Do you really NEED to drive that trip? | Bikes are ideal for trips under 5km!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 มิ.ย. 2023
- 79% of all trips under 5km in distance in South East Queensland are taken by private car. When I talk to people about why they take so many short trips, there's often excuses that doing certain trips by bike are impractical. But I tend to think people mistake "impractical" with "inconvenient".
Everyone seems to moan about congestion, but imagine how much better congestion would be if a great deal more of those short trips were taken by bicycle?
So when I had a load of aluminium cans and plastic bottles to take to the recycling centre about 5km away, I thought why not practice what I preach? Could a seemingly "impractical" trip be done?
Well, even with just a standard bike and probably less than adequate means of securing the load to my bike, I managed, and I actually had fun doing it. Check it out.
Love these sorts of videos showing people what is possible by bike, Chris!
Thanks Josh! And wouldn't it be great if it was a little easier and more intuitive? Can't be what you can't see though.
My local recycling centre is also 3km from my home via the safe route and also like yours, mine is designed around people arriving by car. It has no bike parking and one time the guy running the place wouldn't even let us cycle in the main entrance and insisted that we had to use the pedestrian entrance which wasn't wide enough to walk through beside a bike. We've got to get better at making cycling the easier, more convenient choice for short trips.
Ugh yes. Only issue I had was when I was leaving someone needed to park their car next to me. And the car beside them had been parked over the line so they couldn't get in unless I moved.
There's definitely a mentality that bikes aren't used for practical trips, and so essential things like bike parking, suitable entries and, of course, bike lanes and shared paths are not considered.
As they say, you get the traffic you build for, and we keep building for cars
Could have probably fit those cans in a backpack if you crushed them up. Stopped going to the tomra depots once I realised there were other depots that allowed crushed cans (amongst other bottles) that were always rejected by those pesky scanners at tomra.
Would be great if the supermarkets all had their own machines like in other countries
Great video showing how a bike can be used fir everyday tasks. My local recycling centre is quite unfriendly for bicycles. Cars are preferred.
Cheers. Sadly yes, most of these kinds of places are setup for cars. The one I went to I had to chain up to the trolley rack. There's only car parking available. There's no footpath access, you have to walk/ride up the driveway.
There's the assumption everyone will arrive by car.
My local recycler takes the plastic/cans crushed (not by machine). As long as you have an account. Fit more in that bag!
It's a bit pricey but the Burley Travoy is a great way to carry stuff by bike, especially if you have a soft tail like mine where a rear rack wouldn't work. They're especially great for shopping trips, as the cargo carrier is also the shopping trolley you can bring into the store
yo, unreal trip.
A cargo bike in Brissy sounds like real hard work once you leave the river.
Yeah definitely. There is a growing subculture of cargo bike users in Brisbane though - including in the more outer suburbs who make their way in spite of the infrastructure.
Front loader cargo bike is my daily drive in the suburbs. Small mercy I can make the massive detour via the creeks to the CBD. The uninitiated will cite hills and tropical climate as issues, but really it's dog rough and non existent infrastructure. That and the fact that streets at every level of the road hierarchy are optimised (at great expense) for rat running.
I’ve seen a few about, including the Dutch style ones.
A few years ago i was turned away even though i had made it to the actual bin because only cars are allowed access. The really stupid part is that once you've parked your car at a bin you can walk around the site to reach other bins to deposit different materials.
From the mostly car centric UK.
Wow. A bit like you aren't allowed to walk or ride a bike in a drive thru, even though the inside is closed.
There needs to be a public health campaign around people considering other options rather than driving every single journey. Maccas runs would be a good place to start! Offset those fries.
If only Maccas had good bike parking…
@@JimCullen You'd expect that they need it for all the Zoomos doing Uber Eats and Doordash!
Has anyone tried a bike through the “drive thru”?
@@anthonywalsh2164 anecdotally I know it's not permitted so I've never tried.
Most of society really missed the opportunity to take advantage of car versatility and speed by trying to develop direct routes (highways through cities, stroads through neighborhoods) instead of indirect routes like they do in the Netherlands. Instead we're told to treat our cars like bikes with wide lanes, direct routes, ample free parking while at the same time killing the flexibility of cars by creating congestion, stop and go traffic, unpleasant parking lots, and worst of all, extremely inconvenient and dangerous for the mode of transit which benefits the most from direct routing.
If a city proposed an indirect route(s) from a residential area to a shopping center which would technically take a few minutes longer (without traffic), and instead make the stroad bike and transit priority, there would be riots, even though with traffic the old direct route would most likely be comparable as the indirect one, and the cycling and transit options would be as well, if not faster. Not to mention it would be safer and cheaper, but people feel entitled to "their" way that they're accustomed to.
It is awkward running errands like this on your bike, especially starting out; I've biked for grocery hauls, gift runs and golfing trips and it takes time getting used to, but it's so much more rewarding than sitting in your car, having to park it, schelp up to the store and wind up buying too much crap because you unconsciously know you have the space for it. I'm stuck using a rear rack and crate and/or backpack because the conditions of the roads and trail connections don't inspire me to use my cargo trailer or to get a cargo bike.
Yes! I've had a trailer before and used it to do grocery shopping, take kids places etc. But because Brisbane designs crossings as unprioritised refuge islands that are only just wide enough for a regular bike, it was either treacherous or tedious to pick a route that didn't avoid crossing roads like that.
Most of what I do with rack and pannier bags works (smaller shopping trips for example). This was a test to carry a much bulkier load.
I think I'll get some bungee cords that can more easily attach than the ratchet straps I used. Cheapest option.
@@ChrisCoxCycling You can also think of getting the "Mundo Air Pannier" from UK if possible.
I would love to ride everywhere. The problem is leaving the bike. Thieves are thick on the ground in SEQ.
Fortunately I've not had that happen to me yet *touch wood*
I have a frame lock and chain on my bike, all locks/unlocks with one key; the frame lock means a thief would have to make two cuts with an angle grinder if they want to pinch the bike, so I doubt it's going anywhere, fingers crossed.