Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus

Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by cipritom on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:09PM (#23193807)

One point people overlook is that cars are an existing item that many people already posess. A fast change to biking can put a high demand on their production, which is also based on steel or, even worse, carbon fiber. And then in 6 months many people are going to trash or forget about the bike, essentially just causing a temporary production spike with lasting effects on the environment.

I think more accent should be put on NMF bikes, Natural Material Frame, like those made of bamboo [0] or wood. These materials absorb CO2 from the air to grow, unlike steel or carbon which produces it.

[0] https://diverahub.com/

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by C1sc0cat on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:18PM (#23193909)

And these sorts of articles forget that

1 A lot of us cant or prefer not to live in the heart of the city

2 Most offices are not built with showers and secure bike parking - for longer distance commuters last time I worked in central London I wanted to use a Brompton but boss said no I cat store it in the office so that was that.

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by dionidium on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:43PM (#23194996)

It's kind of silly to protest the feasibility of cycling because it requires a certain kind of infrastructure given the truly enormous costs we've endured to create -- and recreate in the case of cities that predate the automobile -- cities that accomodate the automobile. That all looks baked-in and natural to you, because it's always been that way, but make no mistake, it's the largest engineering project ever undertaken by mankind.

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by nradov on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:16PM (#23193885)

The bicycle supply chain was heavily impacted by coronavirus lockdowns in Asia. It will take a few months to resolve current shortages.

https://triathlontaren.com/diaanour/

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by hanniabu on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:18PM (#23193914)

I heard about this carbon fiber issue. Is there really no way to recycle/upcycle carbon fiber?

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by throwawaysea on Friday May 15, 2020 @12:32PM (#23194089)

The problem is these materials are typically composite materials that have not just the 'raw' carbon fiber bits, but also various resins and other binding materials. We actually have the same problem of not being able to recycle fiberglass already. The early wind turbines which are now at end of life are actually just being buried (landfilled) rather than recycled (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51325101). There is potential to overcome this (https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/post/perhaps-were-getti...), and techniques for recycling other composite materials like SMC (https://www.proboat.com/2016/09/recycling-dead-boats/) could be adopted perhaps. But in the end it'll come down to the economics of it, and we really need to move to a world where repair and reuse is easier, rather than expecting a black box recycling process to solve our problems.

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Re:Cycling to Redefine Urban Mobility in the Era of Coronavirus by JAlexoid on Friday May 15, 2020 @01:44PM (#23195003)

Practically - we don't need to recycle long lasting products immediately(2+ decades).

Take a GF boat or a CF* bike - both of them have a lifetime of at least 10 years. Storing them in a concentrated manner, will take a very small amount of space(we overestimate our landfill needs) and would make recycling or dismantling much cheaper when the tech comes in.

(*CF bikes last longer than alu alloy frames, btw)

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