Its an interesting article about subsidizing ebikes.
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E-bikes work as a car replacement for short-to-medium distances, and it would be a huge net benefit to facilitate that shift for as many people as possible, in as many situations as possible. So to make that happen, you obviously also want to roll out safe, protected cycling networks in tandem with these subsidies.
I think E Bikes are amazing, but people don’t seem to take their speed seriously enough in my area. Those things absolutely crank, and people seem to have no concept of their potential danger to themselves, pedestals or other motorists. Nearly 30 mph isn’t a joke, and they seem to ride on the sidewalks here rather than the roads.
I was highly skeptical before reading the article, but the author made great points and I’m actually fully on board with that, now. I was even wondering if my state had plans to do something like this, then I read this at the end of the article:
Meanwhile, many states aren’t waiting for federal action. Hawaii, Connecticut, Colorado and Massachusetts either already offer subsidies or intend to.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing. This really changed my perspective.
Wouldn’t e-bikes be a relatively stopgap measure? They still require a relatively advanced and carbon-wasteful technological base, after all: maintenance and repair for the bikes themselves (including regular replacement batteries, which are definitely NOT environmentally friendly), plus paved roads in good repair (again, requiring a lot of fossil fuel expenditure).
There’s also the likelihood that as the Earth’s environment becomes increasingly hazardous we’ll require protection from the elements more and more often - protection which would be difficult to add to a bike of any sort.
The US military has projected that basic infrastructure in the USA will be collapsing throughout much of the country in less than twenty years. It’s hard to see how ebikes will be practical under those conditions. Gearing towards long-term lower-tech solutions would seem to be a wiser choice.
Which long-term lower-tech solutions are you talking about concretely?
Maintenance and Repair, regular batteries, etc
I don’t think you understand how simple E-bikes are, they are essentially just bikes, and their maintenance and repair vs any car is miles away, even if we only consider the savings vs oil changes, not to mention things like car batteries or tires.
I ride an e-bike exclusively to get around, usually several hundred miles a month, for the past 3 years, and my battery is still at near the capacity when it was new. I don’t think a new battery every 10 years (if that) counts as “regular replacements”, again comparing to the amount of waste involved in automobiles.
Yes, comprehensive public transport would be better overall, but that requires large amounts of public coordination and money, and still takes away agency from the commuter. An e-bike is relatively cheap, and can be a switch made on a person-to-person basis, so you don’t need to fund a billion dollar train to make progress, you just need to get as many people as you can on bikes.
And, crucially, if the batteries all die and we’re in the apocalypse… It’s still a bicycle. You can still pedal around like normal
