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I would hate to live so far away from where I worked that I couldn't cycle commute, but I also wish I had a viable public transport option for those days where I was too tired to ride or had to carry something heavy.
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Aug 8, 2021 23:10
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Lmao I just remembered that somebody suggested on the local news here recently that for the same money the government spent on hosting the Americas cup this year they could give free public transport to everybody in the city for 7 years. The mayor then said some unintelligible bullshit about how that would mean rich people would be getting free transport too and how instead they're already doing some kind of subsidy for poor people etc. Typical lib brain poo poo, who the gently caress cares if some rich bitch gets free bus trips, they don't take the loving bus anyway. Means testing is such a curse.
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Aug 9, 2021 09:18
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Leroy Diplowski posted:Qft Mountain biking is good, but it's even better when I can get a chairlift to the top so my lazy arse doesn't need to pedal lol.
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Aug 14, 2021 03:06
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Obligatory posting of the fully faired e-bicycle I built to commute to work with:  Uses a New Zealand legal e-bike motor (250W max continuous power but no speed cut-out unlike in Europe) which means if I pedal hard I can hold a constant ~50 kph on flat roads. It weighs about 33 kg so accelerating and going up hills is a little slow, but it's so much more comfortable in bad weather than a regular bike and I can carry quite a lot of luggage. With LED strips down the sides and back and the ability to keep up with city traffic I actually feel more safe than on a normal bicycle, it's low down but much larger visually and unusual enough that people actually notice and pay attention. Also the fact that it looks like a little car short-circuits the cyclist rage part of most motorist brains and the average sentiment I get from drivers is extremely positive. I need to build a better one sometime though, the current design has lovely steering, no rear suspension and is very draggy and inefficient compared to what it could be. I wish that something like this could become more main-stream, but I'm realistic enough to know that 99% of people would never even contemplate having to change their behaviours to suit a new mode of transportation (e.g. having to leave more time when travelling, sweat a bit from pedalling, get exposed to the elements more etc.)
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Nov 6, 2021 21:10
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Dolphin posted:What are the fairings made from? In my case the fairing is made of corflute (that corrugated plastic material they use to make election signs out of) and it's very non-structural, only used as an aerodynamic fairing and weather shield. The actual frame of the trike underneath is carbon tubes glued together. The 'commercial' velomobiles are full carbon monocoque structures which are much lighter and stronger but also way more expensive and time consuming. My plan for the next one is to make it out of plywood, if you're careful and use good wood you can get a monocoque structure down to similar weights of the commercial ones (around 21 kg) and a rigid body would be much better in strong wind than my current floppy plastic shell. This is the inspiration for what I'm currently designing:  So far the design is going very slowly though as it's pretty low down on my priority list.  Also my partner would kill me if I tried to build another one, we don't have a ton of space and my last build took up a big chunk of our living space for years, and we definitely don't have space to park two of them so I'd have to do something with the current one.
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Nov 6, 2021 22:00
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Cheers, pretty much everyone I meet loves it but would also never consider using one lol. They're a lot more common in european cities with decent cycling infrastructure, weird how there are plenty of alternatives to cars for short single-person trips when your government puts even a few seconds of effort into making it safe and relaxing.
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Nov 6, 2021 22:16
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Dolphin posted:have you considered skin on frame construction, like a kayak? you could probably achieve weights similar to carbon or even lighter while still being quite strong Yeah I've thought about it. There's one commercial design that has been around for ages but still doesn't seem to be available called podride: https://www.mypodride.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKq1fGtXFM It looks like awesome fun, although definitely a lot slower than what I'd want. Seems to be plastic tent-like material stretched over a metal frame (but you could do a similar thing with thin carbon tubes). There's also the mosquito velomobile, which is a more traditional fabric on wood frame:  Overall it looks like a huge amount of work and quite fragile though. In the plywood design I'm looking at the skin is quite thin (3mm thick, or about 1/8") and only takes shear forces. Bending loads are taken by larger structural members, and the box sections of the total structure give it overall stiffness. So in a way it's very similar to modern monocoque car construction, and it's effectively a skin over a frame except the skin is thicker, bonded to the frame and provides a significant portion of the overall strength and rigidity.
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Nov 6, 2021 22:32
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Hubbert posted:if this was an e-bike with a battery behind the seat and cargo space in the front, i'd buy it https://www.katanga.eu/waw/ You can get an e-assist version of the WAW which has good luggage space and as a bonus uses mostly 'normal' bicycle parts so it's easier to maintain and repair compared to some others. Unfortunately you're really going to pay with the commercial ones, because production quantities are so low and because human power is so limited they're all hand-made and all use lightweight composites to get the most out of the limited power available. They're never going to be significantly cheaper while production quantities are so low and they're never going to produce many of them while the infrastructure and people's lifestyles don't allow for it. Ultimately human power (and legal e-bike power) is so low they're always going to be niche as people want to A) keep up with traffic and B) not sweat wearing normal clothes. I think something a bit larger with a few kW of electric power would be perfect as a single-person vehicle, but vehicle road-worthiness laws don't really allow for such a device.
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Nov 6, 2021 23:03
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Sphyre posted:Insanely sick Auckland (lol?)
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Nov 7, 2021 01:10
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what city are you in?
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Were you walking in the road? If so you should be walking against the flow of traffic, not with it. I mean it's pedal powered in addition to the motor (and trust me I'm sweating buckets to go fast) so overall energy use is on the order of 8.5 Wh/km with the motor at full power and keeping up with traffic. That's on the order of 20 times less than a typical electric car. It also weighs about 50 times less than a typical electric car and takes up about 1/6th of the space or less. So overall it uses a shitload fewer resources to accomplish the same job as a car (getting me to work or the shops), doesn't make any noise, zero emissions (NZ's electricity is largely renewable but you could easily charge it from a small solar panel), poses significant less danger to pedestrians or other road users etc. I wouldn't be that surprised if overall it was even environmentally better than taking a bus or train to do the same job, it's also great for my physical and mental health. So yeah overall actually significantly way better than a car.
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Nov 7, 2021 02:04
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cool av posted:dang. why dont they just stick to stealing catalytic converters The stealing cats thing is just lmao to me, I've never ever heard of anybody having their catalytic converter stolen in NZ. Entire cars sure, but not just the cat.
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Nov 10, 2021 00:48
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No joke I used to be part of a cycling club that did some training rides at a large park in the city. This park had a big one-way ring road around the outside a few km long, and on that road there was a dedicated cycling lane about as wide as the car lane on the outside of the circle. It was a super popular place for cyclists and on a weekend morning there's be hundreds of bikes riding around the ring and practically no cars. One morning the club was doing pace-line practice, so we were riding in a bunch but at fairly low speeds so that people could practice the technique. There was a SUV stopped on the road ahead of us indicating to turn off the ring road onto a side street, and the layout of this place means that the car has to turn across the cycling lane to do so. The car was about 100m up the road and was completely stationary with its indicator going as we approached, so we assumed that the car had seen us and was waiting for us to pass before turning, however just as the bunch started to ride past the SUV it suddenly turned into the group resulting in a big crash with one guy getting knocked out and losing some teeth. One guy riding at the back of the group had a video camera recording at the time and captured the whole thing, police and ambulance were called and the video was given to the police. A little while later the police decide to charge the guy who was knocked out and lost some teeth with reckless riding and not the SUV, because the police thought that the cyclists were riding too close together to avoid hitting the car when it turned into us... It went to court and eventually was overturned and the police were forced to pay costs by the judge because of how ludicrous the whole situation was, but yeah wouldn't be the first time I'd have heard of a cyclist getting charge for having the nerve to damage a car by getting run over by it.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:29
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Polo-Rican posted:One of NYC's first tesla dealerships (it might have actually been the first one?..) is on an industrial, quiet back street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Since the street was relatively quiet, they used to encourage potential buyers to check out the 0-60 acceleration. It turns out most drivers can't handle acceleration that fast, because over time that street became infamous for crashes... Teslas constantly slamming into fences, poles, knocking over hydrants, etc. just visible destruction all over the place, lol. No joke a lot of people have been saying that cars have been getting too fast for a while now. It's bad enough with ICE cars, which have been getting more and more powerful for decades now but EV's are even worse because it's extremely easy to make them accelerate insanely fast in a straight line but very difficult to make them handle well around corners due to the weight, so manufacturers just push the straight-line acceleration as hard as possible as the selling point. Check out this review of the T*la model S plaid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn9QWjxFPKM That's what you get when a fraudulent company with incompetent engineers and management turns out a production car with over 1000 HP at a (relatively) cheap price that also weighs a million tons. Yeah it goes insanely fast in a straight line but the brakes are absolutely inadequate at slowing down that much weight from those speeds, and because it's electric and relatively quiet you don't get anywhere near as much feedback about how fast you're going. The average shithead driver is ABSOLUTELY going to get that thing going faster than they thought, get into trouble and find out that the brakes and their reaction time is inadequate to avoid a massive crash. At what point do you say that the pissweak drivers license training and testing in most countries just isn't enough for somebody to be able to safely drive some of these cars?
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Nov 12, 2021 19:58
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Milo and POTUS posted:
Better than literally any other new car by virtue of consuming far fewer resources, taking up far less space and being less lethal to others.
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Nov 12, 2021 23:22
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lil poopendorfer posted:yes, and you can watch them die in real time Ahahhhahah why are they pretending that even more than 1% of these will ever go off-road for longer than it takes to test it out the week after somebody bought it? Nobody buys this poo poo to go off road, just like the billion other gigantic trucks and SUV's rolling around to the shops or work filled with fast food bags and children. I remember reading somewhere that the rate of road surface damage goes up proportional to the weight of the vehicle to the fourth power, so uhhh yeah good luck with keeping the roads in usable condition once everyone transitions to EV trucks and SUVs that weigh twice as much as they already do. Also vehicle taxation/registration an licensing fees should absolutely scale by the mass of the vehicle to offset the disproportional amount of damage larger vehicles do to the road. I weep at how hosed and stupid everything is, I used to work in the rail industry (for a huge global company making train components) and it was so clear how at least in places like Australia and New Zealand public transport decisions were being insanely hosed up because of our garbage democratic system of governance. Basically a city like Sydney would want to put in some new addition to its train network (Sydney already has a pretty decent heavy-rail network) but heavy-rail is expensive and takes a long time to build, and whichever government currently in power wants it done in a few years max so that they can show the voters something before election time. And so in comes 'light-rail' which is basically taking a tram, which is a perfectly fine mode of transport in the right circumstance, and stretching it to be the length of a normal train and pretending that it is a train. This is because 'light-rail' is cheaper and faster to build, so you get to show off how quickly and cheaply you added this new infrastructure within one election cycle. Unfortunately trams are designed to move people relatively short distances, they're supposed to be small but frequent so you can have high throughput, they're typically limited to low speeds like ~50 kph and have very minimal seating because they're supposed to be crammed full of people who are only riding them a few minutes at a time. Sydney 'light-rail' trams are between 33 and 45 meters long (about 150 feet) which at one point I think was the longest tram in the world, have a top speed of 70 kph but are often much slower than that and are operated just like a regular train with limited linear lines and fairly infrequent services. They run almost exclusively on dedicated off-road tracks built specifically for the system but because they're trams and not heavy-rail they can't operate on any of the existing heavy-rail infrastructure. Also for whatever reason out of the three existing light-rail lines built one of them follows different track and platform specifications to the other two, so vehicles can't even be shared between the light-rail lines on the same network. Sydney also has -another- metro rail system recently built which is also incompatible with both the existing heavy AND light-rail systems, and the three largest Australian states all operate different heavy-rail track gauges and so none can share vehicles or a common rail network...
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Nov 13, 2021 19:44
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The city of Adelaide electrified their passenger train network a while ago as it was previously all diesel trains. Except the last time I was there for whatever reason they didn't electrify the section of track from the main network to the maintenance depot, and so every electric train going into or out of the depot had to be pushed in and out by a diesel locomotive... This is the same city that for the longest time had the worlds longest tidal-flow highway, that is the entire highway was one-direction one way in the morning, and then changed to one-direction the other way in the afternoon. We as a species (and many other species, and basically the entire biosphere) are hosed as long as we're under capitalist liberal democracies, anything just fiddling around the edges of that as a fundamental system is ultimately a waste of time.
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Nov 13, 2021 20:36
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I've always been seriously concerned about leaving any of my bikes for any period of time while shopping, although picking up takeaway food or a bag of coffee beans from a cafe is fine. I guess the solution to that is have a crappy beater bike with some good locks that most people wouldn't think is worth the effort.
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Nov 14, 2021 09:18
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Just remembered I had this photo of when I rode my velomobile to the local shops. That's a normal sized space on the side of the road, which highlights how much space cars take up when parking.
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Nov 24, 2021 01:36
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Norton posted:hahahahaha i've seen a lot of videos on this stupid thing but I still cracked up again when the elevator goes down to reveal the big new tech is... more roads but now underground and shittier. how is no one driving in the tube the car goes down? seems like cars would all have to brake constantly as you wait for 20 different elevators to each slowly deliver a single car carrying a single occupant. The car tunnel thing is staggeringly, mind blowingly stupid if you take it at face value. I honestly don't know how people who believe in the stated concept function in society but then I realise that society doesn't really function and it all makes a lot more sense. Was there ever a definitive theory as to why the boring company actually exists again? Clearly it's not to replace millions of above-ground roads with millions of sewer tunnels, as far as I know the options are: - Pure scam to bilk local governments out of money promising outlandish solutions, delivering garbage and pocketing the cash (e.g. las vegas). Also in support of keeping the Tesla bubble inflated by making personal vehicles seem feasible into the future when the road system is clearly in crisis. - The actual plan is to make personal car tunnels for the mega-wealthy so that they can avoid ever having to deal with the collapsing road system and surface traffic consisting of poor people - Drug smuggling tunnels under the US/Mexico border
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Nov 24, 2021 19:07
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Filthy Hans posted:If he had miata this would not have happened Yeah clearly the issue here is that motorbikes are too dangerous as they can't handle a little attempted murder via road rage. The solution is to ban anything from being on the road that doesn't provide equivalent protection to an APC.
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Nov 24, 2021 21:39
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Morbus posted:"Hmm what is the actual, underlying rational reason for people investing in such a stupid idea" I ask, in a world where $5 billion has been spent on hyperlinks to poorly drawn cartoons of apes with funny hats. Yeah but NFT's of disgusting monkeys makes sense when you consider it's just another form of gambling, like boring company might make sense if it was just for rich people to avoid proles or to siphon government money into elon's bank account. Neither thing makes any sense at face value and stated purpose, but in both cases a lot of people seem to pretend that they do.
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Nov 24, 2021 22:10
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Pryor on Fire posted:Well yeah some people use helipads but in a city like Vegas there are like thousands of millionaires going in and out every day and it's not really practical for all of them to take helicopters everywhere all the time even if they could afford it. There is just not enough room or vehicles. I saw an ad for Lexus on TV recently where they were advertising their future concepts for EV's and I had to laugh at the absurdity of it, and also wonder how much it had been influenced by Muskian thought. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKsqzqO4NHw It starts with aerial views of a desert 90% covered in solar panels eerily similar to the start of Blade Runner 2049 but I assume not intentionally being a dystopia, the ad then displays a blocky almost cyber-truk style polygonal EV future car zooming into a huge tunnel going under a bay towards a futuristic city full of skyscrapers. The city itself is an idealised hyper-developed space dripping with hanging gardens, very 'elysium' like, there are also TV screens everywhere displaying images of nature which is again very Blade Runner dystopian... There are like zero other cars on the road the whole time of course, because traffic would get in the way of the ideal future. I can only surmise that in the ideal Lexus future some horrific global event has killed off 99% of Earth's population leaving only the mega-rich to whiz around in their perfect empty cities completely unironically like Blade Runner without the constant rain.
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Nov 24, 2021 22:21
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Cugel the Clever posted:Americans are loving stupid. Lmao even ignoring the traffic jam which is hilarious, look at all the space in that video devoted to cars. Like 95% of the surface area the camera sweeps over is devoted to moving or storing cars.
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Nov 25, 2021 08:16
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Some of the pedestrian crossings in Auckland have pressure plates under the footpath on either side, so when somebody steps on them to start walking across a bunch of lights both on poles either side of the road and also embedded into the road start flashing to alert cars. It's actually pretty effective, especially at night. Also if you're old as gently caress like me and listen to AM radio in the car you can hear the radio signals used to make the lights flash playing over the speakers as a high frequency tone that's in sync with the flashing.
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Dec 2, 2021 03:44
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nomad2020 posted:How about instead of banning cars we just put the FAA in charge. Every new car you buy requires a new type certification. (real) yearly inspections, repair logs, the whole deal. NZ at least has yearly or 6-monthly government required car inspections (depending on the age of the car) which do actually get refused frequently for safety issues. That said, the inspections are all done by private garages that I presume have to get some kind of certification from the government to perform them, and I'm sure there are some dodgy ones you can go to and pay to pass. It's probably nowhere near as strict as in Germany which I hear actually has very rigid and frequent safety inspections. Driving tests should absolutely be mandatory every X number of years though, and more frequently over 60 or something, and not just theory tests but actual practical driving tests too. The council here has proposed changing my street and a number of other local streets from 50 kph (~31 mph) down to 30 kph (~19 mph) due to there being a number of schools and daycare centers here. On the one hand 30 kph feels absurdly slow driving down the length of the street, but on the other hand gently caress it it's actually pretty fast for a bicycle and why would you ever need to go along a suburban street faster than that? Our cat was run over and killed on the street a few years ago so I'm all for slowing everything the gently caress down.
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Dec 2, 2021 09:27
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Yeah I love when cycling infrastructure is tacked onto an existing road such that the road and car traffic is given right of way at all times and the bicycle lane is constantly disrupted preventing you from maintaining any speed. There was a particular cycleway in Sydney I used to ride on that was completely separated from the main road that it ran parallel to, which should have been awesome for cycling on, except they decided that in each of the dozen or more side-streets that connected to this main road which the cycleway had to cross that the cars would get right of way and the bicycles would have to stop and wait at traffic lights. So instead of cruising along a long straight road like the cars you'd have to constantly stop, wait, speed up, slow down, stop etc. The worst one was right at the bottom of a long hill and just before a long climb and would inevitably be read for cyclists, so you'd have to come to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill and then start with no speed going into the climb. That's one thing I've seen done really well in Europe, in a lot of cases where they have a cycleway running parallel to a road with side-streets the cycleway will have right of way going straight over cars turning into or out of the side-streets. Of course that wouldn't work in places like Australia because no way in hell would any car look to see if there were any cyclists coming along a cycleway before turning into or out of a side street, so even if you technically had right of way on the bike you'd get turned into red mist on day 1.
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Dec 5, 2021 09:13
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PeterCat posted:Love when there are sidewalks around the strip mall, but no way to walk from the sidewalk to the restaurant that isn't in traffic. I used to work in an industrial area nearby to the city's airport. It's a bit out of the city but there's a pretty big industrial area right next to it and even a fair few shops, hotels etc. It would probably have been a 30 minute walk or something from the airport to my work and there were definitely times where I was flying in and going to work where I would have enjoyed that walk, but there was literally no way you could do it without walking on the road. It's like when they built the airport they couldn't conceive of anybody WALKING to or from it, so there were parts where the footpath just finished... I think that might be different now, haven't been able to fly for a while lol. There's also no train to/from the airport, and the only bus that used to go there from where I lived (privately operated airport-specific bus) changed their route and now only go directly from the CBD to the airport and skip all the suburbs, so lmao now there's zero way that I can get there that isn't driving. I did actually fly with my bicycle in a cardboard box on the plane once, assembled the bicycle in the airport terminal after landing and then cycled home which was quite the experience.
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Dec 16, 2021 09:54
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I'm going to go ride a bicycle on the road pretty soon, if I don't post again in a few hours it probably means I was murdered by a car.
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Jan 1, 2022 18:59
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Status update: not dead. Although one car did try to overtake us to get to a turning lane before a set of traffic lights, but failed and ended up awkwardly sitting half-between two lanes until the lights changed, because heavens forbid he have to drive at slightly under his maximum possible speed for 30m before getting to a red traffic light in order to stay within the lane...
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Jan 1, 2022 21:52
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Horace posted:hey remember that bit of pavement that doesn't have cars parked on it? well, I remember arguing with some goon a while ago about how electric cars weren't practical for a large chunk of the population who live in a house without a garage or who share a house with multiple other people, because in reality you need to be able to slow-charge an electric car overnight wherever you live for it to be any real use. I think it was 3 olives? They were very insistent that basically nobody would really have an issue finding somewhere to charge their car (hint: it's because they're insanely privileged and have never lived somewhere without off-street parking). Just another reason why electric cars are not the 'answer' and are just another way of rich people pretending to do something about the environment while actually consuming even more resources.
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Feb 4, 2022 20:37
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Horace posted:amazes me that this is like a big scoop. your tyres went smooth and your brake pads got smaller. what did everyone think was happening to that missing rubber and asbestos? hopefully electric cars heavy use of regen will mean a lot less brake dust, but the increased weight probably means more tyre wear. I've brought this up before too, but not only more tire wear but also more road damage. Road damage is proportional to axle weight to the power of 4, so even small increases in vehicle weight result in big increases in road damage rate. It's bad enough that literally every type of car has gotten MUCH heavier over the last few decades, but battery-electric cars are inevitably much heavier again, especially when people DEMAND 300+ miles of range for the one time every few months they go on a road trip. More road damage means more environmental damage. By contrast a bicycle (even an e-bike), being as light as it is, results in functionally zero damage to infrastructure. It also produces much less waste in tire and brake pad wear, again by being light and having almost no power. Personal vehicles could be significantly better for the environment and they could be much more suited to the tasks people actually use them for every day, but road-worthiness regulations explicitly ban these types of vehicles and people have been brainwashed into wanting things that are totally unnecessary for them so would never buy an objectively better option even if it were available. I'm an engineer and I've always been really interested in renewable energy and transportation, I've posted my little fully-faired e-bike/pedal car thing in this thread but I'll do it again: I'd love to design and make a more consumer-friendly type single-person electric vehicle, super light-weight, low top speed, low range, using natural fibre composite materials that would satisfy >90% of daily vehicle trips at a tiny fraction of the environmental damage. But such a vehicle would be illegal in basically all countries and nobody would ever buy it even if they could.
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Feb 4, 2022 22:13
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El Pollo Blanco posted:I'm still lolling that if you actually had to pay RUCs appropriate to its weight on an ev in NZ , and couldn't slow charge the ev at home, the yearly cost to run would be higher than than an efficient non hybrid car Lmao. I thought the Schmee videos on youtube were pretty interesting with regards to owning an EV without home-charge capability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5y4GcGedo IMO it's the perfect example of why you need off-street home charging for EV's to become even remotely viable as every-day vehicles. The dude is like the perfect EV owner: - Mega rich British toff - UK has much better public EV charging infrastructure vs. many other countries - UK also has much shorter distances to drive between places vs. many other countries - Very expensive, brand-new high performance EV And yet he still has huge issues with: - Finding working charging stations - Charging at public fast chargers without wasting hours and half his range just getting to and from the charge point - Fast charging prices being comparable or higher than petrol for the same range Give a similar car to a regular person working one or two full-time jobs, living in high-density housing with only street parking or sharing a suburban house with multiple other people and they'd have to sell it to buy a petrol car within a week.
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Feb 4, 2022 22:58
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Jestery posted:I saw a recumbent for sale for sub $300 the other day on the market place Karach posted:these things seem like a good way to get squished by a truck. To be honest I don't see a ton of reason to get a 'normal' recumbent trike without the velomobile shell unless you have some kind of back or balance issue that precludes you from riding something with two weeks. Fully-faired velomobiles like mine (or the proper commercial ones) have most of the same down-sides as normal trikes, but some pretty significant upsides on account of the body shell including speed, weather protection, luggage space and IMO they're much more visible to other traffic due to their larger visual cross-section and higher speed (and you do get some impact protection from the shells of the commercial ones). Negatives of recumbent trikes to consider before buying one: - They are low and feel way more dangerous in heavy traffic, especially when riding past stopped cars in traffic jams - They're too wide to fit through some gaps, I've found some particularly bad pieces of road/footpath/cycleway design that you'd never know riding a regular bike - They're too heavy and awkward to lift over obstacles, so if you get stuck by a pole or something you're pretty screwed - They're heavier than a regular bike and have greater rolling resistance so they're always going to suck more than a normal bike when going up hills Fully-faired velomobiles have those same issues but IMO the advantages are worth it, especially if you live somewhere relatively flat or if your area has e-bike regulations without a speed limit (like NZ). I actually feel very safe in traffic in mine because I have a motor (legal power limit) which helps me keep up with traffic flow and it's such an unusual thing that everyone really sees me and pays attention (I get a lot of people filming me). I also have LED strips down the sides and back for riding at night which again, makes it WAY more visible to cars than a normal bike. It's also easier to carry a lot of weight due to the stability you get from three wheels, which makes it great for commuting. Gets really hot and sweaty in there in summer though, particularly when stopped or climbing steep hills. Unfortunately given normal levels of human power it's impossible to make an unpowered velomobile easy enough to ride that a normal person could go at a reasonable speed and not end up in a puddle of sweat, especially in a hilly area, which makes it a non-starter for the vast majority of people. Also most countries around the world have e-bike regulations that make fitting a motor hardly worth it, 250W or so is fine in terms of power but a 25 kph speed limit before the motor cuts makes the whole thing pointless because with the aerodynamic fairing you'll quickly go much faster than that even with very little human power. There is an e-bike class in the EU that is allowed to go up to 45 kph and have a 500W motor which is significantly more worth-while, but I think there are some strict regulations covering those (have to be type-certified as mopeds) and the market for these things is so small that it's really not profitable to do.
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Feb 5, 2022 06:26
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:This is true though. If you don't have a garage, you shouldn't have a car. (90% of people shouldn't have a car.) My garage has 7 bicycles in it, and the car sits outside.
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Feb 5, 2022 07:19
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Horace posted:speed bumps were installed on my street. drat I need to buy an SUV so I can hit these speed bumps at full speed without slowing down! <-- Apparently what everyone who drives an SUV down my street with speed bumps thinks. For some reason both myself and my partner have noticed a wild increase in car brain at our end of the street recently. This is a very suburban street in the central part of the city, pretty much exclusively PMC people, families etc. there wouldn't be a house worth less than $1.5M here. Up until a few weeks ago the biggest car parked on the road near us was a Ford Ranger, which already stood out against all the other predominately Japanese and European cars. Then recently somebody got this enormous stupid looking Jeep wrangler rubicon thing with huge tires, winches all over it etc. (never any mud obvs). Now there's another ford ranger parked behind the first one and some landcruisers too ahhhhhh. These are absolutely not used for work purposes, none of them ever go off-road, it sucks arse.
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Feb 7, 2022 19:09
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I've cycled around Munich, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Salzburg, Sydney and Auckland. Munich was kinda meh to ride around, lots of roads but there were also plenty of off-road cyclepaths on the footpaths and it's pretty flat. The company I worked for had an enormous bicycle garage for staff and it was very well used even in the autumn months when I was there. Also had a good underground metro train system. Frankfurt was also quite busy with lots of roads and cars but again there were some good arterial off-road cycleways that were fine to ride on. I did have an old german guy intentionally block me when I was riding along the footpath at one point and admonish me that I had to be riding on the road, despite there being nobody else on the footpath and it being easily wide enough for the two of us. I did ride on the road briefly with a local and didn't feel like I was going to die, but it's not something I'd recommend for a child or somebody not so confident riding in traffic. Copenhagen was obviously pretty awesome to ride around in as bicycles are insanely common and their cycling infrastructure is great. It's super weird to walk down the street and see hundreds of bicycles parked along the side of the road. Definitely still plenty of cars on the road, but they're all so used to bicycles being everywhere that you get the feeling they won't intentionally try to murder you (just accidently). Salzburg I actually really love as a city, small enough to be nice, lots of history and interesting old structures etc. Good arterial cycleways and the places I rode around at least felt pretty safe (but to be fair I was mostly in touristy areas). Sydney and Auckland are obviously pretty lovely compared to the above european cities, but Auckland is probably worse than Sydney. Both have some level of off-road cycleways in the CBD and some along motorways going out through the suburbs, but the suburbs themselves are completely devoid of cycling infrastructure and there are plenty of busy roads that you'd be killed if you tried to ride. Auckland gets the award for being more shithouse due to the only bridge joining the north and south sides of the main harbor in the middle of the city not having even one cycling or walking lane, it's car-only. So if you want to cross the harbor by foot or bike you either have to take a ferry (costs money, doesn't operate in bad weather, limited bicycle spots) or go like 10 or 20km further around. There have been numerous proposals to extend the bridge to include a walking/cycling lane, including one absurd public-private partnership that would have seen the bicycles and pedestrians charged a toll to cross while the cars can drive over for free... Every proposal so far falls apart well before anything actually gets built because nobody in charge actually gives a poo poo. I think the most recent proposal is for a completely new bridge just for people and bicycles, which will inevitably be too expensive and not get built.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:00
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Ardennes posted:Yeah, I heard Auckland sucks, but at least there is a more recent attempt to improve its public transportation in a way you wouldn’t see in the states. Maybe true, but I still weep at the lovely lib-brain half arsed public transport plans for the city. It's crazy to me that for the most populous city in the country there's now zero public transport to/from the airport (used to be an expensive private bus service but that's now gone thanks to covid). There have been plans thrown around by the current government about putting in more public transport but typical of our myopic 3 year election cycle brain politicians they're looking at 'light rail' (trams) pretending to be trains, instead of adding to our existing heavy rail system. This really is a pet peeve of mine having briefly worked in the rail industry. The length of the 'light rail' track they're looking to add is going to be about a 45 minute trip from end to end and be fully underground in new custom-built tunnels and new stations etc. 9 stations in 24 km length, three of which are connections to the existing heavy rail network. What they're describing is basically a metro train system, except 'light rail' was never designed to do that job. Light rail (trams) are designed to operate above-ground, mostly in shared spaces with cars and pedestrians and as such aren't designed to go very fast. They're also not designed for long journeys, people are supposed to be getting on and off frequently as stops are also supposed to be frequent, meaning they have a minimum of seated space and are supposed to be majority standing. Obviously the new light-rail vehicles would be completely different in gauge, signaling, platform design etc. to the existing heavy rail system and so neither vehicle could use the network of the other and people would have to change between the two part-way through their journey in a lot of cases. So why would the government select a vehicle being used in a situation well outside what they were traditionally designed to for, and which is completely incompatible with the existing heavy rail infrastructure while still requiring a completely new tunnel and whole bunch of new stations to be built at great expense? Well if you read the government's report justifying the selection you'll see that their initial down-selection process it was determined that heavy rail, light rail and light metro were the best options, but the main reasons I can see cited for not selecting heavy rail were: - It would be more expensive to build - It was assumed that freight trains would also be able to use the new heavy rail lines because they're able to use the existing lines, and that would cause additional disruption to services and noise to areas nearby to the lines (wtf, can't you just not allow freight onto the new lines?) So yeah, pretty much the reason I've heard in every case where light rail was chosen in a situation that would be better served by heavy rail in Australia and NZ at least. Governments want a cheap option that they can build quickly and deliver before the next election and heavy rail would cost too much and take too long. So instead they go with an option that doesn't connect to the existing network, can't use existing rolling stock, requires people to change between two different networks part-way through their journey and which is ill-suited to the travel times and distances because they're making it do something it was never intended to do.
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Feb 8, 2022 21:04
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Shamelessly stolen from a thread in AI, some nice examples of EV infrastructure creeping into and taking over pedestrian space to solve the 'don't have a garage issue'Olympic Mathlete posted:The problem with a lot of these is at least here in the UK the planners are super loving lazy and install them on already street furnitured out narrow pavements. It's honestly one of the worst things about EVs in cities.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:49
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Lmao why the gently caress couldn't they have had a bicycle roundabout in that pedestrian area on the level under the road surface? I can't find a good picture of it right now but they have exactly that type of infrastructure in Rotorua, NZ: /cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/PTUDACODMTPPKJURY7W3KSNRZU.jpg) There's a roundabout at the top which is the start of a motorway, and there's a separate bicycle and pedestrian roundabout in the middle beneath the road surface. It owns because it's near a huge mountain bike park and a holiday park (caravan park), so we routinely camp at the holiday park and ride our bikes on the cycleway a km or so to the mountain bike trails without ever having to go on the road. As far as shared bicycle and pedestrian paths go, I honestly think that bicycles and pedestrians should be separated in the majority of cases the same way that cars and bicycles should be separated. There's too much of a speed difference there, and to be fair to cyclists I see a lot of pedestrians being selfish too, like walking in a big clump totally blocking the path and refusing to move for passing bicycles.
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Feb 10, 2022 07:03
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 12:59 |
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Sounds like she just mashed the accelerator to get into a gap, panicked and pushed harder. Maybe most cars don't need to go from 0 to 60 in less than half the time they did 10 years ago IDK? That's what concerns me most about a lot of EV's, their only real 'party piece' is accelerating really fast in a straight line, so the car makers are competing with each other by juicing that number.
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Feb 10, 2022 08:24
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