Go for ankle straps over vests. It’s far more important for the reflective materials to be moving than the amount of body coverage you have.
GCN recently covered this topic with interviews of optometry and psychology professors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33GpfTWdk8U
You’re probably at the edge of the bus line. There’s a usually very empty bus every 30 minutes just a block away from me. I took that bus a few times and realized that my neighborhood is the turn around for it. Most of the folk on it have gotten off by the time it loops through.
This situation of empty busses at houses makes sense too. Why would a bus be full at the edge of town? It needs passengers first and they won’t accumulate until the bus is near populated spots like downtown. And why would a city pay for empty busses when they could route them in better areas?
There’s evidence they are being used as an alternative to more polluting modes: https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-280-million-electric-bikes-and-mopeds-are-cutting-demand-for-oil-far-more-than-electric-cars-213870
I too live in a state that’s eliminating stagnating regulation, which in turn is causing my town and neighboring towns to catch up with extreme housing demands. I imagine we both will experience an awkward phase as some lots get updated buildings next to lots that haven’t seen construction in 60+ years.
I view my recent experience as long needed development. There’s no way a developer would plunge that much money into a building if they didn’t believe they could sell the apartments/condos. I’d watch to see how fast they sell out, if they haven’t already. Consider investing in nearby development if the complex sells quick. Maybe also consider moving further down the train line if you’re looking for a less dense neighborhood.
Locking up is a great way to get some piece of mind. Another way is insurance! It’s not too expensive compared to an expensive bike. You can also setup your own “insurance” by opening a savings account/index funds/rotating CoDs with some money and deposit a monthly value of your choice (gas money saved per month, what private insurance would be, or as a general savings goal).
IMHO, scooters are so inexpensive that it’s not a huge deal to buy a new one when it’s stolen. This is true for ebikes too, though it can be a little more painful. Try comparing such a loss to how much you’re paying for transportation and you’ll find that a bike isn’t the biggest slice of that pie. Use that knowledge to relish the thought with your coffee after not paying for gas or a parking meter.
That’s a fair position to take, and thank you for debating. Have an upvote!
I don’t think park-and-ride should be made artificially cheap or free because that causes demand to drive to the town edges. Regional transit is needed and is already competing with subsidized highways. We don’t need more subsidies that induce even more regional car demand!
Besides, even with charging for the lost costs, park-and-ride is going to be cheaper over inner-city parking. Let me clarify my point of the cost of a garage: the cost of building a garage includes materials, maintenance, enforcement, and land value. City edge land is cheap to the point that park-and-ride probably won’t be built as a garage but as a lot. Engineered buildings are expensive and usually only make sense when the land value is very high. I suspect it’s only a million or two to build a paved, ~200 spot park-and-ride, which would place daily spot pricing on the order of $1.50 to $2.50 a day. That’s pretty cheap compared to privately owned garaged parking in major cities (> $25 a day).
My pricing beef orbits around how often city garages are heavily subsidized. I’ll make a real-life example from a nearby city of 64,000 people. They built a garage adjacent to their downtown for $12 million. Amortizing that over 15 years and the number of spaces puts the minimum revenue per spot at $8.98 per day. What is the city’s going rate for parking? $40 per month for a permit and $1.25 an hour with 9 hours of enforcement. Only the hourly rate at 100% occupancy, which this lot is not generating, meets just the construction costs, let alone figuring out discount rate and property taxes.
And speaking of taxes, I expect publicly built parking lots and garages to also pay for their taxable rate, even if it’s just an accounting trick by the city to price their lots. Running local property taxes as a land value tax would go a long way towards properly pricing the value of public garages. LVT would also discourage parking in the city center, where land is expensive, in favor of parking on the city edge, where land is cheap. Just another trick which drives down park-and-ride pricing and discourages city-center parking.
There are good parking garages and bad parking garages. What makes a good parking garage? I’d say good garages must be:
Bad garages are ones that break the good rules. They are:
It’s also possible for a good garage to become a bad one. Say a small town installs a parking lot on the edge of town, but then the town grows. That lot should be removed due to the increased land value it occupies. The new medium sized town can consider adding a parking lot or garage again, but certainly not in their popular, profitable, and active downtown.
Start smaller and cheaper! A rack and inexpensive/DIY paniers will absolutely hold two bags of groceries. Try riding an occasional forgot-the-milk / fresh veggies / beer run. It’s liberating.
I bought an inexpensive cargo bike, and enjoy it greatly, but I’ve gotten a fair amount of mileage out of my older bike after putting on a simple rack.
Another deeply disturbing tale. RIP Ben.
I’ve had many coworkers roll into the office with their carbon bikes because it makes quick work of a long commute and it’s so easy to carry a lightweight machine up the office stairs. They’d wear a backpack if they needed to carry a laptop. No cars involved; not even a bus.
There’s no need to gatekeep which kind of bike someone chooses to use when the objective is to not drive a car. They can ride a carbon bike if they want too.
Those are value judgements. How does a carbon bike get stolen if it’s never locked in a public place? Why would a carbon bike be loaded with anything more than a bottle of water and a small saddle bag?
These considerations are important for commuting, touring, and other fun activities, but are perhaps less important for the bike racer.
The advice is good (steel and aluminum are much underappreciated) yet this op-ed is weird and mean spirited. Yeah, carbon fiber bikes are expensive and quirky. They’re a specialty bike for racers squeaking out tens of seconds to a minute or two of time. No one is seriously advising new riders to get a 10 grand bike. Why the gatekeeping? Let racers spend their money on their favorite, healthy, and engaging hobby.
There’s a whole suite of vaccines which do not provide what you’re asking for: sterilizing immunity. That’s the penultimate ability of a vaccine. It’s incredible we’re even able to create anything of that character given we’re fighting against living, evolving things.
Setting the minimum bar to “I must never get sick” instead of “won’t find myself in a grave” or “I wasn’t able to work for a month and was stuck in a hospital for three weeks” is a crazy thing to hang onto.
I own a Jeep (TJ) that I’ve built up for off-road excursions. I’d like to clarify about how these vehicles handle dirt, country roads, or mountainous terrain compared to bikes: Jeeps are nowhere as good as bikes.
Crazy, right?
It’s not like what the marketers would love you to believe, but it’s true. A 1.5 ton, four wheeled vehicle will struggle in all kinds of situations where light two wheeled vehicles will have no trouble at all. There’s a reason why you’ll see so many people standing around in videos of us four wheelers trying to make progress: walking is faster and easier! Pushing a large, heavy box through difficult terrain is a large part of the fun of a Jeep.
My recommendation for a bike is a gravel or all-terrain bike (ATB). Today’s mountain bikes are built for fast descents, very rough terrain, and large jumps. They’re amazing on certain trails but, IMHO, not the best for dirt and gravel tracks. Gravel and ATBs are also more flexible with mounting points for things like racks, cages, etc for outdoor excursions. As a bonus, they’re cheap right now. Gravel was all the rage during the pandemic and now stores are overstocked. You can get a great deal on new or last year’s models from your local bike store.
Or, if you really want that four-wheeling experience, take look at recumbent quadricycles. They’re quite unique! With fat tires they’ll float over just about any soft surface.
As others have stated, do not go to a box store or online with very limited exceptions. A LBS will generally employ a mechanic who knows what they’re doing, will stand behind any issues that arise, and can work on the bike after it breaks in. You’d be lucky if a Walmart employee manages to put a handle bar facing forwards.
Absolutely. My comment is about why a regulation would be 2 hours when today we can get more capable, air rated parts. US regulation is lagging behind, but it was based on what was within reach 20+ years ago. Heck, I bet most craft would eventually become 25 hours voice recording as older standard recorders become no longer available.
Flight recorders have a very long history with modern ones being engineered in the 1960s. They used film and magnetic tape loops, having very limited capacity. That’s where we get 2 hours from. Early ones only ran for 30 minutes, so 2 hours is pretty good in comparison.
It’s time to upgrade the regulations to match our current technology instead of 1990s limitations.
Uber has posted profits for the last two quarters. Lyft hasn’t yet been profitable, but they have been reducing their losses quite a bit.
I don’t think either of them will fail this year. Some AI gold rushing unicorns out there certainly will. It’s hard to know which though; they’re still private companies.
Nortel wasn’t killed by Huawei stealing their IP, which certainly did happen. They tanked themselves with some terrible accounting that hid the terrible situation they put themselves in. Nortel and Enron are the reason GAAP is the gold standard and legally required to be reported these days.
There are sailed powered logistics ships! Here’s a grain ship that just launched. There are also companies that produce inflatable or deployable sails to reduce fuel consumption in favorable winds.
Ultimately there will be a need for chemical energy or similarly dense energy to move a ship. The wind doesn’t always blow, and when it does it won’t always be in the direction you want. Nuclear is certainly an interesting option.
I’m hopeful. This measure forces visibility of progress and allows any regular citizen to sue the city if they try to weasel out. I can’t imagine a city politician taking a position of “we’re going to fight this ridiculous lawsuit about not installing a wider sidewalk for as long as it takes.” That’s a real bad look, especially given this measure passed 65% for, 35% against. It would be political suicide.