I think the endorsement was just bad journalism or bad writing and Bezos just did not want to risk it. If such an endorsement would come out in such a divided climate, then i would want it to be excellent. Maybe it was just partisan.
They endorsed in 2020 and 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and if they were so serious about adopting national neutrality they should have announced this in January instead of spiking an existing endorsement
But this is past. Each time had its own challenges. For example, i learned so much about how media and partisanship works in the past years. It is so obvious and visible to me now. Maybe others feel the same and thats why an endorsement would feel disingenuous. It has to be reasonable and believable. But maybe it was not.
Squirrels block everything. Just the amount matters.
The fact is if you travel around anywhere you will not be blocked by people or bikes. This is a car problem. Or, rather, it should be their problem but becomes everyone's problem.
In train stations i am constantly blocked by people. Or subway stations. Or even in these metal boxes, oh my god, i chose my own metal box anytime of this congestion. ;)
Yeah, current cities are not built to maintain all possible modes of transportation. And so you had a short interruption of a city favouring bikes and causing all kind of chaos, while everyone else had to suck it up. And so the pendulum swings, and someone else is trying to work out the city transportation problem. Personally, i wanted a privileged skateboard lane, but no lobby for that.
You know, i enjoy cycling as much as many others. But in the end, it is an illusion. Motorized biking is already making the lanes dangerous. And i have seen bike rage more often than i did in cars. So, in the end, we will just go again the same road, with how we ended up with cars: we want to go from A to B, sometimes as a leisure activity, sometimes regular, sometimes in a rush. Thats why we used cars or motor bikes (And to avoid mass transport in metal boxes, heh).
Personal anecdote: I wanted to paint my apartment. It was so hard to get someone to do it. Because no one wanted to come to the city. The effort to find parking nearby was not worth the hassle to just paint my little apartment.
We will see where this goes to and how we will change or rebuild the cities. But surely not for bikes only.
Biking is good for your health in ways driving will never be.
You can't just look at biking from a purely transportation lens. It's better for your population for other reasons as well, having your people exercise regularly saves you millions in healthcare costs.
Not only that, but bikes do factually use less space than cars. Which frees up space for other things in the city.
I think public transportation is important to complement bikes, you're not supposed to bike to the other side of the city.
But people already use bike lanes with bikes that have a motor. They do not care about health benefits. Thats maybe a reason for us health buffs.
And no one argues about the advantages from bikes. But there are arguments for cars too. Or for planes. And for any other mode of transportation. Thats why the exist. :)
That is not necessarily true, I know multiple people who switched to electric bikes.
The first effect for them is that they ride the bike more, because they know when they are exhausted or there are nasty hills they can add more of the motor in. So unless people (like delivery people) ride only with the motor, them using the bike more is already a win.
This is going in the right direction. Increased adoption of small electrified vehicles in densely populated areas to replace the larger and more dangerous large vehicles especially trucks/SUVs. In the end we could have roads for small EVs and walkways for people, and no cars/trucks like we have today.
I do not know. In asia you have heavy usage of scooters. And still you have congestion. Its always about amounts and how traffic can be directed, no matter the mode of transportation.
They are indeed crazily low. The real prize is just hidden by subsidy. But more and more the true cost will be revealed. There is no free lunch.
But hey, germany could never really decide, are they living in an authoritarian, left or right utopian la-la-land or in a free country. For some time the american influence was huge, but i fear, the influence will diminish and the pendulum swings again.
I'd wager that those subsidies have very strong returns on investment. From a thermodynamic standpoint, trains are clearly the most efficient long distance transportation technology. The inefficiencies almost always appear as cost.
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