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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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As much a I hate cars I can guarantee that wouldn't work in Canada for at least half the year.
I bike commute year round, but yeah, past a certain point, the cold kills the batteries so I have to switch to a traditional bike: That would be damn near impossible with huge amounts of cargo on anything but completely flat land.
And honestly, that's only one small problem when it comes to Canada. We're huge, we're cold, and we'rereally spaced out.
I would truly love to see a viable solution for this sort of problem though. And like, in the cities I can see this being used for mail cargo and stuff, but not on a large scale.
Are we spaced out though? Obviously distances between our cities is large, but we're 73.7% urban. On par with the EU (75%) and more dense than worldwide (57%). 36% of Canadians commute <5km, 59% <10km.81% <20km.
We like to call size the problem, but in my observation, there are certain activities that require a car, and then we just use the car all the time because we have it already.
When I was in Small-town ON (population 5,000), a car was definately a necessity, you can't get everything you need in town; the bigger town was 30km, and the city was ~200km. Owning a car was a necessity, and I don't think anyone would question that.
However, we all drove everywhere. Work? Drive. McDo/Tim's? Drive. Grocery? Drive. The restaurant/bar? Drive. But the town is maybe 5sq km. Any point in town to any other point in town was <2.5km, but we all drove everywhere.
That's not a question of distance, that's a question of design and making it nice to walk of bike. The trails were rammed on the evenings and weekends (so much so I'd drive around to find parking at the trailhead 1.3km from where I lived...), so it's not like we were fundamentally opposed to, or incapable of, walking/biking/whatever.
The next city closest to me is over an 8 hour drive. My city has a footprint bigger than Vancouver at over 300² KMs. Yes, we are spaced far apart, especially when comparing us to the USA which is where most of these things tend to be marketed. When you add the mountains and bone chilling temperatures I can say with relative certainty that cycling packages and equipment around the city all year round is absolutely not feasible. Even in Edmonton or Calgary this wouldn't work in the winter.
I personally don't own a car, I walk and transit everywhere, and your experience and observation are limited. I'd like my electrician to show up with all of his fingers.
Of course my experience and observations are limited. I've only lived 10 places in Canada.
On weather, when I lived in Yellowknife, it was easier, faster, and cheaper to hop on my bike; than to plug in for 30-120 minutes, idle for 15, and then drive. But that's obviously a pretty compact place. So it's probably more condusive than a southern city like Edmonton. And there's no major hills or mountains to speak of.
Not every place is going to have the same solutions; but a big number of cities can get a lot of trips done with improve transit.
The point is that we need to be doing things to reduce vehicle trips. If bicycle trips are only viable for 7 months a year, that's 7 months less vehicle trips.
If you can only do 50% of you to errands without a car, that's 50% less errands. We have a culture around driving everywhere, and we need to break considering other trips trips are alternatives to driving. Trips where we are driving should only be the ones with no viable alternatives.
And yet you argue all my points that this isn't a good solution for us. I never said it wasn't good for elsewhere. I get the point and I'm on board with reducing driving- and trust me I do my part, but you are never going to get a busy tradesperson riding their cargo around in January. If a solution is only going to work when the weather is perfect it isn't going to convince anyone who has to actually haul around the stuff to switch and that's the biggest hurdle to jump.
I'm sure this would be great in lots of places where it isn't below zero for over half the year.
Definitely more viable in big cities, but until we get solid state batteries that don't get messed up by extreme cold, it's a moot point anyhow.
Maybe if someone develops a warp drive for bicycles it'll become viable away from places like Toronto lol
It's not about speed it's about protection. People need to be warm and safe while traveling between jobs.
Warm can be done easily enough with the right clothing, but yeah, safety is another matter.
Warm clothes can only go so far, you have to still be able to move. Workers need a heat source to replenish themselves, not just to bundle up. To wear all the necessary clothing to keep myself warm for a 45 minute walk adds 15 minutes on to the walk because of how much it bogs me down.