mess due to private vehicles on city streets and I'm glad you do see that.
+Patrick Lewis
"And I get that some people like cars, in the same way that some people really like methamphetamine."
There is absolutely no equivalency. If you're trying to make a serious argument, you've just destroyed it.
Keep up the great work Lou.
Greetings from the island of Curaçao.
I live in the Netherlands and Page wasn’t anywhere near Denmark or the Netherlands 😂
More trains, more tramways.
Tramways are very cool, I love them. But it's not as individual as a car or a bike so we need a lot of them to satisfy our needs. I think that tramways with lots of stops is a good idea
As a cyclist, I hate the biking revolution. The more the average person bikes, the more solid the stereotypes about cyclists become. The average person does not research the rules of the road, or chooses to ignore them at their own convenience. One of the worst types are those who go against oncoming traffic. As a fairly fit cyclist, this is EXTREMELY dangerous as I'm almost always travelling over 25km/h. In that situation it's likely that both me and the other cyclist will sustain serious iniury. There's also the stop sign and red light running ones. Although that's common among drivers, cyclists seem to be more visible in these situations
Ian Rachiele what I'm saying is people notice it more
I thought that ppl rode on the opposite side if there is no sidewalk???
double00shotgun you don't ride on the opposite side period
searchoverload8 lol... double shotgun proved your initial point....
They should educate cyclists as they do with drivers ignorance is the issue
I love every Beme News that comes out. These are always so good!
Hm pretty good status quo video, I would have hoped to see some potential solutions presented for the problems you laid out. Just saying we should pump the brakes and take it slow was not very satisfying
Don't think he's saying take it slow, more like taking a considered approach on how to make them more effective rather than just dumping them in the city and seeing what happens.
I went from taking public transport to work to driving to work. My God, driving is so much better. In the comfort of your own car you are in complete control of your environment: You can have your car at whatever temperature you want, you can have it as quiet or as loud as you want, you can take whatever you want with, you can take whoever you want, you can take any route or go anywhere that you want. With the doors locked you're perfectly safe. This is why parking issues, nightmare traffic and fuel prices will not convince most people to get out of their car unless it gets very extreme.
Since when are the Netherlands considered Northern Europe?
Dolby it's west
It's situated between Norway and Finland, I'd say that's almost as far north as you can come.
The only map I will ever look at is the map of America.
I got hit by a lyft pulling into the bike lane while riding my bike. Luckily, I was uninjured. Car drivers have had it to good for too long, it's time for them to share the road.
+1 for that Duchamp
It's been sitting in this room for a while. Finally a piece where its appropriate.
Everybody tends to forget the terrain they will use the bike. In the Netherlands it is quite easy as all the country are flat and its making it really good for normal bikes. This is turning when you live in countries with hilly areas such as Germany or England where the uphills can be a real challenge for anyone and a barrier for many people.
In the UK the bike lanes are really fragmented and unattended in many parts of the country. No wonder as 6 miles constant 60degree uphill just scares away anyone to try with a bike. Damn even weaker cars struggle to climb some of the roads we have here. And if you willing to use your bike for get to work in the morning the last time you want is arriving tired and sweaty.
Here comes the electric bike. It can solve this issue. You can easily use it even in the Alps and have all the merit what the bikes have (easy to park, easy to maintain, and take the same space on the road as a normal bike does). You constantly have the flat road feeling and "thanks" for the restrictions it's mostly fixed 16miles/hour while normal bikes do more especially if it's driven by a guy dressed as a scubadiver. So wahts the fear off?
people don't want bikes "REALLY". what they want are slow motorcycles that they can use like a bicycle. Hence why motorised bikes are taking off.
One thing I have noticed about driving in general is that it tends to give people a false sense of isolation. Many people feel like they are alone when they are driving and forget that their actions affect those around them. That is one thing I like about biking, it doesn't do that.
I am from Prague (Czech Rep.) and here the bikes are not so common BUT just because of terrain of the city. Lets say hill is not a friend of dry armpits :D
Right, but ebikes are a great solution to that! I live in a city with it's share of hills, and while I generally where bike kit while riding (I ride fast), there are lots of people using ebikes that just wear everyday clothes - skirts, dresses, business attire, etc.
Yes, I have been to Prague, but it was a while ago.
Matthew Jenkinson: True! This is solution to this. E.g. Xiaomi produce electric scooter which is somehow more and more popular here (I guess because of price).
but it's still mostly flat when compared to other cities, apart from ebikes a great thing is also to combine bike + funicular in very hilly cities.
huge amount of cobbled streets does not go well with bikes though.
Yea, the terrain in Prague isn't perfect, but with decently wide tires it's okay. The general lack of bike lanes and driver intolerance is the real issue. As well as places to lock them on the street, sometimes. Still, been biking almost everywhere in Prague for 3 years now. Be proud of your bike sweat xD
I know that my city is not prepared for bikes. They do have one bike lane along the side of one roadway, but there are no crossing zones along the most heavily trafficked roadway in the city. You have to cross two lanes of fifty MPH traffick to reach the other side. If you try to cross at the corner there's always cars turning the corner and there's no safe time to get across. I try to avoid that road, but it's the main business area for retailers. When you shop that's where you go.
LoL.
None of those bike's problems can't even be compared with car's problems.
Take a single land being used as a car parking lot and you could put a all mountain of bikes that "causes problems" in cities.
Each bike is one car less.
It's not about waiting for the Great Solution. Bike is part of it now.
I was going to buy a car in my country. But did the maths of owning a car for where I need to travel. My country has rising oil prices, costly insurance, costly regostration fees, parking fees in the city, toll fees, maintenance costs, etc. But now I'm getting a bike. I will save so much money, and get fit at the same time.
CAN SOMEONE, PLEASE, SOMEONE TEACH THIS MAN HOW TO RIDE BIKE.
While riding my bike today, following the rules, someone in a car pulled up next to me, and told me to get off the road. Thanks for the video. I feel a little more normal
Have you ever seen a movie where the protagonist uses a bicycle troughout the movie instead of a car? Have you ever seen commercials for bicycles on T.V. or just car commercials? As long as the medias associate "cycling" with "being broke" or "its a hobby" we are doomed. If everybody used their own intelligence we would have as many differents vehicules and types of transportation as there is people.
We get commercials of normal and E-bikes here in the Netherlands, but not very often, because we all already have a bike (or 2)
PapierPanierPiano
I thought that the stereotype is that those who take the bus are broke and poor unless they live in New York. Bikes aren't cheap.
In the Neterlands we often buy good bikes form like 150-200 Euros and if you don't crash a lot they will survive for a minimum of 5 years. I have my current bike for like 8 years now, and only had one flat tire, that you can fix by yourself. I never had any more problems, so if you can spread the 200 euros over 5 years it will become so much cheeper than a car or the bus....
and here is the steriotype that if you don't own a bike you're weird, and if you don't bike the short distances in bad weather you're weak, so everyone has their own stereotypes i guess...
Elyne van Opzeeland I will have to come live in the Netherlands because I assure you here in Canada the mentality is different. If you're on a bike you're a looser who just hasn't enough money to buy a car. When people see me take my bike they are worried and they offer me lifts and stuff. I'm telling you dude, you live in a special place with open minded people. In North America the bike is for the lowest, not the highest
PapierPanierPiano I am indeed very happy to live here. I always despised my country a bit, but right now thx to the internet i see how happy i should be, and i am, with my little country....
And i'm proud to say that the netherlands is a country full of open minded people since the 16th century in comparison with other countries!
I love these Beme videos. I hope they are successful.
It hate it when people only talk about the Netherlands when they talk about bikes, when they're actually EVEN MORE used in Belgium.
Anecdotally, they definitely weren't used anywhere near as much this past January and February when I was around.
Yeah right, I suppose that's the reason why there are more bikes than citizens in the Netherlands?
Baptiste De Jonghe Are you sure? That's quite a bold claim. I know plenty of people are cycling in Belgium Limburg and in cities like Antwerpen and Gent, but probably only 1990s China was able to outnumber the Netherlands when it comes to cycling.
The EU researched (quality of transport report 2014) the mode of transport most often used on a typical day. The bike usage results: the Netherlands 36%, Denmark 23%, Belgium 13%. So yeah... you're talking BS.
I like riding on converted train right of ways. They don't intersect traffic and cut right through town.
I think we could get city planners to design separate trails for bikes, away from cars. And these could have separate lanes for faster electrics, and small scooters.
I'm also very interested in pre-planned communities where there is a lot of green space, and golf cart paths. If you think of a community that is designed around how people get from place to place, you might try several of these areas, like a small suburb, but one of them could mainly use bikes, another community could use mainly scooters, another mainly golf carts. These burbs could be interconnected by normal streets and highways. People could choose their style of getting around in the local area, and all the cars would face outwards toward other neighborhoods and cities, not crossing the bike lanes at all.
Also, I think all bikes could have a subsidy, just like many other industries are subsidized.
And if you design the bike trails to have a buffer of grass and trees and flower beds, people would enjoy the ride more. And falling onto grass is way safer than falling onto a parked car. Trails could follow waterways. We could strategically place air pumping stations, to refill tires, a few public bathrooms, a few small bike shops or kiosks, to sell spare parts along the way, along with public drinking fountains for water, benches for resting, a few picnic tables for meeting at, kiosks for putting up posters of local events, open bike shelters with bike racks that are out of the rain, and security cameras.
I think everyone should get a bike riding license, even those that can't ride, because everyone needs to know the guidelines for safe riding, so they can agree on it, and teach it to the little ones.
Our city is doing a lot of this. We are building lots of bridges and rain shelters that are only for bikes and pedestrians. There are lots of plants, trees, rain gardens, statues and artwork, and places to play music. It's not as expensive to build and maintain as you might think, and it makes bike riding way more interesting than riding in a car or on a highway.
In Germany most people use a bike
Camilo Eimbcke González. "use" but still millions of cars
When I moved to the pacific northwest, I was totally broke and didn't have a car, so I bought a bike, while that got me to work, I was having near death experiences on a daily basis almost always from cars pulling into the bikelane to turn into the main road. Now part of this is shrubbery and trees frequently make it hard to see traffic without pulling forward, but they almost never look before they pull into the bikelane. The infrastructure really just isn't here, shared bikelanes seem too dangerous to me.
I ended up buying a 2011 Honda PCX, so I am still on two wheels but, being able to flow with the traffic pattern of the cars around me has dramatically reduced the "I have to slam on the breaks because you just pulled in front of me" moments. It seems to me, that if E-bikes were faster and integrated into the existing traffic pattern, they too might have far fewer conflicts with cars.
my only response is: look at the Netherlands for solutions. Honestly if you don't own or are able to ride a bike in this country people will think you are weird
Not being able to ride a bike isn't the norm in the US either lol
Joseph M "own OR able"
I guess it depends where you live and how the city or town is set up. Where I live most people don't work close enough to commute by bike. And even fewer would want to in the heat, cold or rain. The bike lanes aren't really a concern to the city when more and more cars are on the road. They do promote riding bikes downtown and we have the docked rental bikes; they mainly seem to be used by tourists. Fortunately we also have nice greenway paths for biking, running, and walking...that most people have to drive to.
1:03 you were so mean to Paige 😓 *I'm gonna start a Kickstarter for her* to get a sick burn in response next time 😔
Nkanyiso Innocent Khwane I like your post. I think beme is crap. This guy saying you can go now to that girl is a nice way to talk to someone. Kind of like, all you are good for is pulling down a map. This edit is crap. Well done beme dream team, go back to sleep.
I live in Tokyo, Japan which is often forgotten when people talk about cities with a lot of bicycles (there's really tons of them here). They began to have problems in the 80's because people were parking around train/metro stations and the sidewalk was getting crowded, so now they just take them away in trucks, park them very far away and you need to pay to get them back (depends on the municipality, Tokyo being a cluster of "cities").
Tokyo didn't need any incentive for people to ride bikes.
i like the new beme.
Why?
Minh Le -- Do you also like to drop the soap in a shower? This was painful to watch. I like Lou, but this was bad. CNN is like having Joe Biden around your nieces. Don't do it.
beme review *clap* *clap*
comprehensive review in casey neistat style
I don't understand why Beam news is not getting the views. It's amazing specially Lou..
1:29 what a mess!!!..
I've seen regular docking bikes and the new dockless bikes in Mexico City. The city government gives regular maintenance to docking bikes and the docking stations are everywhere, and always well illuminated and with surveillance cameras. Just looking at the new, dockless bikes, I was already imagining how people will either begin riding them into their homes (thus making the "sharing" part almost worthless), or idiots will begin putting them up on trees. And of course, they will be abandoned anywhere whenever they get a flat tire or something (rather than the card - holder at least having to walk them to the nearest dock), so the actual fleet will plummet.
Thankfully, I have my bicycle, and will soon have my electric micro car.
I'll stick to a Honda 650cc
Bike lanes actually have another benefit.
Which is they actually accommodate transportation in between pedestrians and cars in general. For anything that needs flat surfaces and goes 10-30 km/h and isn't all to large, bike lanes are the more ideal transport lane.
This matters because some of the mobility assist devices for the elderly or handicapped fall in side this range. Having such medium sized vehicles on pedestrian sidewalks is problematic, especially if busy, but also because sidewalks can have extra clutter on them hindering easy passage. They also may not also always have smooth on-off ramp areas, which bike lanes do as they cater to a wheeled vehicle. And lastly, sidewalks can be quite limited in where they run, even when properly built up; in comparison bicycle lanes when properly built up will even connect to nearby cities.
As such for people with disabilities (or even a person out of a hospital operation) bicycle paths allow them a greater range of freedom, combined with making it easier and faster to get around as well.
Basically in summary, there's a host of different vehicles that don't go together well with cars, but can be of great benefit to many people in general. Having a specialized lane for these vehicles will help for all these people, not just the cyclists.
I want an E-Bike!!! :)
Great overview! At the same time with the bicycle revolution I feel there's a silent personal electric vehicle (PEV) revolution. I moved from a bicycle to an etwow electric kickscooter and I couldn't be happier.
But there's so many options! Electric kickscooters, onewheels, skateboards, longboards, segways and more configurations than I can imagine.
Beme is best spot! ❤️💯
I saved soooo much money using my bike as my main form of transport. been biking so long that driving a car feels like a cage now.
It is almost like capitalism's profit motive doesn't lead to the most socially optimal solution to transportation problems. Private transportation companies are more interested in making money than improving the communities that they operate, regulation can help alleviate these problems but it is slow to adapt.
Well said.
You make it seem like seeking profits is bad. I offer you this in rebuttal. If these companies make profits more profits with less regulation and as a result can hire 20-30% more people. Would the nuisance of a non-optimal transportation environment be worth it. A little aggravation for you could mean 10-20 more people get new jobs or keep their job...fair trade off if you ask me.
Regulations are set by big oil OR other corporation's that are more powerful than our government therefore using regulations to avoid competition, lobbied by big corporations to increase their domination. (Enjoy the poetry)
As a small example, who do you think put the 250W limit on electric bikes? Was it really necessary? Regulations create monopolies and slow down free enterprise that would create better and less costly solutions. Let people vote with their dollars for the solutions that they want instead of letting special interests deciding for the people.
Be careful with what you wish, seems like you might have underestimated the complexity of this situation and got the solution backwards, just food for thougts...
NikoxD93
Big oil is dead, idiot.
Ike Okereke I'm sure it is, idiot.
A huge issue, mainly talking about the US, is that cities were designed with the car being the main mode of transportation. As much as I would love to get rid of my car, it's effectively not possible in many areas due to the lack of public transportation and the fact that residential and commercial areas are spaced so far apart. 5-10 minute bike ride, fine. 30+ mins bike ride, ain't nobody got time for that. Furthermore, public transportation is actually more expensive than getting a cheap used car, so the math doesn't work out even in places with decent public transport.
E-bikes are NOT bicycles. They are motorcycles. If it has a motor, is a motorcycle, it does not matter if the motor runs on gas, coal, nuclear, or electricity, if it has a motor it is a motorcycle.
Ebikes should have plates, insurance and a license requirement, its not like poor people are going for those expensive beasts and they allow non experienced riders to go much faster than they should.
Depends if its pedal assist, if it uses a throttle i'd agree but the pedal assists only assist when you pedal and they cap out at 15mph I think it is, so its more for assisting people less capable but doesn't provide the same silly speed ability you are talking about. In a lot of cases they will actually be slower, because they cap out the speed, anything above that you have to pedal yourself...and the bike will be heavier due to the battery and motor etc.
I think it's worth letting them be classed as bikes as it helps people get into cycling, if it has a throttle and isn't speed capped though then yea, no way it should be classed as a bike.
It’s just branding tbh but yeah technically they’re motorcycles
People seem to have figured out how to remove the 15 mph limiter and easily go over 30.
Sure, but the suggestions you are already putting forward apply to those vehicles?
For it to still be classed as a bike in the US it needs to meet the following "fully operable pedals, a top speed when powered solely by the motor under 20 mph (32 km/h) and an electric motor that produces less than 750 W (1.01 hp)".
very nice overview with mentioning of a lot problems. Good job!
Many people do not leave thier house unless they drive. *What happened to just walking somewhere?* Or bicycling to destinations? It's like we are addicted to driving. This changes our posture. Now we are "tri-pedal" using three limbs to transport ourselves (legs for driving and one or more arms for steering). Because we drive more than we walk, our psiology has changed.
Lucas Kerper Because American cities are a pain in the ass to walk. In my case for example it’d take me an hour to walk downtown and reach the nearest place that has commercial buildings. Wouldn’t imagine the situation being different for most other people.
Except in big cities, America is too spread out to walk or cycle, thanks to the car. Car transportation still works well outside big cities and metro areas, and the infrastructure built for it makes bicycling and walking difficult in the U.S. Summer and winter temps often make walking and cycling difficult and dangerous, too.
it's crazy that in rome nothing works but dockless bike sharing is doing fine. no wild parking, no vandalism...
I really don't like the set design. I get you want to keep it casual, but the mess on the table is really distracting. Just organising the papers would make it a lot easier on the eyes
I, for one, think it's awesome.
- go live your life
Blank Space And the way it’s designed it looks crooked. Slanting to the left.
In Austria(central Europe) biking was almost always considered more sth as a sport rather than transportation. Probably also the reason why many roadbikers(such as myself) can be quite elitist-like and behave"I'm better than you"-like. It's almost considered a luxury, I mean many roadies spend more than 2000€ on a roadbike, which is fine, but they don't consider using them for commuting. Simply because they fear that they get stolen.
Although many attempts were made to commute on bikes in my city like from the public insurance companies. You could make as many commuter kilometers as possible and win some very nice prizes. That's all good, but rarely do i see sth like "New bike lane in plan". People simply aren't fully commited here to actually want to ride to work, except a few people. And these are almost always considered "sporty" "enviromental concious" etc. They think that they need to be fit to commute on a bike. WHich is very wrong. I see so many old ladies cruising around town on their 19whatever old bikes and not care about their speed. If you want to ride to work, you really gotta get up earlier to not get completely smacked trying to be as fast as possible. That's also not as popular as it could be.
When i was commuting to school it took me around 35 mins on my cheap ass MTB. On a proper commuterbike probably less than 30mins. The bus about 25mins. So in my case riding was almost always a better solution since i would never be stuck in traffic jam(had a bike route that never crosses a road) AND train a little bit. But that's also a problem. People often think of training when riding a bike. And let's be honest not many do actually want to work out. You would have to really emphasize on getting from A to B and not race the distance as fast as possible
And that's why Elon Musk is making tunnels...
Laura Moraes And that's why I think he is actually digging for secret a government programs projects or for private investors, because his tunnels are clearly not a credible solution to traffic.
NikoxD93 and that's why your conspiracy theory is horse shit.
Ali Fraiha Yeah if it's a conspiracy but no theory yet, the idea has not even reached that stage yet. But lighten up mister grumpy... Is there something so sinister in our world that keeps you from enjoying theorising about things you don't know? Why so serious. It's satire, he can dig holes as much as he wants, I don't care if the city is still standing.
But you tell me Mr serious, why do you think Mr Musk is digging holes according to YOU.
Use your imagination it's harmless and good fun, nobody is going to die if you say something really stupid ;)
M O N O R A I L !
I think he is practicing making tunnels on earth so that later he can do it on the moon and mars. :)
I live in Colorado Springs and the main problem I see is how much urban sprawl there is and to get anywhere on a bike can take awhile. The stores versus the neighborhoods are a way off from each other. It’s just easier and in some cases safer in the car.
There will never be a "peak" car trend. You may see different energy source running cars, but they will always exist as long as people need to cross large distances. For example, the US is a *must* for a car if you want to get from one State to another. Good luck getting rid of that, especially when the US doesn't have a good transport service.
Make elevated metal structures with rubber material to ride on. Construct them in a controlled environment and deploy them everywhere. Many areas will need to have them specially designed for said area. It has few problems that can be solved with other things we already have at our disposal.
The problem with biking in areas like LA is distance, The vast majority of people don't live within biking distance of their places of work. This makes it much more desirable to drive to work.
It was fascinating to see the level of the growth of bicycle usage particularly with bike sharing. I appreciate understanding some of the problems with it. The video did a great job helping visualize the use and its problems. While there may be problems integrating bike sharing programs, and in general I consider profit to be sludge in the machine of society, but you can't get bike usage up far enough and fast enough for me, even if profit motive is the driving force. Profit motive has been the driving force for personal fossil fuel driven transportation to the destruction of a functional transportation landscape for society and even worse for the environment to the degree that our existence is threatened. It's threatened not only by global warming but by pollution and resource depletion on a massive scale. Combustion engine personal transportation is responsible for one third of our carbon pollution. Also in a very short one hundred fifty years we've used up more than half of the planet's oil reserves that took hundreds of millions of years to develop. We're heading off a cliff of consumption and pollution at lightning pace with no slowing in sight. Our future generations will have 11 billion people with a fraction of the petroleum resources we have now and magnitudes more pollution. Then global warming gets added to that. Last but not least masses of people seem to ignore the political upheavals of a world dependent on and running out of fossil fuel spawning the travesty of endless wars. Complaining about the problems of bicycle integration's growing pains defies the scale of our problems with combustion engines used for personal transportation.
They should make semi-dockless bikes, where there are stricter rules on parking, some docking stations, and possibly a motion activated camera that turns on when locked
I felt immediately unsure if i would hate this video when I saw the Duchamp reproduction in the background
Jump bikes have a good compromise between docked and dockless. They have a U-lock built into the frame and you are supposed to lock them up at bicycle racks. They seemed to be parked more responsibly than there dockless counterparts. They electric assist helps riders keep with the flow of traffic and virtually flattens hills.