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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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micromobility - Ebikes, scooters, longboards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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I could not relate less to what you just said. I thoroughly enjoy driving. One of the contributin reasons to why I stopped bike commuting was that my truck just sat unused in the carage all day and I missed driving. To me this sound more like that you're perhaps not very experienced driver and you find it stressful due to how much concentration it requires. This is not the case for me. Just like when riding my mountain bike I don't really think about how to operate the bike. I don't even think of me being on the bike but rather the bike just being an extension of me. I get the same feeling when driving a car. Driving a boat on the other hand I do find stressful and I'm quite sure the reason is that I only do it a handful of times a year so I'm not 100% confident in my skills.
Do you thoroughly enjoy sitting in traffic and terrible drivers trying to crash into you? That's what he's referring to.
Traffic and bad drivers are part of driving like flat tires, noisy brakes and broken chains are part of cycling. That's not what I enjoy about it but it's part of the deal that I'm willing to accept.
I don't pop 3 tires and break a chain everytime I bike and yet everytime I drive to work I have to sit in traffic and deal with jackasses..... I'm curious about how you feel they're similar.
Have you considered the possibility that not everyone lives in a densely populated urban centre like Toronto? My city has population of 120k people. Traffic is virtually unheard of here.
That makes a lot of sense. I was going initially reply with “do you live in a small city” but didn’t want to make it personal or anything.
Nah ... driven (and ridden motorbikes) plenty.
It can be plenty of fun on the open road or when doing it with friends and cruising around. But the moment there's traffic and the density of an actual city ... nah, there's something off about it for me. I only tend to notice it once I stop driving around for a while and then get back in a car. I don't mind driving, but there's something there for me.
I like driving when I am not in a rush and not dealing with traffic...so basically never while commuting. I don't mind driving to a friend's place, or a long road trip, but bike commuting is superior for me. I don't need to make weird sweeping assumptions since you said you live in a small city, but commuting traffic is a nightmare on many coastal cities and major metros, so it is probably not a lack of experience so much as you're commuting in an area unlike most major metros.
I actually work from home now, but I bike commuted for over a decade, including for a couple years a one way ride of 22 miles. No matter how tired I was in the morning or how I didn't feel like getting on the bike, I'd always feel better once I started going, vs a car which studies have shown saps your energy. Also, there is something magical about biking over a highway and seeing standstill traffic that you'd be in as you toodle along without having to stop.
Plus the calculus I always did was that by turning an irregular 45-75 minute commute into a guaranteed 93 minute commute meant I was spending at most an extra hour and a half to get 3 hours worth of a workout. That frees up so much time for leisure and means you don't have to workout basically at all.
If bike was faster I'd probably favour it over a car. That however was not the case for me. My commute is 15 minutes by car and 30 by bike.
this. it's a mentally taxing to constantly pay attention to make sure I'm not gonna crash.