Re:Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm
by fragmede on Thursday December 12, 2019 @02:27AM
(#21769970)
> Bikes can be fitted (for the most part) with different tires/wheels
Maybe there's a level of sensitive to being a bicyclist that I realize, but not that's something I've ever needed to consider mid-day at the office for my commute home. It's not like a hilly mountain bike trail suddenly grew out of the ground while I was on my lunch break that I unexpectedly need to cross in order to get home. (A planned detour the long way home is a different story.)
Personal transport evolves as technology changes. From the original iron and wood bone-shakers during the Victorian era followed by the later penny-farthings, to the chain and derailleur drive-trains that are popular today. Bicycles assume that the locomotive energy comes from a person, and are designed around that.
A useful amount of energy can now be stored in on-board batteries, with motors powerful enough to propel a person forwards, some are more powerful than a person can pedal. Some are even powerful enough for cars (requires a lot more batteries though). Electric motors are quieter and don't have exhaust like gasoline engines, either. (We also have self-balancing technology that lowers the learning curve for single-axle designs.)
Henry Ford, possibly apocryphally, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Shoving an electric motor on a bicycle's a faster horse. Maybe with some imagination we can do better than that.
Maybe there's a level of sensitive to being a bicyclist that I realize, but not that's something I've ever needed to consider mid-day at the office for my commute home. It's not like a hilly mountain bike trail suddenly grew out of the ground while I was on my lunch break that I unexpectedly need to cross in order to get home. (A planned detour the long way home is a different story.)
Personal transport evolves as technology changes. From the original iron and wood bone-shakers during the Victorian era followed by the later penny-farthings, to the chain and derailleur drive-trains that are popular today. Bicycles assume that the locomotive energy comes from a person, and are designed around that.
A useful amount of energy can now be stored in on-board batteries, with motors powerful enough to propel a person forwards, some are more powerful than a person can pedal. Some are even powerful enough for cars (requires a lot more batteries though). Electric motors are quieter and don't have exhaust like gasoline engines, either. (We also have self-balancing technology that lowers the learning curve for single-axle designs.)
Henry Ford, possibly apocryphally, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Shoving an electric motor on a bicycle's a faster horse. Maybe with some imagination we can do better than that.