I have a 10 year old hub drive ebike that’s on its third battery which I love dearly and don’t particularly want to replace but I have no idea what I’d upgrade to when I do
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also it’s always a weird feeling having these urban design and urban commuting conversations after having lived in vancouver for 13 years because we were like, way way ahead of the curve on ebikes and bike lanes (to the point where it felt obnoxious to talk about to others, in a look-how-great-it-is-here sense) up until like 4 years ago when they started getting this stuff everywhere else and now (deservedly) no one is too excited about our deal anymore
it’s great! I just, as usual, feel like my enthusiasm is/was on completely the wrong schedule
i think e-bikes these days go into two main categories - “i’m just a normal-ass bike that happens to have pedal assist” vs “fuck your car use me for everything”
to me that’s a pretty good sorting method to figure out what you’d like, even down to the companies, since all of the traditional bike companies (specialized, trek, etc.) are just making normal bikes that they’ve attached motors to and all of the up and coming e-bike companies (radpower, tern, etc.) are trying to be car replacements
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Yeah lots of the folks who are getting into ebikes right now are definitely more interested in partially or completely abandoning cars or other transport systems (in LA, I’ve seen people wanting to avoid the unreliable bus service) so a LOT of the newer brands offer extremely cargo-capable bikes. If you don’t like the size, weight, or look of the Tern type rear-cargo bikes, you can also get a very cargo capable bike by buying something from a regular web ebike brand like Ride1Up or Rad that comes with a rack, then hanging panniers off it. I now do all my grocery shopping with panniers on the back of my RadCity.
There’s also a whole category of ebike out there which is heavily used for transport but also for leisure. It’s essentially the “illegal moped” category… those are the souped up Super73 or Ariel Rider-style bikes that have a cafe racer look and sometimes heavy modification. Not all of these are moving at illegal speeds, but they’re certainly capable of it, haha, and when I see an ebike going faster than 20-24 MPH, it’s always one of these. They have large empty spaces inside the frame perfectly sized for strapping in an extra imported battery… Somehow though I doubt this category would interest you, as you already have a motorcycle, haha. Every time I go to DTLA however I see one or more older guys standing around with one of these bikes in the train station late at night and they’ve got it incredibly souped up and modified with all sorts of aftermarket parts. It seems like a fun hobby!
Also, if you were thinking of getting a new ebike, definitely sell your old one. The demand for these is immense even if they are old, particularly if you can prove that the battery is not as old as the rest of the bike.
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Sitting on a train 10 hours today (right now) and 10 hours Sunday so I can go to my cousin’s wedding tomorrow. About as long as the drive would have been, which I would have done without thinking about it if we still had 2 cars. Probably about 50% more expensive than the gas would have been. I should do this more often.
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I find the DIY aspect of ebikes to be really interesting, if only because parts are generally readily available and they all generally “fit” together universally with a minimal amount of fabrication.
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Man, I really wish the US had more train routes that covered the same ground as flights for city-to-city hops, etc. I think people would gravitate to trains over flights pretty quickly. Immediately thrifty or broke people would go train, of course. But then people would start to think, “Hey wait a sec. I show up to the flight two hours early, drive an hour to the middle of nowhere, and it takes me an our to get out of the airport and probably another hour to where I’m going… The train might actually be faster, and nobody shoots x-rays through my skull and makes me throw out my water three times.” I think people who could afford flights would end up going train pretty often as well.
I’m not terribly romantic about trains, but they simply have a lot more dignity than air travel, and (imo) sitting in traffic.
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yeah taking the amtrak down to SF from Seattle was one of the most relaxing and enriching travel experiences possibly ever, aside from not getting much sleep due to the car rocking back and fourth and stopping all night. It’s a very easy ride down to Portland, as opposed to a comparatively stressful drive down.
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cubes drove way way more than I ever had to for work on a regular basis so I get the intense desire to be nowhere near a car but I think committing to 10 hours on amtrak is nuts compared to driving or flying, it’s just not that comfortable or well-priced or reliable, wish it was, but.
all US rail journeys under about 3 hours are good, and anywhere that builds rail that’s intended to be used for journeys of <3 hours is way better for it. above that and all bets are off
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Well, when I talk about glorious train futures, I’m mostly walking about subways, trolleys, and skytrains within cities (which are unbeatable on any level if you build enough stops), and hypothetical bullet trains (which have to go mostly straight with really broad turns, due to the speed, need flattened terrain, etc.).
For, like, all of New England of course trains are already competing with flights and cars and are pretty popular. Bullet trains could probably be added in some cases, though bullet trains tend to have very expensive tickets, so it’s not really clear if they’d be all that popular.
But for more far-flung trips, here’s some napkin math for fun.
The fastest bullet trains go about 200mph, Amtrak goes about 100mph, a cheaper train about 80mph, and a 777 goes about 650mph.
NYC to Atlanta (arbitrary city choices; picking far but not too far) is about an 800 mile drive, 13-14 hours (says Google maps). It’s a 2.5 hour flight. It would be about 8-9 hours by conventional train, 4-5 hours by my fantasy bullet train (which I’m not sure if feasible by the terrain).
Given those options, my preference ranking would be be bullet train, flight, conventional train, bus (assuming the bullet train isn’t more expensive than the flight and has equally convenient departure times, etc.)
The difference in travel time between the flight and bullet train is made up for by how much time you spend driving to the airport and dealing with security theater, and the train would probably be more centrally located on both ends.
If it were a crappy ol train instead–hey: probably beats driving or the bus.
Edit: to re-iterate, this is pure napkin math. I’ve never taken a 10 hour train myself, and for all I know there are existing train routes between NYC and Atlanta, and they would take 24 hours, because they’re not designed to be used together, etc. etc. I’m totally open to hearing real life stories of how, “Well…it doesn’t really work that way…”
Edit edit: actually, I did take a 9 hour sleeper car train in Vietnam. But never in the US. It was fun, but–y’know–I was on vacation with friends, and it was a sleeper car; so yeah.
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CityNerd on youtube has quite a lot of videos about high speed rail, which includes some info about planned high speed rail routes in North America. The most surprising stuff to me was the planned routes in Texas. Within a couple hundred miles trains outcompete airplanes in so many ways it’s not even funny, haha.
The whole playlist of his HSR content is here but here’s the most illustrative one about the convenience of faaaaast trains:
I took HSR on my recent trip to [redacted] in Europe and it was a dream. City to city, direct, 2 hours, just enough time for a delicious nap. I wish the weather had been better because the videos and pictures I took look kind of gloomy and blurry, haha. I want that for the US so bad!! I already take 18 hour Amtrak rides on the regular because I’m an enthusiast, but the fast trains are SO nice.
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I last rode the TGV in 2008 and it really hurt my ears but it was very nice otherwise
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the disastrous high speed rail plan in california is kind of an object lesson in why we cant have nice things like that in the usa
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I don’t think I even want people to travel between SF and LA in 2033. who’s gonna be doing that.
(that said they’re planning to fulfill the 3 hour cutoff so after 25 years this should technically be some version of successful)
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meeeeeeeeeeee
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the reroute from bakersfield to palmdale before going to burbank is just like. too funny. you could not invent a funnier way for local politicians to fuck this thing up.
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This is objectively wrong as far as I can see. The drive would be the same time and the same expense, especially because I would’ve had to rent. Flying would’ve been more expensive, especially getting tickets this late, and way more of pain in the ass. And the train is head and shoulders more comfortable than both. Like I said if we still had a second car I would’ve just drove without thinking about it, but that would’ve been stupid. Now I’m gonna think about it.
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In general yes the high speed of flight gets more cost effective the longer the trip is. I’d never take a trip coast to coast on a train, but Baltimore to Charleston it was perfect. Getting all the way down to Florida would put flying back on top for sure.
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but what if you took the train where you can put your car on the train so you can have your car in florida but don’t have to drive there
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there are a limited number of places I would even want to show up without a car in the US these days. I did all that academic conference travel as cheaply and adventurously as I could manage 10 years ago, I was always researching where I could get commuter trains from spillover airports and so on, and (maybe I have this in common with @u_u as well) I’ve spent enough time both in and out of america that I don’t have a ton of latent enthusiasm for not playing to most places’ already existing strengths.
that said I’ve always wanted to go to charleston (I think I can finagle a work thing there around this time next year) and I’m sympathetic to the “how do we avoid having to own two cars” question, that’s part of why I have a motorcycle now
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