The person on the left is carrying bags, the one in orange is a delivery driver and a couple of people are wearing backpacks. Aside from car brained, Damaris is also blind.
In this vein, I saw a comment on Lemmy that speaks to this. I'm paraphrasing but it really woke me up. The person said that Americans choose on edge cases and not standard use case. I realized I felt that way about ICE cars vs EV and I am a cyclist. It is amazing how we can have blinders on.
Yea, car congestion isn’t about industrial transport, it’s about personal transport. All of the people commuting to/from work etc in single person occupied tanks.
You can stack at least 3 crates on the back of the bike if you have a bag carrier, 2 otherwise.
Then 1 or 2 on the bar between your legs, and 1 on the steering bar, or 2 if you also have a bag carrier there.
Ebike recommended if they're full, but it's way doable when bringing them back to the store.
I live in the very non flat south East of the Netherlands.
We still do everything on bike. Groceries, mail, like 4 children while carrying groceries and being on the phone.
When I used to be on twitter and in response to idiotic comments like that, I would post the video of the guy cycling with a fridge on his back, one of someone moving a piano, several tradesmen that quit their vans to use cargo bikes, the pedal cab company in London (proper cargo bikes not the shitty tourist things) and the mother of 6 from Portland that had a cargo bike to take them all to school.
You're a fucking idiot if you think roads were only built for the transportation of goods & services as they were superceded by canals then by railways.
It was a massive step backwards in inefficiency in an orchestrated move by vehicle manufacturers that freight was shifted back to roads.
And the guys (yes, more than one) carrying fridges on their shoulders while cycling, have more fucking balls than you'll ever dream of having.
Having lived in Utrecht, yes all those stores in the picture, completely empty, also all the people on bikes are happy to finally have the chance to sit after spending their day in a house without furniture.
Clearly they're not bringing the goods, they're bringing the services. That clown even said it himself. Refers to goods and services then only talks about the goods.
Also many pedestrianized streets allow for deliveries with larger vehicles! These just have to drive more carefully and slower for the last couple hundred meters. Usually just a city block or two.
A perk of belonging to my city's bike advocacy group is that you can rent this for no additional charge:
64″ aluminum truss-frame trailer; easily carry a 4×8 sheet of plywood, eight bags of groceries, or whatever else you can fit on it up to 300 lbs; holds 4 plastic tote boxes before stacking
Nosireebob, can't haul stuff around with that... /s
Trying to persuade the (amazingly) only contractors on the entire planet that think they need a tiny-penis truck because they occasionally need to pick up some wood from Howm Deeepo to ride a bike is like trying to get blood from a stone
My dad has a solid bike trailer. It's not as big as your group's one, but he can do about a WinCo shopping cart worth in it. That's plenty for the vast majority of their household needs.
Throughout history, most people have lived within an hour of work.
The biggest difficulty is retrofitting cities that have developed in the last century. Places that have been around for centuries were developed with walking in mind. Places that were developed around the automobile and climate contril are very difficult to convert.
The world has both quadrupled in population and urbanized over the past century as the car became the primary mode of transit in much of the world.
The only thing that makes transitioning even possible is that the landlord class would love to return to feudaliam.
It's actually still doable, but requires some creative thinking to undo the damage done for half century. Train can carry people from suburb into the city, the last mile can be solved either by brt, tram, or by micromobility. Bus, tram, and bicycle need their own dedicated lane for this to work nicely. This won't necessarily prevent people from driving but it will make driving not the only way to go to work.
Places that were developed around the automobile and climate contril are very difficult to convert.
Iirc Amsterdam is basically that, it used to be car-centric but the government take away that monopoly and give it back to bicycle and micro-mobile. Paris is another recent example on how bicycle usage is rising if given the proper safety infrastructure to ride around. It's also a car-centric city before this.
It's not that it's hard, it's just lack of political will and dinosaur way of thinking. It's something that never crossed their mind.
You can't just dictate what you believe roads should be for and think everyone should agree with it as fact. Roads are for a lot of things, and even in this guy's narrow definition, people are goods, in fact they are the most important and valuable goods on the roads.
That's one of the busiest intersections in Utrecht, especially in the weekend with buses, cyclists, pedestrians and some cars. It's pretty easy to navigate too
But I mean, it doesn't matter if you can't carry a single 2x4x24ft lumber from home Depot to your house or from the lumber hard to home Depot. We got the main roads for that so big trucks can do that. Just commuting yourself from your house to work and back is enough.
In Amsterdam I got to see lots of little human powered delivery vans though. Mostly DHL. It was awesome to see. So it is doable in flat locations for sure.
Ok so before your anti car brain downvotes this... Read me out.
It's a legitimate question for cities that do remove most car access, some essential items (fridges for example) do break and they do need to be replaced. A Bike won't do to transport these types of things (mattress is another example) what's the solution to this logistics issue?
I'm all for car fucking don't get me wrong but the image does raise an reasonable question, and i feel it deserves reasonable answers not just 'fuck you you stupid car brained fuck head' which is the majority of these comments.
I don't think car access should ever be completely removed. The way it's done in most pedestrian/bike areas around here is that trucks (delivery and trash pick up) are all done within a small window of time. Outside of that, no cars are allowed besides the one or two security vehicles that move at walking speed if they even move at all.
See, the way you're phrasing it is a legitimate question. I notice you didn't give a smug description of what a road is for and you didn't continue to point out that bicycles don't fit all use cases.
To answer the question, there's a few ways. Some furniture stores rent out cargo bicycles (like IKEA) and inner cities do allow traffic specifically for delivery of goods in a lot of places.
The Netherlands does have access for those things. Its the petrolheads who make up that they dont. Otherwise we'd see their cities failing. And there are cargo bikes for many things. My Cousin's partner rides one thats like a mini boxvan, half electric with a solar panel on the top.
If the above is about the Netherlands then cars are rarely every completely banned. Mostly restricted and trucks for supplying businesses are allowed (although they often have to be low emission if it's downtown).
Idunno, maybe they don't get all' their shit delivered in front? Maybe there are trucks in back instead of clogging up the front door that customers use to get in and buy things? Maybe there's a damn train underneath all' this! How 'bout that! Nyeehh!!! 😝
Furniture gets moved by bike here all the time in the Netherlands ?
We got this amazing invention called a bakfiets (tub bike) or we just balance it on the back.
Bicycle trailers are a thing for a reason. I'm sure hauling a washer and dryer would be difficult but a sofa is easily achievable. For heavy stuff most places offer delivery for free or really cheap
@HexesofVexes@nehal3m Cycling commute times can be pretty compeditive in big cities, driving can have very bad worst case speeds where cycling is very stable.
The pictured example in Melbourne is 0:35 to 1:40 by car and 1:25 by bike. Yes the car will frequently win, but you can leave later to guarantee being in the office by 9. (TOA was set to 8:55am)
(The best and fastest is cycle to local station and catch the train)
I didn't realize that your commute to work required you to haul furniture and large appliances every day. Guess everyone needs a pickup then. Fuck public health and safety.
Even Belfast only allows access to the city centre for vehicles doing deliveries. It's not uncommon to see one, but I mean a single one generally in the centre of a capital city
They are asking a question regarding something they do not understand.
It is a true statement that roads are used to transport goods and services.
They then simply ask who in the video is carrying goods and products into stores/homes, and how workers move goods from ports to the stores.
They don't know how a system like this works when it comes to, for example, stocking a grocery store, because they have not worked or lived in a place with infrastructure like this.
It's just ad hominem and poor practice to call someone blind when they aren't familiar with something, particularly when they seem interested in how it works, and works contrary to convincing people of the cause.
If someone has worked with punch cards to program a computer all their life, and someone showed them software written the python programming language and they said:
"But the punch card is so that the computer can read in bytes to know what to do, in this text I don't see any bytes, there's nothing telling the computer if this is little endian or big endian, it all looks like a book. How does the text tell the computer what to do?"
Then my response would NOT be "Well the list comprehension here is yielding a range of numbers which are sent to the print function, and this class is acting as a signal handler. Aside from punch card brained, you're also blind".
My response would be a very happy opportunity to explain to them the benefits of a modern programming language versus punch cards, and how it works in comparison.
Unless this is a person known to be explicitly anti-bike and pro-car, it is bad to be this critical of them and works in no one's favor.
I'm skeptical of all that - surely they understand that roads carry more than just goods and services. It's such a basic part of society that you'd have to be from another planet to be confused about that and build a whole argument based on it.
It is a true statement that roads are used to transport goods and services.
They then simply ask who in the video is carrying goods and products into stores/homes, and how workers move goods from ports to the stores.
It's a very simplistic and reductive view of roads, though, in response to a post that specifically mentions another function of roads, namely, facilitating people's travels as individuals for their own purposes. It's like you telling someone you like using lemmy because you've found communities you enjoy participating in and individuals you like talking to, and they go, "But the internet is for commerce, the buying and selling of goods! Who is selling and who is buying in these instances?"
Your example is overly charitable, in my opinion. Not everyone is being malicious with these sorts of questions, but the person is ignoring some pretty clear context explaining other uses of roads to go attach a strawman. At the very least, it seems like a bad faith argument.
Alright, I don't generally agree with you guys in this subreddit since cars man freedom from landlords to me. This person in the pic though? Absolute lunacy! I'm just dying to see the look on their face when someone sets them straight!
yesyes the stores are all just there to be pretty, you can't buy things from them, everyone was completely stumped by how to get the stuff into the place so nobody tried and now we're all dead of brain herpes. Jesus.
Three entirely different use-cases there. Commuting, logistics and... Well, the port thing is also logistics but it kinda shouldn't intersect with a city downtown?
Not to mention that nowhere are cars completely restricted, you can have professional trucks and such.
Now, does everyone need to own their own car to move pianos, or should it just be a piano-moving service you hire the one time a year you need a piano moved?
A truck carrying freight ≠ a person driving home groceries. Groceries that typically fill up a car's trunk just for 2-3 people; a bicycle isn't carrying that. You'd need a rickshaw-like cart hooked onto it. They do exist though, for passengers, so making one for personal cargo loads is doable.
I wouldn't want to do any of that in winter, though. Snow, ice, and sub-zero wind-chill (plus the further cooling effect while moving) are not when anyone should ever be on a bicycle.
Also, driving to a larger grocery store is non-negotiable for us because they're the ones who stock the lower-demand allergy-safe foods. Guess how much a corn allergy sucks in America, on top of others. While most allergies and medical conditions are rarer than not, they are a huge problem.
Didn't get me started on commuting - and youn literally can't remote-work a labor job. Imagine having to make a 30+ minute car commute on a bicycle on top of a 9+ hour day.
So while yes, fuck cars, bicycles are not anywhere close to a magic bullet. Our entire civilization needs a comprehensive bottom-up overhaul that addresses every problem simultaneously, since most of them are interconnected.
Groceries, in particular, are more of an effect than a cause. Lots of people live without cars in New York City, or London, or Paris, or Toronto, or Tokyo, and they manage to eat. The reason you need to buy 7 days worth of food for two people all at once is because you live in a field far away from everything. "Getting Groceries" becomes a special trip, because, while driving, leaving the highway, stopping and parking are inconvenient.
As a pedestrian in a city, I was going to walk past 5 food stores on my way between work and home anyway, and it's really not problem to walk in and buy only what I ran out of yesterday, or some special item I wanted for tonight's dinner. It's simple to shop for 5 or 10 minutes, five times a week, rather than one hour once a week, and never need more than a single bag of groceries at a time. And rather than being inconvenient, it's actually great because I'm only buying what I need right now, the things I'm going to use as soon as I get home, so it's very simple.
Allergies could be tricky, yeah. If you're lucky the local shop, by nature of being smaller and more local, actually knows you and knows you need this stuff and stocks it because they know you'll buy it from them. But that's not a guarantee, for sure. That having been said, if the only people driving were people with corn allergies, the roads would be a much safer place!
I'm all for way less cars on the road, but, what do all these people with some form of physical disability that limits their movement abilities? I rarely ever see this brought up in the debate, what form of independent travel can these people use in a carless society that won't be impeded by their physical issues? Something that gives them the freedom to live their life and not rely on some form of ride sharing experience that takes their freedoms from them?
We can't leave people behind for a quick solution.
Mobility scooters, public transport, ect. Because of the overfocus on cars, acessibility is badly neglected and this needs to change.
What about the people that are unable drive a car because of physical or mental disabilities or age? Or the people that are allowed to drive but shouldn't? There are vastly more of them than people who couldn't ride a bike but can drive a car.
And yeah, unfortunately getting rid of cars completely is not going to happen, but cars will work so much better when the only people driving are those with no other alternative.
Fuck cars is about using our resources better to improve mobility for all.
None of this is about total 100% bans on cars, just making the option of not using a car nicer than using one. Even where car bans exist options still exist for delivery vehicles.
Public transit exists and is often better than driving depending on the disability.
In the current system we leave behind everyone that can't afford to buy and maintain a car, which is a staggeringly large number already.
it's not like a lot of disability that would still allow them drive in the first place, and if they need someone else to get them around, other form factors still work just as well. Just making places walkable will still accomodate mobility devices better than roads for cars anyways.
I'll get downvoted being in this community, but in extreme climates where it goes down to - 30 Celsius and has up to 230cm of snow a season, bikes don't work.
This is another version of the comment people are mocking. 'Ah, but in this incredibly extreme situation, bikes are inefficient!' Yeah, I know, mate. I wasn't planning on biking to the south pole with a fridge on my back, was I? The point is not that bikes are the best solution for every single journey any human has made or will ever make, but that cars aren't the best solution the vast majority of the time.
They work better than cars do. Not long ago on my bike commute in a blizzard I had to keep getting off to help get stuck cars moving again, then if happily ride off...
And handling the cold is easier when riding than walking to and waiting for trains and buses because you generate your own heat. People ski in those conditions. It's just a matter of the right clothes and equipment and not being soft as fuck.
I'd be keen to know your (or others) experience of biking and driving in those conditions because in my experience cars aren't well suited to those temperatures either. I don't have direct experience of biking in that low but I know people who do and they swear by it.
Of course you could throw fuel at it and keep your car running all the time to stop it from freezing. 😷
Montrealer here. When roads are unplowed, cars also struggle. When it's too cold, cars also struggle.
I live at the top of a gentle slope and as soon as it starts snowing, cars are slipping and sliding down the slope. There's even a famous video of exactly this kind of thing, with cars, buses, police and snow plows just sliding down the slope.
Cars need very well maintained roads to work in winter. Those roads can also be used by bikes. And if you plow bike paths and bike lanes, just like we do for cars, cycling in winter is usually no big deal. Sometimes while cars are slipping down I can observe cyclists being able to climb the same slope. Or they just push the bike up on foot and continue on their way.
I use my bike in winter and can assure you that it is working.
Addendum: I am a simple man. When is starts snowing I just sit by my window and watch cars struggle to go uphill. In fact, I record it.
Also, just to continue on your points. It's not -30C every day and snow here is usually plowed within a few hours, AND removed within a few days. Extreme weather is extreme, and one should avoid driving in during heavy snowfall anyway. So either you're on a bike, or in a car that you must dig out of a snow bank, or using public transit, if the weather is extreme, everyone is going to have a less than perfect day.
The only reason bikes don't work in -30 is because there isn't infrastructure to support them and if there is it isn't maintained properly. I was going to link examples, but it seems other people already have.
I do 65 minutes in the morning to work, and 80-85 coming home
I think you'll find most !fuckcars members will also be big advocates for zoning reform that enables more people to live closer to their work. Nobody should be living a 65 minute drive from their work unless it's purely by choice. They shouldn't even be a 65 minute bike ride away from their workplace.