The NYTimes is once again trashing the most promising mobility innovation of the 21st century

If a city cannot manage their bicycle traffic, how should we ever expect them to handle car traffic?

Any problems with bicycles is a simple issue of infrastructure and priority.

"Teens are dying on bikes" - it's because of a bike of it's because of a fucking truck that weighs like 300 bikes?

Elijah Orlandi makes deliveries for Grubhub in the evening after his 9-to-5 job.

“There are scenarios where people have the right to be upset,” said Orlandi, who lives in the Bronx and has been making e-bike deliveries for Grubhub — in addition to his 9-to-5 job — since October. He has seen e-bike riders “swerving in between cars and all that kind of stuff.” But Orlandi is also hoping for compassion. “People got to understand, we’re working,” he said. Delivery apps, he noted, keep track of how quickly workers make their drop-offs — and ding them if they take too long. “Sometimes you’ll be going somewhere and Grubhub will send you another order, and then no matter what you do, you’re going to be late,” he said. “So that’s why you’ll see a lot of people rushing.”

Surely the problem here this dude's e-bike. Not that people need to do gig job on top of 9-5 work day, unaffordable rent, inflation, and exploitative gig economy platform

First New York Times came for the Palestinians. And I didn't speak out because I was not a Palestinian.

Then they came for my e-bike and there was no one left to speak for me.

I wonder if it has anything g to do with all the advertisements for luxury cars in every edition of the paper... :-/ Cheers for the post.

Listen here now I've played simcity and good transport is the backbone of a strong economy.

With ICE, you control the population by controlling the oil. Like rest of the world has to eat up price raise without much retaliation, what else you're going to do, you have to work and you depend on oil. But since China is the major producer of batteries and EVs, the nations that dictate the policies are losing that control.

So US does what it does best, propagandize the masses. Mass produced solar panels are bad, EVs are unreliable, e-bikes are a menace.

The world powers will turn the world to ruins if it serves their interests.

Ebikes will be banned in most of North America in 5 years, calling it now :/

the fuck? how do you hate on e-bikes but are okay with e-cars?

In Rio de Janeiro happened something like this. An old woman and a children were walking on the bike lane and an ebike crashed to them and killed the old woman. A city councilperson hurried up to make a law banning e-bikes from bike lanes, saying that they should use the car infrastructure, but the Mayor vetoed the project.

Posting the article here so you all can make your own minds up.

Genocide deniers and enablers also happen to be in the pocket of the regime that wants us all wasting our lives in traffic when we are not working to make them rich.

I love my e-bike.

Having an ebike in New York is what having a car in any other major American city is supposed to work like (but can’t because car-centric infrastructure is terrible city design)

Nothing is more than 30 minutes from me. There’s parking everywhere. Only requires low cost infrastructure to be usable. Traffic jams are infrequent and short-lived. Ownership and fuel costs are low. Environmentally friendly. Quiet. Great for recreation. Is very safe for the user and pedestrians.

Yet, electric trains are a better alternative to most people's transport.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The voice of fascism.

There's definitely no bias at all here /s

No NYC is a nightmare because it's NYC

These bastards!

Mass transit probaby has less overhead

NYC's cyclists (of whom I know many) need to follow traffic laws.

Those laws are there because people need to act predictably on the street. When a red light becomes a mere suggestion for cyclists, motorists eventually start treating them as such as well. Monkey see, monkey do.

...and getting t-boned by some douchecanoe driving a car when you have the light is commonly fatal for a cyclist.

There was an uptick in utterly shitty driving from 2019 onwards in NYC, and the police stopped all enforcement actions even in egregious cases... then the roads became, and largely remain, a free-for-all. I've seen some attempts recently to start clearing the mess up, but too often NYPD are ignoring these dangerous road users... or hiding their license plates and being offenders themselves.

...and this is before you're fighting for space in a the bikelane with some drunk+stoned asshole on a moped.

I'm fully in favor of delivery professionals being required to have a license and display it at all times when on the clock. They should also be required to have specific insurance, and a highly visible personal identifier when working. They should also get automatic Union representation and a living wage.

Anything more powerful than a class-C e-bike should have a license plate, and if not it gets taken and destroyed, or auctioned to a more responsible owner. Sales of these vehicles without a registration needs to be illegal. Anything more powerful than a class-C e-bike found in a bike lane should be impounded on the spot. Running a stop sign or a red light should get you a ticket, regardless of what wheels you're on. Going the wrong way down a one way street should get you a ticket.

It doesn't help that NYC doesn't have the space and largely practices "maximum-conflict" street design... but that's just the slow, shitty entropic action of self-serving interests pushing communities around, and they react very slowly. It takes (usually multiple) fatalities for anyone to wake up and actually do anything about it.

Also wear a damned helmet.

I haven't read the articles because there is no link to them, but in my city there would be very valid reason for complaint about ebikes because the same sociopath tendencies that people exhibit while driving cars are moving to ebikes. These fuckers ride them like goddamned motorcycles, except whooshing right next to people on trails and sidewalks meant to be shared or in some cases, primarily used by, pedestrians.

If I were to guess the average speed of ebike riders I would say around 25 mph and you usually don't even see any pedaling.

I've learned to despise them because what's happened is that the people who don't want to deal with car problems but are too lazy to pedal have brought car-type problems to spaces that used to only be shared with bikes.

The problem is obviously with shit actors but what can we do about it? Until there are laws enforced about speeding and riding like an asshole, nothing will change. Which in my mind won't happen without articles or something else bringing it to the attention of people who don't actually deal with these assholes.

I wonder if anything happened at NYT in the last two years; they were quite positive about e-bikes in 2020 to 2022.

what i've learned is that I'd much rather live in this echo chamber with windows to the outside than in another echo chamber

I skimmed the picture first, and thought you were talking about escooters which are terrible, ebikes are great though.

What, the NYT is demonizing bicycles?

Oh, wait.

E-bikes.

Right.

Because I guess pedaling is too hard for people that live in one of the flattest cities in the world.

Don't be surprised, Bezos bought the NYT in 2013 IIRC and has been taking a "more active position" over this past year.

Dude fuck e-bikes too, one of my closest friends was killed on one of those things, I hate cars too (especially the panel van that killed him), but let's not pretend e-bikes are in anyway safe

lol.. in the Bay (Northern California), E-Bikes would be left abandoned on the side walks and parking lots. I never seen the organization that provides these e-bikes have someone or a team drive around and pick them up..

All I assume is that the e-bikes are used up until their battery is dead and they're left abandoned right on the spot. I assume the battery has enough life in it still to be located and picked up and placed back into their charging stations.

Edit: Wait not e-bikes, e-scooters.

Media praising bikes - "Look see they work"

Media criticising bikes - "Huh, would you believe the media spin right?"