I know this just a meme, but literally the answer is infrastructure.
Where I live there are no separated cycle paths and it is illegal to ride on the footpath. Combine that with a hostile car culture, and it is simply too dangerous at present for me to consider.
They are building a separated cyclepath near me, however, so once that is in place I’ll be doing most commuting by bike.
I’m convinced that everyone hates driving, but they don’t understand why. They are innundated by ads showing people who love driving, but those people are always alone on the road. It builds the illusion that it is traffic that is bad, not driving.
Driving is really exciting the first several times you do it as a teenager. But I’m unconvinced that anyone could continue to enjoy it if they did it for an hour a day for decades. Even if there was no traffic at all.
Daily? Because they get trapped in a situation that doesn’t give them options. I live near the bus/light rail in my city, but the best job opportunity I got is 20 miles further out towards the exurbs. Its a 30 minute drive vs a 90 min bus/bike trip. Looking for something much nearer as the commute sucks, but when we build our cities like we do it really limits our citizens’ options sometimes
Yeah I’m all too aware of North American style city design. The title was more along the lines of “why do we as a society still center our communities around cars when better options such as bikes exist?” and not trying to assign blame to any individual car driver, just to be clear.
I personally refuse to participate in the folly that is “the commute” but I realize that not everyone has the same flexibility, nor the same priorities. I live 10 minutes walk from my work, but I have a couple of coworkers who drive over 30 minutes to get to work. It’s remarkable how much stress their commute causes them compared to my little stroll.
The commute is brutal. I constantly reference it as my least favorite part of the job. While they have done some accommodation by doing a 4/10 week and permissible WFH, it still is something I’m looking to change
For me the number one reasons is assholes stealing my bike the millisecond i turn away
I had a really bad anal fissure years back. Ended up having to have 2 separate surgeries. Now if I do any type of sitting down activity, biking, rowing, etc. I get hugely swollen and sore in the entire area around my taint. Would love to bike again, but it’s just not going to happen for me.
Hang in there! I had my entire rectum removed and couldn’t fathum the thought of riding a bike.
But 10 years later I decided to give it a shot and now I bike all the time… Thousands of kilometers this past year!
Healing did take years, so don’t give up. In the interim, I did get an e-scooter so I didn’t have to sit 👌
I’ve thought about getting an e-scooter. I have a regular (well adult-sized) push scooter that I use just about daily, but it’s not great for longish trips.
I have a regular (well adult-sized) push scooter that I use just about daily, but it’s not great for longish trips.
You might even want to consider a “kick bike”, which is a kick scooter with larger (bike-sized) tires. I had one several years ago and it was awesome! Should be easier to get around on compared to the one you have now, and I know a guy who went across Canada on one!
That’s impressive. I’ll take a look.
It’s not safe.
Bikes are wonderful and amazing and awesome but I was a full-time bike commuter in my southeastern US city for two years and I can’t blame anyone here who doesn’t.
In the summer you get so hot that you need to expect to have somewhere to change or ideally shower wherever you go if you’re gonna be there for a long time. There’s very few dedicated bike lanes and a lot of roads may not even have sidewalks so you need to be able to bike on the open road sharing space with cars, which means you need to have an athletic ability to be able to maintain a decent pace on the road.
Even still you’ll end up having dozens of close calls from reckless cars and maybe even an accident or two which if you’ll be lucky are minor. I got hit by a Jeep that blew through a stop sign ironically on a bike path. I was okay but my bike had considerable damage. Another time I almost got sideswiped by a car that pulled through to parking on the other side of a bike lane without looking.
In short unless very significant infrastructure improvements are made (which are not expensive and are not really difficult to implement technically), biking is inaccessible as a regular form of transportation for most people in most parts of the United States. Which is very unfortunate, because biking is awesome.
Distance and effort are the big ones. That’s why e-bikes are a game changer.
Every time I sit on a bike, my jeans tear.
I kid you not. Hired myself a bike after years of wearing the same jeans, and after just 30 minutes I got a new ventilation hole.
What kind of jeans are you wearing? lol
I’ve never heard of anyone having this issue and certainly never experienced it myself
I dunno. I have no clue why. Nevertheless, I do experience it.
Everybody carries a curse. This has to be mine.
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Rain.
And heat. Particularly with workplaces with no end of trip facilities. It’s 106 F with the heat index and humid where I live currently. My last workplace had lockers and showers, and so I rode even in the rain and heat, but my current job has no bike facilities whatsoever. I only ride in when the weather is good enough that I can ride in without worrying about changing more than my pants and shoes and freshening up.
Yeah, we definitely need the government to offer grants and tax breaks to companies to build and provide better bicycle-commuting facilities to their workers, including ample indoor bicycle parking and showers
It’s absurd to me how the US’s “Infrastructure Bill” dealt mostly with cars, and the press coverage of this was horrible. Where was the news coverage pointing-out the lack of investment in train and bicycle infrastructure? Fuck cars.
yeah i’m sure more tax breaks will fix things
I don’t know about yours, but mine clicks and clanks.
So fix it up! A well maintained silent bike is such a joy to ride.
There’s not much to fix, it’s just an old Dutch bike.
There’s probably plenty of maintenance to be done if it’s old. Bearings get worn out or at least need to be cleaned and greased. Chains stretch and cassettes wear. Brakes fall out of adjustment and pads wear out. I don’t know about you but I find riding a cared for and silent bike to be such a joy. I honestly can’t fathom how people manage to ride squeaky rattly inefficient bikes everywhere.
