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It's time to replace urban delivery vans
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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No thank you. This can work in maybe a small town. Or a small NY neighborhood.
But in most situations:
A fleet of bikers is more expensive than a single van. I'm referring to human cost.
The amount of product that gets shipped cannot scale with how many bikers we would need.
the weight of products puts more physical labor on the biker.
A biker carrying 500lbs of product on the road is dangerous for everyone. Products falling. Losing control over their bike. You can create artificial limits, and companies will ALWAYS hit the max and go a bit more. Always been the case.
This isn't solving the root issues, of why people hate cars, which is Single occupancy cars flooding highways and creating pollution.
This isn't a theoretical, it already exists and it already works. Cargo bikes can deliver parcels faster than vans in some cases, they can carry large loads, ebikes make up for the labour, riders have much better awareness of the world around them than van drivers, and don't have all the extra mass of a van that will cause damage in the event of a crash. And it doesn't have to work in every situation, it can take vans off the road sometimes and that's still good.
I like what someone else mentioned of bikes doing the last mile or two. Vans could do the last 20 miles or whatever, and bigger trucks or trains the long haul.
I would also not put vans and box trucks (not that you did, I'm speaking in general) in the same bag, a van is almost the same as a car when it comes to driving.
And of course if we could lower the demands on delivery drivers (and riders? Not sure what you call them on bikes) it would lower accidents. I recently saw one of the new Amazon electric vans, and while I liked some things (no air or sound pollution), the driver was accelerating like crazy every time.
I'm amazed by the level of cognitive distortions employed when attempting to rationalize choosing cars over bikes!
Arguing that bicycles pose a greater danger than motorized vehicles like trucks or cars requires a significant amount of fact twisting.
When you consider the safety of everyone involved, bikes are just considerably safer than cars. Just think about how many pedestrians were fatally injured by bikes last year, and compare that to the number killed by cars.
This is only accounting for direct fatalities. Cars also contribute to a substantial number of indirect deaths due to air pollution in urban areas, and they accelerate climate change, which will have huge consequences on everyone's life.