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  #21  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 3:31 PM
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my city was near the bottom, therefore i deem the criteria for this listicle to be bogus. also, this is the first time i've heard of the nickname the big guava for tampa
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  #22  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 3:32 PM
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I'm fine with hills as someone who cycles pretty much daily, but it is a big deterrent to casual/inexperienced cyclists.

Case in point: While travelling with my wife she has been fine cycling (on bike share) in Chicago and New Orleans. Both extremely flat places with decent (Chi) to non-existent (NOLA) bike infrastructure and generally aggressive drivers. We tried in Portland and promptly go into an argument at the first moderate hill. She wasn't interested in doing that at all!
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  #23  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 3:47 PM
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Originally Posted by cabasse View Post
my city was near the bottom, therefore i deem the criteria for this listicle to be bogus. also, this is the first time i've heard of the nickname the big guava for tampa
If you're referring to Atlanta, I think where it seems to falter is bikeability (how traversable a city is by bicycle, which I think has to do with infrastructure), percent of workers commuting to work by bicycle, availability of bike shops, and non-status as a Vision Zero community (commitment to eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries for all road users). Where it seems to do well is bike trails and a low number of unhealthy air quality days/year.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 3:51 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Detroit is putting in a ton of bike lanes. I don't think it can be a great biking city without them. Detroit is also building a sprawling bike route via old rail right-of-ways that will be accessible over a wide area of the city.

I'm not quite sold on SF being a great biking city due to the topography.
It is called electric bikes for those hills.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 5:11 PM
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It is called electric bikes for those hills.
Electric bikes aren't real bikes.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 5:31 PM
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Bullshit. Detroit has made giant improvements to biking in the last 8 years. Built many bike lanes all across the city including sidewalk level bike lanes on commercial corridors. Has multiple greenways for bikes that are totally separated from cars and is building another giant greenway the loops the entire city. Has a fantastic bikeable waterfront.

Maybe not the best city in the US for bikes. But nowhere near the bottom 10.
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  #27  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 7:29 PM
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Electric bikes aren't real bikes.
…and electric cars aren’t real cars.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 9:14 PM
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Originally Posted by montréaliste View Post
…and electric cars aren’t real cars.
Not an analogy. Electric bikes have an external power source, like electric cars and gasoline cars. Some might call them a motor vehicle. A bike does not have a motor.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 9:36 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Not an analogy. Electric bikes have an external power source, like electric cars and gasoline cars. Some might call them a motor vehicle. A bike does not have a motor.

eh, kind of - but you still have to pedal them with some degree of effort, they just 'smooth out' hills by charging on descents and then applying that extra energy (plus what's added during home charging of course) on climbs. you don't ride them passively, and the batteries they work off of are pretty minuscule in size. they make perfect sense for commuting in hillier/warmer cities; if i end up going back into the office at some point, i will absolutely be getting one instead of driving, and save my other bikes for purist recreation/exercise.
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  #30  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 10:07 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Electric bikes aren't real bikes.
A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other.

Yes, that includes electric bikes.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 27, 2022, 11:00 PM
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Regarding e-bikes, I can see why the most hardcore fundamentalists would say that they're not "real" bikes since bikes are traditionally human powered only. Most of them still require pedal assistance in order to operate I believe. The gray area is when e-bikes can be also controlled via a throttle, where the bike can be powered by the motor only, through pedal assistance, or pedal only. I believe most transportation authorities still consider these as bicycles rather than mopeds or motorcycles, as those don't have any pedals at all, and I think at certain speeds, the motor will cut power on an e-bike.

Obviously, there are plenty of good use cases for e-bikes (commuting where you don't want to work up too much of a sweat before coming into the office, messenger/utility/delivery) and for regular bikes (recreation/exercise). I know a lot of Grubhub/Doordash/Uber Eats folks that use e-bikes. More and more people in the cycling community are coming around to accepting e-bikes as "real" bikes. There's still a few sticklers out there as we can plainly see here.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 2:42 AM
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I was pleasantly surprised by amount of bikes I saw in Detroit. Pretty cool to see the bike party people with glowing colourful lights at night downtown. Travelling in groups with portable stereos. Does this happen in other cities?

Also noticed bikers using sidewalks. Sidewalks were generally pretty wide in those areas.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 3:19 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samne View Post
I was pleasantly surprised by amount of bikes I saw in Detroit. Pretty cool to see the bike party people with glowing colourful lights at night downtown. Travelling in groups with portable stereos. Does this happen in other cities?

Also noticed bikers using sidewalks. Sidewalks were generally pretty wide in those areas.
Bike parties are pretty common here. I imagine they're popular/common in most urban cities.
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  #34  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 5:23 AM
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Originally Posted by homebucket View Post
Yeah, e-bikes are extremely popular in SF, I think largely because of the hills. I don't have one myself because I ride recreationally and for exercise, so e-bikes sorta defeat the purpose of that (and they're heavy AF), although I have seen a lot of e-MTBs for sale as well. But yeah, certainly you can make a strong use case for e-bikes in general, especially for commuting.

Another thing with SF is the wind, especially if you're near the water. On blustery days biking against a headwind, that can be as difficult or more difficult than riding up a hill.
Ah, the wind. And hills.

I commuted by bike into and out of the Financial District for over a decade. As I often explained it, I would ride Market Street to get to work, and ride uphill against the wind to get home. Great exercise, though, and I never skipped a 'workout.'

As for e-bikes, my husband bought one while we lived in SF precisely because of the hills. He still has to pedal, though, and the harder the incline, the harder he must ride--they aren't motorcycles.

Quote:
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Bike parties are pretty common here. I imagine they're popular/common in most urban cities.
Yeah, I enjoyed dozens of bike parties over the years up there, especially the East Bay ones. At one point, we had several forumers participating--and we even got Giovanni Sasso to ride a Critical Mass with us when he was visiting! The first regular bike 'parties' in the state were in LA--Midnight Ridazz started up in 2004. SF Critical Mass started in 1992, but anybody who is familiar with CM or the bike parties knows they are two distinctly different beasts.
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  #35  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 12:21 PM
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On the bike-friendly list there is a fascinating mix of cities with very pleasant climates (San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, San Diego, Tampa) and cities with quite unpleasant climates (Minneapolis, Denver, Boston, Chicago). This idea that people won't bike or walk if the weather is shitty never pans out.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 1:01 PM
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian View Post
There can hardly be any doubt that SF is #1 in entitlement attitude on the part of bikers. The SF Bike Coalition absolutely assumes all pavement is meant for them and in spite of the fact that orders of magnitude more people get around the city in cars, trucks and busses than on bikes, they have the right to take over (and ignore any and all traffic laws while doing so).

Even sidewalks, where the law says they can't ride, are theirs and pedestrians just need to get out of the way (as one recently told a friend of mine after nearly knocking him down).
Grumpy!
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  #37  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 4:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samne View Post
I was pleasantly surprised by amount of bikes I saw in Detroit. Pretty cool to see the bike party people with glowing colourful lights at night downtown. Travelling in groups with portable stereos. Does this happen in other cities?
It's called Slow Roll:

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Quote:
Originally Posted by samne View Post
Also noticed bikers using sidewalks. Sidewalks were generally pretty wide in those areas.

It's not illegal to bike on sidewalks in Detroit like it is in other cities, so it's not as taboo there.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 4:37 PM
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Originally Posted by homebucket View Post
I believe most transportation authorities still consider these as bicycles rather than mopeds or motorcycles, as those don't have any pedals at all, and I think at certain speeds, the motor will cut power on an e-bike.
They aren't allowed on the Hudson River path along the west side of Manhattan. I'm not sure of the rationale for it, though. At least not in the places where pedestrian space is segregated from bike lanes.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 5:09 PM
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I am more than surprised that Dallas has no bike share stations. There are more than 65 BCYCLE stations in San Antonio. More than 75 in Austin. More than 150 in Houston.
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  #40  
Old Posted May 28, 2022, 5:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Electric bikes aren't real bikes.
In a city like SF I understand why people have electric bikes as it is necessary to get up the hills (although many do it just fine without). Relatively flat cities I wouldn't justify one. You're just lazy.
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