> Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell.

It's raining half the time here in the Netherlands. You can stand under a convenient overhang in the banking district of Amsterdam at 8am and watch the bankers pour into the underground bike parking lots. They use cheap and readily available outerwear that covers their clothes - including shoes - and keeps them dry. Suits, skirts, high heels, whatever.

No! It is impossible, simple untrue and cars are the only solution. /s

If you come up with more evidence, I’ll move the straw goal post.

And thus contributing to the PSAF/forever chemical problem.

It's not that hard to do. I ride in the rain and fog here in SF (the city under discussion), but you need dry pants. The real thing is that this is not an AV vs. ebike thing. Almost all people who ride bikes/ebikes here are pro-AV. It's mostly people not from SF and people who don't ride who are anti-AV.

AVs are so much safer and predictable than human drivers.

I'd be cautious, considering Teslas in "self driving" have a nasty habit of running over single track vehicles (motorcycles and bicycles) because their systems don't recognize that anything narrower than a car exists.

https://www.carscoops.com/2022/10/motorcycle-advocates-warn-...

Something like the West Coast Express train in Vancouver is what you want - tables, washrooms, AC plugs for charging your stuff, etc. It's a great way to commute.

I agree with you on public transportation.

But pre-pandemic I e-biked to the office rain or cloudy in Seattle 4 days a week. Albeit Seattle rains aren't usually heavy.

Rain jackets.

Outer wear solving this problem has been around for a long, long time.

The problem here is your attitude: it sucks. I’d elaborate on this, but it’s enough to read your post. Instead of baselessly concluding that everything you dislike and feel inconvenienced by will suck forever, have you considered feeling hope and optimism instead?

Hope and optimism from the climate alarmist crowd? We’ve been told since Al Gore that the world should have already ended. That people want to take us back to the 1800s in transport tech isn’t very optimistic to me. People would rather have a train than airplanes. People would rather ride a bike in crappy weather than a comfortable car. People would rather we set our thermostats to 78 degrees than enjoy whatever temperatures we want in our house. There are people exciting about eating bugs because apparently cows are going to make the planet explode.

Not much hope and optimism these days when the sky is perpetually falling.

That's rich considering we just set a global record for highest average temperature ever recorded. Have you watched the record flooding recently?

Just because your personal personal upper class bubble world hasn't ended yet, doesn't mean people's lives aren't being upended by climate change. How selfish of you.

(and trains are infinitely better than airplanes for short (<300) mile trips. regular schedules, less expensive tickets, no baggage checking and getting lost, no endless and invasive security procedures? yes please.)

> How selfish of you.

Heh one person berating the op for not being optimistic enough and another berating them for not being doom/gloom enough. What a perfect example of social media “engagement”.

About 11 years ago I road some rush hour subways in China for a couple weeks while working in an office out there for a project.

It was clean, people were quiet, all the sort of "crime" or "etiquette" concerns seemed addressed from my POV.

It was still terrible because it was crowded as hell and we were packed in and standing up for 20-40 minutes. From talking to locals, people's commute time tolerance still stretched out and with cost of living and demand and all that, it was no "just take a jaunty 5 minute walk to work" paradise compared to the US.

Maybe that 40 min standing is better for my long-term posture and joint health than sitting in a car? But it would still be a really really really hard sell.

Yeah, this. I've done the Asian subway commute thing, and it's pretty crap. Tolerable, but only because using a car in those places is mostly untenable. It's even worse in western countries, because we don't have the commitment to rock-solid subway schedules that places like Japan and Korea do. Here we get poorly planned maintenance works, and commute times that can balloon out by hours because you're taking replacement buses. That's before we get into factors like assaults and harassment.

I will never use public transport for commuting in my home country again. I got a car at the onset of COVID, and I'm not going back. As for the suggestion of using bikes, well... I grew up the monsoon zone. Good luck convincing people that a bike will fit their needs for the 5 months of the year when it's raining. People honestly forget what a miracle cars are. They're not perfect, but they're reliable, they get the job done, and there's a car that can meet just about anybody's needs. Even if you made an e-bike with some kind of weather protection, I'd be willing to bet that at some point, you just end up with a downsized car. Bikes just aren't the universal workhorses that cars are.

> Also, not sure if you've used public transportation recently, but man, it SUCKS. Far less time efficient than a car, often crowded during the times you want to use it, and ZERO enforcement of proper etiquette or rules or regulations as far as riders are concerned.

I've been using public transportation for 13 years and it's better than its ever been in terms of speed, reliability, and the crowds.

Where have you experienced public transportation that is worse off today than it was in the past?

SF, every time I visit. LA, often when I visit. LV, when I don't feel like driving. SD, when I'm there visiting, NYC which admittedly has been several years, Chicago metro area, which admittedly is the best of all of them and still very much has all of the problems I have detailed and aside from traveling outside of the city I much prefer a cab or a car, and several places in mexico, touristy and not touristy, which weren't markedly better or worse than american examples.

That leads me to think these problems are endemic, and you, yourself, are either really lucky, or just used to the discomfort after so much time. You should treat yourself to some perspective, go out and take an uber home, then ask yourself if it was better.

> That leads me to think these problems are endemic, and you, yourself, are either really lucky, or just used to the discomfort after so much time. You should treat yourself to some perspective, go out and take an uber home, then ask yourself if it was better.

Your replies lead me to think that you, yourself, are either really sheltered, or just used to the privilege of not having to interact with people you feel like are "below" you.

I have used Uber in all the places you mentioned as well as transit. I can tell you that I would rather spend $4 on a 1 hour transit ride than $15 on a 40 minute Uber literally everywhere. Unless I'm wasted out of my mind at 3am or in an unfamiliar area or not in a state to take transit home or the Uber ride is exceptionally cheaper or faster.

I've been working since I was 12 1/2 (under the table summer gigs, eventually payrolled at 15 with a work permit, zero free summers in highschool), parents were on government assistance, declared bankruptcy twice, I went to public schools where I was the victim of overt acts of violence due to the color of my skin on multiple occasions, parent's had their house foreclosed on and I squatted there for 9 months before I got evicted and had to couch surf, my first car was a van with no door locks and a carburetor with a worn out accelerator pump and the only gauge that worked was oil pressure. I kept a 5 gallon jerry can in the back because I never really knew if I was going to run out of gas.

In my life I've been mugged 3x, stabbed once, spat on several times (only spat on while riding the bus funny enough), had a full coke thrown at me while I was riding my bike to walmart (which was worse than being stabbed because I wasn't stabbed that bad and being sticky really sucked). I've been hassled by the cops (because that van was super sketchy looking) countless times, never arrested because I was never doing anything wrong, but no less unpleasant having to put your car back together on the side of the road because you look like you're driving a drug dealer van (which, I did tbh).

These days I volunteer at the local food bank, handing food and diapers and sanitary products who are in need of them. It keeps me grounded, because some of those people are fantastic humans, the real salt of the earth, most are regular folks like you and I, and some are remarkably unpleasant, but I get that they're havin a bad time and that it's not really personal (though the guy who told me I looked like an "r-slured cross between drake and mr bean" because we were out of eggs kinda stung, not gonna lie). I highly recommend doing that sort of thing, those places all need extra help, even if it's just a few hours, and they mostly have zero ways to reach out and get it.

As to where this privilege, where this shelter is that you speak of comes from? That's a mystery to me, I fought to get where I am, I've existed on the good will of others, I've been hungry and dirty, and tired and quasi homeless. I remember where I came from, I know how bad things can get and how much better they are now. My friend, if I were to touch more grass, I would have to become grass itself first.

In terms of time, if 1hr transit = 40min uber, you're spending 21 bucks for 20 minutes of time, so, 63 bucks an hour. Is your time worth less than that or more than that? And that's valuing safety and comfort at $0, which is probably unfair, but harder to quantify. Personally, I'm at a point where I can afford the extra 21 bucks, so I just uber. I also drop like 300 bucks a month on a car, plus gas, including insurance, but timewise, if I didn't I'd be valuing myself somewheres around 18 bucks an hour with how my commute works out with public transport. Haven't been paid that low in years now, no plan on going back. That and, it has the added benefit of being able to go anywhere, anytime, without any real restrictions. Zero public transport options are like that.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong and sitting on an uncomfortable plastic seat for hours every day, getting hassled, maybe stabbed, maybe spat on, would be good for me, doesn't sound like it though.

Forget it Jake, it’s HN town.

Have your tried driving? everyday, in stop and go traffic, bumper to bumper, with assholes waving in and out, impatiently, or sitting there for literal hours on a highway with turns but no distraction besides the podcast about some inane bullshittery? rather be sitting uninterrupted on public transportation, with an app or timer to warn, and then tell me when to get off, than sit in a car as a driver, having to pay half attention. it's enough to drive someone to drink. not that I would while driving, the repercussions are too steep.

Oh no, I sit there and play with my phone on the bus and ignore people. Guess what I'm going to go home to do from my couch. the same except except be lonely while doing it.

Wow that sounds fun! I think I might try it next time I need to go somewhere.

You have no idea how long I've been sitting on public transit wishing that _I_ was the person controlling the bus in stop and go traffic and having to put my 100% undivided attention on the road in front of me. I stare at the bus driver, and I bet he can feel my daggers piercing his back, my disdain for him that I'm forced to sit here on my phone reading people's stupid opinions on HN and Reddit and pointlessly arguing with them. Trying to change the mind of an idiot who doesn't even want to change their mind.

I had no idea you could go out and buy those things people drive around everywhere. I thought you got them on your tax return if the government owes you > $20k, so thanks for the TIL.

I drive every day, and I've made it a point to pick places to live that are near-ish to where I work. Current commute is right around 15 minutes, but, I've lived places an hour from work, commuting every day. It wasn't the best, mainly from a time-optimization standpoint, got in the way of socialization, but, I listened to a ton of audiobooks and podcasts, so, wasn't exactly suffering in any way.

Personally, I don't spend that much time "plugged in" to my phone these days. I don't have social media (HN is as close as it gets), and I keep most of my e-socializing to group messages between various friend groups on signal. So an hour on a train/bus/etc would likely be too much downtime for me.

I do have an uncle who lives in Chicago, at the end of the line, train wise, so, it's over an hour to get into the city. He just catches the train and goes to sleep, because he's riding the whole thing to the end, sets an alarm, earbuds in, +1hour nap. Nice side benefit, but, truth is, he'd drive if he could, but the way chicago is laid out, he'd be walking a half mile from parking, and it's only like a 2 block walk from the end of the line to get to his work, so, makes alot of sense for him. For most, makes zero sense.

Understand that, time is the only truly non-renewable resource. Everything else can be replaced, somehow, someway, but time is irreplaceable. Ultimately, if you're going to have universally viable public transport, it needs to be clean, safe, comfortable, and at least as fast as owning a car. So far, after decades of advancement, it's still none of those things for most people.

> an hour on a train/bus/etc would likely be too much downtime for me.

You realize books exist, right? Or any other media you'd be consuming sitting down at home anyway?

> and at least as fast as owning a car

No it doesn't. If it takes an hour by bus or 30 minutes by car, that 1 hour is more useful to me and way less stress. Until I didn't have to drive every day due to Covid, I didn't realize how costly driving, especially in traffic or long distances, was to my mental health.

It sounds like you're not able to take advantage of the Internet on your smartphone to the same degree as I am. Between the web browser, and all the apps, especially Gmail, there's enough there that I can take care of some chores/errands. I'm not talking about burning time on social media, though that's certainly available. With hotspot functionality, I'm able to do real work on my laptop, anywhere there's cellphone service and also some company shuttles have wifi.

Look, cars are luxuriously convenient but having to drive isn't. We have Stockholm syndrome with it, and think it's a good deal. But we're commenting on an article about self driving cars because it isn't.

Bicycle commuting in the rain would be no big deal except for all the 4000lb vehicles you have to share the road with.

You can put rain gear on. Braking and steering are hardly affected. You can't go fast enough for hydroplaning to happen.

Your visibility is impaired, but visibility on a bike saddle is already infinitely less obstructed compared to a driver's seat. You don't even need windshield wipers!