I take your point(s) that the argument cant be "Everyone just use bikes and trains". That's obviously not practical but to be fair it's not what is being suggested either.

But in relation to the point you made about bad or cold weather being a factor for bikes being an impractical mode of transport. Please take a few minutes to consider the points and examples provided in this video (1).

TLDW: There is a town in Finland (Oulu) where cycling is a primary mode of transport (over a fifth of of all trips are by bike and 77% of people cycle occasionally) even in winter when it gets down to -20 Celsius.

Weather is always spouted as a reason for not investing in bike infrastructure which is really annoying because that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It's the lack of safe and adequate bike infrastructure that stops people from cycling. Anyway, I thought it was worth adding that point of nuance to the discussion.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

From the video: in the winter cycling capital of the world, 22% of all trips are taken by bicycle (all year round). This leaves 78% of trips not taken by bicycle. Honestly, 20% is what I'd expect as an upper limit for bike trips, in a place with great infrastructure and solid biking culture.

This is not an argument that (EV) cars can be replaced by trains+bikes. This is a solid argument, with which I agree, that bikes have a place in a transportation ecosystem and they should be encouraged. I was never disputing this - I own several bikes, and I actually prefer to rent uber electric scooters over uber cars.

We are in agreement so, in that bikes are an absolutely essential component of a more sustainable transport infrastructure. 20% by the way is a very large number in the context of the total number of trips taken by any given population and unlike you I do not believe this is an upper limit of what can be achieved with bikes but this is a separate discussion.

I just wanted to clarify a bugbear with me which is the "people don't use bikes because the weather is crappy". I know nuance is lost in such a few amount of words and that's probably not what you are saying in totality but i just wanted to highlight this point.

As an aside, I lived in a large city where amenities such as supermarkets were relatively far away. For a couple of years I got away with not owning a car and using a bike for all shopping needs. There are some examples of where a car would have been way more convenient but the fact of the matter is I made do without it. There are a large number of trips that I made with the bike that I wouldn't have done if I did have a car. Humans are creatures of convenience. There are some trips where a car (or something similar) is absolutely essential but for the vast majority it is not. In situations of necessity it is amazing what can be achieved. We are not living in an age of necessity with regards to means of transport but we really should be if the climate science is to be believed.

Between electric bikes and work from home during bad weather, I don't see why that upper limit couldn't go much higher in most large cities. The benefits outside energy use are also great. Increased safety, decreased noise and tire pollution, etc.

I am fine with snow, it is the rain that is the real fuckup ...

Haha, yeah. I guess things like Cargo bikes don't exist. Nor does just bringing your stuff onto the train and putting it into it's cargo holds. Or bringing your cargo bike onto the train.

Yup, private carriages are the only option for your occasional weekly or monthly tasks.

I guess its also just outright impossible to just allow for mixed zoning that'd allow for daily grocery shopping as well.

I've written in another comment that I'm very much in favor of cheap, small city EVs without all the safety features mandated in a modern car. I don't think we need a ton of iron to go shopping. But I also don't think it's practical to go all the way down to bikes - biggest velo vehicle might at most carry an adult, a child and groceries, while offering zero protection from the weather and very little safety, compared with the smallest and flimsiest hard-shell EV.

And I'm saying this while owning... let me count... 4 bikes, one of which is electric. And I absolutely love Uber electric scooters.

But no matter how I try to get creative, I just can't think of a way where you can have bike infrastructure covering everything. Too many pieces missing. Where would you park all those cargo bikes near train stations? And again, what do you do in winter with two kids?

Small city EVs on the other hand require no new infrastructure, zero major investments, are a fraction of the cost of a car, are non-polluting, and do 90% of what a normal car does. And when going on holiday - yes, you can take the train, which is what I'm actually doing btw.

All they need is a very small regulatory change. Allow no-highway cars with speed limits and none of the safety features of modern cars. Just do that.

I don’t believe anybody has ever suggested that bikes should cover everything.

People have pointed out that most people can use bikes for pretty much everything, but obviously there will be a need for the occasional car. Some people will need to use cars more, other less. But if you make the simple mindset change of first planning to bike there and then falling back to the car if you deem it infeasible, we’re already most of the way.

Most of the safety concerns for bikes disappear as soon as a certain amount of bikers are in the streets and the infrastructure isn’t actively hostile to them.

> Most of the safety concerns for bikes disappear as soon as a certain amount of bikers are in the streets and the infrastructure isn’t actively hostile to them.

Even in the Netherlands, bicycles was the most dangerous mode of transportation in 2021, with 207 fatalities. Cars came in second with 175 deaths.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/523310/netherlands-numbe...

This is a really good point. If we start adding bicycles to the US, more people will die. And we will need to have a greater percent of bicyclists than the Netherlands before the death rate starts to drop off. Having safe bicycle routes is a long way off.

Base rate and attribution fallacies.

When a car kills a cyclist it's not the bicycle being dangerous, and you can't compare numbers directly without normalizing by some metric (hours, km, trips). Although in the latter fallacy I believe correcting it will make bikes look worse.

I agree.

Also keep in mind people of all ages are allowed to ride bikes, which is luckily not the case for cars. This source does say elderly and children are more likely to be part of cycling accidents (not necessarily fatal) https://www.veiligheid.nl/kennisaanbod/infographic/infograph...

Also driving under influence is (hopefully) much more prevalent in case of cyclists.

Hence, car drivers switching their transportation mode to bikes don't have the same risks as the entire cycling population.

The bicyclists were quite likely killed by car drivers.

Versus if everyone had cars and perhaps more people would die in total.

And more people die in car accidents each year than in wars. You need to compare against the number of trips made and I suspect they are substantially greater for bicycles.

No way “most” people can use bikes for pretty much everything.

I get what you are advocating for. I have had several periods in my life where I used a bike as my primary form of transportation. But it only works well in a pretty narrow set of circumstances.

The point is that within the boundaries of city life, it can absolutely work for most trips, provided the infrastructure is not completely car-centred.

Within the bounds of a childless, healthy, individual, who can work remote, living in a city that is well designed for bikes. Unfortunately this is a nearly negligible percentage of the existing population/infrastructure. There are many many decades of change, including universal rent control, required for the rest of us.

It's ironic that you ask where to park cargo bike while at the same time proposing EVs. Where do they park? Where do they drive? We are occupying massive amounts of land for car infrastructure completely covering it in concrete and thus contributing to urban heating. At the same time we have study upon study that shows that people are happier in places where they can walk/bike instead of driving.

Small EVs are the type of cars that are needed the least. They are a car for those cases where you essentially did not need a car.

> At the same time we have study upon study that shows that people are happier in places where they can walk/bike instead of driving.

People prefer living in places they can dress in t-shirts and shorts. But trying to dress in a t-shirt in the snow won't make you happy.

It's true that all else being equal, a walkable city is the best. But we don't have that, and we're not likely to have it soon. All we can do is work on a solution for today and tomorrow. And I really don't see OP's original point of trying to skip EVs.

Because vast amounts of public money has been spent and continues to be spent on cars that could save lives and prevent massive ecological harms were it spent on adequate transport technologies.

Tesla alone has received enough in subsidies from california to build a decent transit system for about a quarter of its population.

The infrastructure is not a problem at all. Just use the one you have. If it can serve traffic demand using cars, it can serve ten times the same traffic demand using bikes (slightly less when using cargo bikes). Stop the segregation fantasy where drivers are allowed to get away with pretending that all roads default to limited access. They don't. Roads where first built for walking, then for walking and various form of animal transportation, then for walking, animal and cycling. When cars entered the picture, all the other forms of road use technically did not go away, outside of the small set of limited access roads that came up a few decades later.

Yes that makes sense. Steam engines had to be larger to be more efficient so the best size for them was a locomotive.

Internal combustion engines are sized at a point where they are profitable and efficient.

Electric motors allow us to make terribly small cars, and their small batteries will mean even more efficiency improvements. Combined with self driving abilities and we no longer need to own our own car…just hop on the city infrastructure and get driven to your destination.

In fact if we make it small and light enough you could suspend the car from a metal rail and now have an extra lane up in the roadway above the regular traffic. And then you can add another metal rail layer…and another. And you no longer need intersections because the rails can dip down or up to cross each other. So the biggest source of traffic latency (stoplights) and bandwidth limitations (not enough road surface area) will be eliminated.

Eventually we may build entire city blocks pre-fabricated with vertical and horizontal elevators inside, so you no longer need your own vehicle to navigate. Heating costs will be proportional to the external surface area and not to the volume enclosed by the building.

Our e-trike takes 2 kids, groceries, has full weather protection and brings joy to rider, occupants and many around. Protected bike lanes add the safety, but let's make no mistake, all the safety issues arise from motor vehicles.

As you allude to, this is a massive zoning issue (especially in the US). The infrastructure required to move people from their houses to places of work and shopping is insane, given where all those houses and places of work and businesses are. To make trains viable for everyone, you have to rework the entire built environment to move all of those places into different locations so that people can get from one place to another efficiently.

I live in a small/midsize city with relatively ok public transit for its size and the only places I ever take it is to downtown or the airport - places where parking logistics are terrible and it's easy to get to on public transport. Anywhere else (like going to the store or work) and getting there takes hours without a car. Living in areas that have better connections or better walkability triples my housing cost, so I own a car and drive. Cities need to be significantly more dense for more trains to make sense, but that density means clearing out all of the less dense buildings and building new. That's extremely costly and doesn't actually help the environment because of the massive amount of carbon needed to fix that everywhere.

This is the argument being made again and again, but if we look at the realities the average number of occupants was 1.6 in England [1] and is likely similar for other countries. Also have a look at cycling commutes in Finland on YouTube, lots of people. The argument that we can't change how we move is just an argument about not wanting change. I bet if we actually make cars cover all the direct and indirect costs (for both ICE and EV) instead of massively subsidising car travel, people would quickly change. Why do we need to subsidise the choice of a part of society to not want to change?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/314719/average-car-and-v...

> What you're missing is that real humans occasionally need to move a mattress. Or just bring home groceries once a week.

People without cars also have to do that. Groceries can be walked home (i know because i do it) and they also fit on busses. Mattresses are a rare thing and you can rent a taxi.

Also, there was a recent episode by the YT channel "Not Just Bikes" that really opened my mind to the possibility of 80% of these situations being comfortable accommodated by cargo bikes. They're really amazing and a bike-centric future in cities is actually pretty realistic.

As someone who bikes everywhere, I'd say 80% of these situations don't even need a cargo bike. The cargo bike covers maybe another 15%, and the rest you can deal with by renting a van once or twice a year.

I agree with this - unless you have a single item that almost fills the cargo bucket, panniers are fine. Most cargo bikes I've seen don't have any more carrying capacity than a regular one laden with panniers. It's like truck vs. estate or something - sure there's some added convenience, and it's easier for single big things, but is it worth the specialised vehicle if you have/otherwise need (people capacity, maneuverability, whatever) the other one anyway?

Cargo bikes are far too expensive for this to work.

That is maybe the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard when comparing cargo bikes to cars.

Cargo bikes cost between $2k and $5k, can be easily stolen, take as much space to park as a car, and carries one person.

Cars carry 5 people and can cost between $5k and $10k.

So cargo bikes are really no match.

You're comparing brand new cargo bikes to used cars. The real comparision would be a new cargo bike (2-5k) vs a new car (>40k).

You're making the assumption that the cargo bike seats only one person, when a parent could easily seat two children on a cargo bike.

You're making the assumption that everyone would be using the cargo bike as their primary day-to-day transportation, when the cargo bike is mostly useful for either transporting young children, or when transporting cargo. At other times a more reasonable choice would be to use a regular bicycle.

You're making the assumption that cargo bikes take up as much space as cars which is just downright false.

New cars don't cost $40k in the real world.

Also, there is close to no second hand cargo bike volume so it is absolutely a fair comparison.

If I want to buy a vehicle I don't care if second hand cargo bikes are available or not. I know that second hand cars so exist though.

It is much better to view cars as a yearly cost, or a per mile cost.

Most people don't pay $40k up front, instead they pay $4k to $10k per year for a new car.

So let us assume 2 adults and 3 kids.

$5k for a _very nice_ cargo bike capable of transporting 1-2 kids too young to cycle on their own.

$4k for _nice_ bikes for each adult. ($2k x 2)

$3k for _good_ bikes for each kid as they grow out of the cargo bike. ($1k x 3)

$1k a year on maintenance for the bikes if you don't want to do it yourself.

$1k for locks and a crash course on how to lock your bicycles to stuff making it too much of a pain to steal.

That's $15k, or the cost of your lower end for a car for 3 years.

So between year 3 and 4 you can start either just replacing the bicycles with new nice ones because you like brand new, get yourself even more expensive electrified bikes, or spend it on other stuff.

And all the while here you could also settle for just "decent" bicycles which cost way less.

What kind of math is that?

That car will last you 10 years something you can hardly say about the cargo bikes.

You don't need a new car every year.

Are you seriously comparing a $5k car to a brand new, high quality cargo bicycle?

The equivalent cargo bike to a $5k car is below $500 and kids bicycles are below $100.

Edit: As for why I calculated like that? It is quite normal for a car to cost $5k per year. You have insurance, maintenance, repairs, taxes, financing, depreciation and fuel to pay for.

If you _only_ spend $5k on a car you're either going to skimp on a lot of those costs or pay it in maintenance, repair, and fuel... or you should compare it to the same tier of bicycles. Used bicycles you fix up yourself.

You think a 5k car is going to last you 10 years?

> take as much space to park as a car

They really don't.

I'm not sure why you need 5 people for the things listed above, like carrying groceries?

> can cost between $5k and $10k.

And how much per year in insurance/tax/maintenance?

Most cargo bikes cost quite a bit less than a car though.

Not if you account the price per capita.

I can't even piece together how this could be true.

A family probably only needs one cargo bike. An brand new _expensive_ cargo bike costs around the same as the yearly cost of a car.

If you think your car costs less, calculate your TCO.

And the other 3 members of the family are walking?

For what a single car costs in taxes, insurance, fuel, and maintenance for a year your could get 5 used bicycles and a nice cargo bike trailer off amazon.

Then why do people buy cars? You can also manage without running water, people did it for most of human existence, but it doesn't mean it's what we want to do. Money talks - when they afford it, a supermajority of people prefer to own a vehicle. And we're on the cusp of making it non-polluting, cheap and sustainable. Let's not blow it because "trains are marginally more energy efficient".

> And we're on the cusp of making it non-polluting, cheap and sustainable

Electric cars? They're not really any of these things. They're just not quite as bad as gas vehicles.

I kinda hate this kind of semantics. Paper cups are polluting, using this definition. Literally everything in human civilization is polluting.

I practical terms, when using words to actually mean something as opposed to bash opponents over the head with them, EVs take away something which is burning gas exactly in the places with the most population density and replaces them with something which is not burning oil in the places with the most population density. What's left in terms of local pollution? Break pads? Still less than gas vehicles, due to regenerative breaking. Microparticles from tires? Yeah, that's about it.

If you also want to count pollution from manufacture and energy generation, then you kinda have to also count pretty much every activity humans engage in, including hiking in the woods because your backpack is manufactured somewhere, using energy.

The effects of car pollution for human health are 99% burning fuel. EVs take this away. I think it's fair to call them non-polluting, and not play word games with this.

Local air pollution of newish cars is primarily from tyres and brakes, as is the effect of vehicles on waterways. What is from burning is mostly trucks (which are better replaced with trains for about 70% of use cases in a sanely designed area). An EV with decent range will also take until well after it is bricked by a remote software update to break even with keeping a small capacity hatchback running.

Producing an EV and building and maintaining car infrastructure uses massive amounts of fossil fuels and entails horrifically destructive mining of large quantities of rare elements such as cobalt and niobium.

All for the end result of wasting vast amounts of time, space, and tax money in any urban area to force a suburban lifestyle that is even more destructive, economically unsustainable, and wasteful.

EVs are much more efficient than ICE.

If you want to disincentivise congestion, or car accidents, or road wear, or suburban sprawl fine.

But don't just spout climate change denier talking points about EVs.

EV busses are a hot trend right now, they make public transport cheaper, safer and greener.

Do you really want people to believe that they are environmentally worse than the ICE vehicles they are replacing? What about urban delivery trucks going EV? How does spreading that fiction help?

Battery busses are much worse than trolley busses or rail. They're also significantly more expensive than all other options.

Their only upside is nimbys might let you have a transit system if you suggest them.

Are there any studies to back that claim the EV busses make public transport safer?

Yes, it's mostly air pollution from the engine and braking that is reduced:

https://www.transportenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2021...

Oh, so the busses are not safer in terms of collisions or pedestrian fatalities.

How do you account for dangers of battery production and disposal? Are injured EMTs and mechanics, due to high voltages, also considered? How do you account for pollution of installing upgraded transformers and lines to the bus depot for charging batteries?

To be fair, a sanely designed bus system (ie. RBT or busses that aren't useless because they're stuck behind a car) is just is safe as light rail...but then you can just build light rail because it's cheaper.

I usually expect the people doing Lifecycle Cost Analysis to think of these things and quantify them.

Have they all missed these deaths that you've uncovered? Enough death and destruction to overwhelm the well studied impacts of air pollution?

I bought my first vehicule at 32, when I moved to the US.

Prior to that I was relying on public transportation, renting something for vacation, and coordinating with others.

In the US that was not sustainable.

The US is absolutely massive - and in some places, this is absolutely not true and you can use public transport for everything AND it's better than driving. And in other places, the nearest public transport is hours away (by car!!).

Yeah, we have cities too.

It’s just that there is trains between them. Or buses that are not greyhound. By « we » I mean Europe. It’s small, but large enough.

And yeah, density, yadada …

It’s fine. Différents place, different organizations. You guys also have a massive army so you will end up being right.

There are also a whole lot of places places in the US that no one would call a city or even a town. And a whole awful lot of people live in those places! Rural in the US often means living an hour or more drive from the nearest place with a real grocery store.

That’s totally doable in a big city such as NYC. Been in here for 20 years and never owned a car. I do drive occasionally and rent a car for a few days to a week. Always works out for me and my non glamorous lifestyle.

Owning a car gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility but you either live in a place that requires a car every day, or one where you need it less.

If your neighborhood is well planned, with good access to public transportation, groceries, daycare, etc. then renting a car becomes viable for the cases bikes don't cover.

Trains, trams, buses and bicycles don't need to cover every case.

And I could totally do all those things just need to work a couple hours less a day, have more reliable child care and maybe fix the deranged hobo problem so my grocery and body make it home safely after most trips

> real humans occasionally need to move a mattress

And real humans can occasionally rent a car. Maybe it is not worth holding thousands of dollars' worth of rusting metal for that occasional odd job.

As for snow and ice, Oulu, Finland is an example of how infrastructure defines the way people live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

That still doesn't exactly solve the "30% of seniors thing", though.

And quite a few of them have will have unplanned trips to do from very sparsely distributed locations (also known as "houses in the countryside") to other very sparsely distributed locations (aka "their doctor" or "their family").

Also, car loan is perfectly suitable for planned, long distance trips with lots of cargo, which unfortunately happen at the same time for everyone (they're also known as "vacations"). I would not want to be Hertz on the 15th of August in a world without personal cars - unless you ban people from traveling cross country to see their family twice a year, which might be required.

I used to bet on "small scale on demand public transportation", but it requires either "communities paying drivers" or "engineers solving self-driving in rural roads", none of which is happening anytime soon.

In the meantime, though, we have to invest in trains, bike lanes, and downsize cars at the same time as electrifying them.

Mobility devices are great for bike lanes. What's funny about this comparison is that you're ignoring children, who absolutely cannot drive.

Well, they're part of the "cargo" during holidays, I suppose ;) ?

But yes, of course children need a different kind of transportation.

Though, arguably, it's easier to pedal with your toddler on your back than with your grandma !

I'm curious, is "30% of seniors thing" solved by having a car in the US? Here in Japan, driving by senior is getting more problematic. Senior people live in rural are hard to give up having cars because public transport is getting poor and rural town have shrunk because of car society. Older people tend to cause car accident and anyway every people finally can't drive, so gov want them to release their license earlier.

Is "realising licences for old people" a thing in Japan ? I can't event imagine someone arguing for that in France. (Old people are practically the only ones to vote in substantial numbers.)

What's the typical age limit ?

There are no hard age limit but over 75yo needs cognitive test when renewing license. IMO "driving by old people isn't the best way for transport" is general consensus now, even for most old people. But many people still want driving to live because there are very few alternative, and rural farmers are tend to old. Hate for old dangerous arrogance driver is increased by an notorious deadly accident in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higashi-Ikebukuro_runaway_car_...

The point was precisely that all of these odd jobs are individually occasional but collectively common. You only need to move a mattress once every few years, but you also take camping trips a few times a year, you have vet appointments several times per year, you want to take your dog to a more remote park a couple times a month, you want to take your kids (and all of the things they require) to visit their relatives out of state a few times a year (plus other road trips), you have to transport large furniture or shopping items a dozen times per year, etc.

Moreover, it’s also just convenient to be able to get across town in half the time that you can by public transit.

Isn't that cultural? We don't even think about getting such things delivered. Why not? Because it's expensive? More expensive than owning a $20,000 vehicle?

That's a kind of 'frictionless cow' blind spot as well. If personal ICE and electric cars disappeared from existence tomorrow, we'd adapt.

What you're missing is that many of the problems you're describing are due to building cities around cars. You can get the mattress delivered (and even if you don't, you usually can't fit a mattress in most vehicles and probably need to rent one). You go to the store more frequently, and buy fewer things, at a grocery store that's less than 5 minutes way by foot. People can and do transport their children by bike. Walkable cities with public transportation are considerably easier for seniors, because many of them can no longer drive. You're also leaving out folks with disabilities, for which walkable cities with good public transportation are life changing.

You're also conveniently leaving out cost. Transportation costs in walkable cities with good public transportation is considerably cheaper. Cars, gas, insurance, maintenance, parking, etc. is extremely expensive. My current transportation costs are roughly $80 a month. When I had a car, they were roughly $800 a month (with averaged maintenance costs included).

(Most) Folks aren't saying that cars shouldn't exist, just that in cities, they should not be what we design for, because their convenience for some people results in the inconvenience of most people.

EVs should replace ICE cars, but we should restrict how cars can be brought in the city, and we should limit where and how they park (especially by eliminating free parking). The costs related to this should be progressive, based on income.

I suggest you watch this video[1] by the awesome channel "Not Just Bikes". Bakfiets are a dutch cargo bike you can literally use for 99% of all your errands. People in a city do not need personal cars. And even Cargo bikes are only useful for 10-20% of occasions, depending on if you have big shopping tours or kids. For the 1 or 2 occasions a year where a car is needed, car sharing is the way to go.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA

"We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

It's funny you mention the Netherlands as your proof for your little list of gotchas. The Netherlands handles all your little gotchas fine, and so do more northern countries like Sweden.

The problem is the convenience of a car makes it not worth just putting on a layer of clothing for the weather. Use a car if you're going to travel 100km, but don't be like the rest of the people in my Montana town and use a car to go pick up the groceries 3 miles away just because it's 42 degrees and you're cold.

See by saying you need a car for these extremes you are actually just making excuses to use a car all the time.

>The Netherlands handles all your little gotchas fine, and so do more northern countries like Sweden.

Most people in the Netherlands who can afford it still have a car though. Yes i do a lot by bicycle but a car is far superior for many errands and trips.

No one said the car was inferior for those trips. It's unnecessary and far more damaging.

But at least in my experience (and I suspect in others' as well), those shorts trips make up a miniscule percentage of overall miles (and therefore emissions). It's commuting and road trips that account for 90% of my mileage

Well you should definitely be commuting by bike or public transportation. Don't know why you would think that wasn't in the cards.

Road trips? Why are you taking them in a personal vehicle? Because there isn't competent public transportation.

I'm against car ownership. Oh you can't get anywhere without a car? Maybe build another lane to a place where I care.

There's a huge infrastructure and zoning problem that incentivizes some jobs to be in transit-friendly places (professional services - so they have easy access to their customers) and others to specifically not be in transit-friendly places (manufacturers - so they have easy highway access for shipping). If you're living with someone in the other category of work, at least one of you is necessarily living in a location that requires commuting where I am.

I have the short end of that equation, so I'm commuting 20 minutes by car (vs. nearly 2 hours by bike or by bus). It just doesn't make sense to have transit go regularly enough or direct enough to where I'm commuting to (one rider buses are worse than cars!!).

You've given up then. You've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas. Go have "fun" in your 20 minute commutes.

I could find a new partner? Or get a new job/career?

When your partner dies from participating in one of the most dangerous activities Americans do on a daily basis? Yeah, that would suck.

It's hard to change you life to avoid such a convenience, but it's possible if you try.

So...I should try more by doing what, exactly?

Assuming I'm an average driver, and across a 30-year career, that commute is increasing my changes of dying something like 0.3%, given the number of miles I'm driving (that's a whole lot higher than I expected!) by car vs. 0.03% by bus. But...by bus, I've spent an additional 3% of my entire life (assuming I live 100 years = 876,000 hours) commuting, so the balance of that equation shifts pretty far in favor of car commuting (and I'll switch to electric at some point soon once EVs are purchasable without a 6-12 month wait...).

I will grant you that riding a bike 4 hours per day would probably improve my lifespan more than that 4 hours (due to improved fitness), though will likely also cost me my relationship because all I'll be doing is working and commuting to work. But this would enable me to move closer to work! Win/win!

>So...I should try more

Yes. You're replying to the meme comment: "We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." and you're literally saying you're out of ideas.

>by doing what, exactly?

You've already mentioned you have a 30 minute commute. What could you do to reduce that? Maybe your SO has better options for public transportation to their work than you do and you could move to take advantage of that while giving you a commute close enough to bike. You could car pool. You could work with your local government to increase public transit options. Get an E-bike and take that to the faster public transportation routes instead of waiting 2 hours on the bus. You could just take the bus.

There's a 20 mile differential between my SO's work and mine. And this is one of the closer options work-wise for me. So...either we both commute by car or I do.

My bus option is a single transfer. But it still takes 2 hours. Bike to the transfer takes the same amount of time as taking the bus. E-bike 20 miles is a possibility, though we're probably talking higher chances of death that way than a car. Biking by human power would probably be lower chance of death (due to lower speed and better cardiovascular health).

Working with the local government generally doesn't work...especially for something like this where it's adding a bus route for one (which is worse than a single occupant vehicle). I'm like the definition of a case where single occupant EVs make sense...

Please keep trying to do nothing.

Please keep giving me zero ideas while judging me for my decisions

The article put up a simplified view in order to reduce the topic down to a single number of energy in vs energy out. It is a technical definition of energy efficiency, but without all that messy context that define transportation.

If we were to discussion energy in transportation the context is much richer and complex. The easiest way to see this is in weight. A EV car in general is much heavier than ICE cars, sometimes by a factor of 3x, which happens to cancel out the energy efficiency of the EV. We also have to consider reduce, reuse, repair and recycle aspect. EV car is generally more electronica complex and (according to what I have read), have worse reuse and repair aspect than ICE cars. EV might win on the recycle aspect, and train/bicycles obvious win on the reduce aspect.

We also have to consider drive distance. The average trip for a car (using statistics form my country) is 5km, which most of those being commute to and from work, with a majority within biking distance. Of course, if people need a car to transport kids, participate in hobbies, regularly transporting large items, then they might simply use that same tool to travel to and from work as a convenience. Owning a car enables unnecessary travel with car as well as enabling the necessary travel.

And finally we need to consider how stations for stores, buses and trains are designed. Train stations are not designed for a person to haul a toddler, an infant and 3 bags of groceries. Subways however are rather much designed to make transporting a toddler and a single bag of groceries a fairly acceptable experience, and since subway stations generally has good coverage, people don't need to have 3 bags of groceries. Supermarkets that focus on subway users tend to be located in the subway stations, while supermarkets that focus on car users that travel a few miles from the store tend to have large parking lots and be located at the outer edges of cities near big highways.

> A EV car in general is much heavier than ICE cars, sometimes by a factor of 3x, which happens to cancel out the energy efficiency of the EV.

This isn't true.

The Model 3 has around half a ton worth of battery and weights around 2 tons. the GMC Hummer EV weights over 9,000 pounds, around 4.5 tons, which is roughly three times the weight of a Honda Civic. The hummer has around 1.4 tons in just battery (https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/business/electric-vehicles-we...)

The law in my country has a combined maximum weight limit (car + trailer) as part of their driving license, which has cause a bit of a problem with EVs. The extra weight from battery mean that there isn't much room to drive the car with a trailer, a problem which political is starting to gain some traction. The argument being put forth is that people are forced to use ICE car to pull things like boat trailer just because the law was designed for more lighter ICE cars.

If there is no additional weight with EVs then the law doesn't need to change. Are you saying that the people arguing that EV is being hindered are wrong?

Just as a small hint about that. EU has recently change their rules. The previous allowed max was 3.5 tons, but electric and gas powered cars has been given an exception to increase the max to 4.25 tons in acknowledgement that those cars tend to be heavier, and that the previous limit restricted the use of lower emission transportation. Source: Revision of the Directive on Driving Licences.

Of course politicians could be wrong and there is nothing to make it physical impossible to build a light weight EV. Restricting weight reduces road maintenance and decreases the breaking distance and if there is no need for increasing the maximum then everyone is better off with the old maximum.

> What you're missing is that real humans occasionally need to move a mattress.

The corollary is that real human civilizations have to move goods over roads with ICE trucks for the foreseeable future unless batteries approach the energy density of diesel.

Trucks are already moving to electric.

It not going to happen overnight, and currently bans on new sales only are scheduled for like 2040, but they're likely to be brought forward as people get more confortable with the idea.

Starting with last mile delivery in urban areas, trucks are going electric today. And it's not initially about energy density, it's about the poisons and pollution they emit.

I'd claim it's all about economics. There are small trucks commercially available for the first time now that can move the volume of packages required. And they're cheaper to operate than ICE trucks, so companies are obviously and quickly switching. The marketing points are frosting on the equation!

Semi trucks will move 'forward' to electric when the technology becomes available.

So far it's not, the state of the art prototypes can not do the required job.

Maybe it will be something like fuel cells instead, who knows.

As I said, it's already happening.

https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/news-stories/press-release...

Green Hydrogen will be part of the answer in the next 5 years or so, but it's not a blocker right now. There's plenty of semi trucks that have tasks that are within the current battery limits.

Green hydrogen is not green besides washing.

Green Hydrogen is going to be a big part of fixing the mess made by fossil fuels.

Blue Hydrogen and small Fuel Cell hybrids got pushed harder than they should have been by some oil and gas people, which left a bad taste in many people's mouths but, as long as it's not being used for something that you could do with mains electricity or batteries instead, Green Hydrogen is part of the solution. We need it for making chemicals and fertilizer and as an analog to pumped hydro storage.

A view on this from a anti-oil and gas angle is here:

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/09/01/cleantech-talk-chemical...

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/09/03/cleantech-talk-chemical...

Hydrogen cars, no. Hydrogen shipping, maybe. Hydrogen for chemical feedstocks, yes.

Green hydrogen right now is green washing. Clean hydrogen production is easy to do, but is more expensive than dirty hydrogen production.

When that equation changes (which it will do eventually), clean hydrogen production will win out and at that time, we'll need infrastructure to support it. The question is just: when will it happen?

Green Hydrogen became cheaper than dirty hydrogen in the US as of the recent Inflation Reduction Act:

> The cheapest cost of production for grey hydrogen in the world today comes in at a monthly average price of $1.71/kg in the US Midwest, according to Platts, with green hydrogen in the US Northwest coming in at $3.73/kg. Subtract the $3/kg via the tax credit, and that renewable H2 would cost a developer $0.73/kg to produce.

Good point - Didn't realize IRA addressed that! Though technically it hasn't been signed into law yet and I assume it doesn't go into effect immediately?

That’s a very bold claim with no support whatsoever.

Check how it is produced.

"Electrolysis from renewable energy" isn't an obvious boogeyman. That's essentially the definition of green hydrogen--maybe you're arguing that someone is selling counterfeit green hydrogen, but that's not an indictment of green hydrogen. In any case, would it kill you to spend a couple sentences explaining what you mean rather than trying to be all mysterious and making us guess?

Or in case of Singapore, your heat wave is our most days in 80% humidity. And on the days it isnt hot, it's probably pouring rain... you know 10 seconds of it is indistinguishable from jumping into a swimming pool rain.

When I move heavy stuff I don't use my car, I rent a truck, which was made for moving heavy stuff. I also don't see a reason to carry toddlers to grocery shops.

You take toddlers with you because leaving them unsupervised is illegal. Whether you’re driving your own car or renting a truck doesn’t matter—rail doesn’t suffice in either case.

Yes, not only cold weather is a culprit, but also hot. I can't even imagine a cyclist riding from one part of Dubai to another. It is dangerous.

bikes can carry and tow trailers to help with some of that. Also...groceries can be carried on the bars if a few bags

>You're correct in the sense that trains and bicycles are, true, more energy efficient. I'm not even looking for numbers here, because it's irrelevant.

On the contrary, it's highly relevant in a world where we have a very pressing energy issue.

>What you're missing is that real humans occasionally need to move a mattress.

Cargo-bikes can cover many of the transportation use-cases the average person has, and the rest can be covered by utilizing shared transportation vehicles. No private vehicle ownership is necessary here, and private vehicle ownership and its use as the primary mode of transportation is >80% of the problem.

>Or just bring home groceries once a week.

Cargo-bikes, closer shops, public transportation, grocery delivery and/or higher frequency of shopping solves this

>Or have kids.

Cargo-bikes, public transportation solves this

>Or that a full quarter of the population are seniors.

Bicycles, public transportation solves this isse. Additionally, car infrastructure is more exclusionary to seniors than the alternatives - same with children, who are not allowed to operate a car. Not to mention people with disabilities. All more discriminated against by car infrastructure than the alternatives.

>Or that quite a few people live in places with hard winters. You think it's a coincidence that Netherlands is the country of bicycle riders? Gulfstream :) They hardly have any snow or ice - just walk around in the street there, and it'll hit you that most buildings have windows that take up half the wall. Cold is just not a concern there, the way it would be in a lot of other places.

Bicycle rates are not statistically correlated with neither local climate, nor topology for that matter. Infrastructure is more or less the sole deciding factor.

>If you compare an EV with a train on an energy efficiency PoV, yes, the train may be twice as efficient (or less?). But an EV covers 80% of energy requirements (it's CLEAN, cheaper than gas, less carbon generating, less likely to subsidize oil-based dictatorships), while also not having you haul a toddler, an infant and 3 bags of groceries through snow from the train station half a mile away.

Essentially all of these problems can be solved satisfactorily with alternatives. Note that clean is also relative - the alternatives are very significantly cleaner than car-oriented transportation.

And we have barely even touched the subjects of transportation mode lethality nor economic discrimination, which are hugely significant - cars kill more than any other mode of transportation, and is more expensive both on the individual and societal level, making them a huge burden for poor people.

You're doing a lot of hand waving which basically boils down to equating "it can solve the problem in some scenarios" with "it's the optimal choice".

Can you use a cargo bike to do groceries? Sure. Can you rent a car to carry a mattress? yes. Can you carry two children on a bicycle? Ehh, ok, let's pretend you can, or you just take the bus.

But this is ignoring the fact that in the past hundred years, people have repeatedly chosen to own a car. Yes, including in places with good public transport. And surprising enough, even when the cost of a car + maintenance + repairs + financing + gas is a lot higher than just taking the bus, not to mention the comparatively trivial price of a bike. The very fact that you just don't see that many cargo bikes anywhere, but see cars everywhere is a pretty strong hint. That's the default hypothesis - that cars actually do bring value in people's lives. All you're offering to counter this is a list of "in specific contexts, bike may solve the same problem in shittier ways". I'm sorry, but I just don't see how freezing your ass off in winter on a bike is even remotely acceptable.

In my youth I actually tried this. Spent a winter with a motorcycle, and another winter with a bike. Both were complete and utter failures. I actually burned a set of gloves when I left them on the engine to get warm. And biking on the snow and ice... ugh. The bruises.

Plus small practical things. A cargo bike or a bike with a trailer basically take just as much parking space as a small car. And are a hellof a lot easier to steal.

Cars may kill more people than bikes, but you can't snap your fingers Thanos-style and have all cars replaced with bikes. Dramatically increasing the number of bikes in the street means mixing bikes with cars, which means a lot more dead people. I know it's the car's fault, but such is life, the universe is not fair. Still means more dead people.

> Bicycle rates are not statistically correlated with neither local climate, nor topology for that matter. Infrastructure is more or less the sole deciding factor.

I call bullshit. Smelly, stinky bullshit. In the same city, with the same infrastructure, I see with my own eyes bikes and electric scooters disappearing in winter and reappearing in spring. That'd be just impossible if climate had no bearing and only infrastructure mattered.

> In the same city, with the same infrastructure, I see with my own eyes bikes and electric scooters disappearing in winter and reappearing in spring. That'd be just impossible if climate had no bearing and only infrastructure mattered.

They aren't saying weather doesn't matter. Just that people use weather as an excuse for bad infrastructure which matters much more, and is easier to change.

Also, people may not be aware that e-bike cargo van deliveries are already a thing in urban areas. Being enclosed from the rain is not a unique advantage of cars and removing cars from urban areas as much as possible is a necessary first step.

You might say, well that's just a small electric car and technically you'd be correct. A small, light, electric "car" that can intermix with pedestrians and cycles and wheelchairs and mobility scooters.

They're literally saying weather doesn't matter. I mean, you can hardly be more clear than "Infrastructure is more or less the sole deciding factor."

I'm sorry for appearing confrontational, but the original comment was pretty much "we should ignore EVs and just skip to trains+bikes because they're better". I'm not disputing that bikes are ok, and as it happens I own several and love riding scooters. But taking "bikes are ok" and using it as a stick with which to hit EVs has just one result: later adoption of EVs, more people dying early because pollution, more carbon in the air.

I didn't say that we need to chose just one solution. OP did, quite clearly. And then followed up with arguments which are rather weak, to which I'm responding a bit less politely than I otherwise would.

You're a lot more polite than I would be :-)