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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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Let's look at the reasons car-owning motorcyclists (me) don't ride their motorcycles:
-Weather exposure. Piling on gear in the cold sucks, sweating through your clothes sucks, and riding in the rain sucks. In addition to this: tempurature changes are really annoying because your gear needs change.
-Effort. Getting ready to leave takes more effort and longer than hopping in the car. Also driving a car is effortless compared to riding a motorcycle.
-Utility. Simply hauling my boots to work is super annoying because i don't currently have my box installed.
Solutions:
-Weather. Having the proper gear. Better, high-end gear will be better adaptable to wearher changes. Expensive, though.
-Effort. Preparing in advance due to not deciding at the last minute would help here. Riding will always take more effort than driving.
-Utility. If i didn't own a car i would simply have a sporty moto and a cargo moto so hauling the basics wouldn't be an issue however obviously hauling anything sizeable would still be an issue.
How do these apply to cycling?
-Weather. Cycling in the cold and rain is not as bad as moto in the cold and rain howver cycling in the heat is much worse. Proper gear for cold and wet will make it suck less (it still sucks) but I would rather die than cycle in the heat.
-Effort. Cycling takes the same effort to get ready and more effort to ride (especially mentally due to the current road situation)
-Utility. Cycling and moto offer similar utility but there are less opportunities to strap boxes and bags to a random bicycle. You would probably need a large pannier or a cargo bike for most things. Hauling anything sizeable is, again, not realistic.
The final problem: travel time. Cycling takes like triple the time to get anywhere in my situation and experience.
Seems most of the complaints are related to comfort.
This was a thought experiment done for my own benefit for my specific situation that i decided to share. Obviously other situations would lend similar yet different results.
I'm aware travel time in large cities is highly dependent on traffic—traffic is not something that I personally deal with.
This comes from my experiences as a car driver, motorcyclist, and former cyclist.
Cycling takes longer bc the trip is not optimized for a bicycle.
I get what you're saying for shorter trips, but once you get into the 20km range that's an hour bike ride (unless you're really going for it) no matter how optimised
Yeah, that's where multimodal really makes sense. Like, take the bike to the train, take the train close, ride the bike the rest of the way. There are train cars marked specifically for bikes. Here in the Netherlands. I still haven't tried it, but I see people using them all the time.
So my commute is on the order of 20km, and that's quicker by bicycle than bus (on my specific bus route), and much cheaper than parking a car
As a bonus I can park my bike in the office basement parking, versus walking from the nearest bus stop, or parking a car and walking from however far away your budget allows
Should I check the cycling data I have of me traveling in a straight line down the main street of my town without stopping and compare it to the drive time for the same distance?
Go, measure the land dedicated to cars in a circle the distance to the end of main st. All that area is distance you wouldn't need to bike if cars didn't exist.
Not sure why i would do that. It's clearly not within the scope or the stated context of my comment.
Then you failed to understand my point.