The dodging cars can be resolved by the Council making actual protected bike lanes. Not a bicycle gutter, if they strip a lane of a stroad on each side it can be replaced with a wider pavement, bike lane, grass strip with trees... Safety, shade, nature...epic win for everyone.

To a point. If you are the only rider, your risk of dying is very high, because no one around is expecting it. Sometimes the right choice is to keep driving until the infrastructure finally makes things safe.

I don't get the anti ebike stance.

Decent is less, used is fine too and less than 1000. For 3k you get a proper bike, new. And with ebikes you can consistently move at 20+kph. So further away becomes feasible for many. Especially on the commute. But you do you. Non ebikes are great too especially an old bike if you have to park it publicly cause theft is an issue.

Wouldn't 3k Euro be essentially the luxury sedan of ebikes? My first was a class 1 aimed at tourist rentals that cost around $1.5k CAD ($1k Euro). I considered that entry level at the time, though there are cheaper ones out there now. My current one is a $2.5k CAD ($1.7k Euro) class 2. It is pretty much everything I could want in a bike. I can't see myself spending more. Well, maybe a cargo model would cost more?

I get what you're saying about theft though. I am lucky in that I have indoor parking both at home and work. A coworker of mine lives in a condo where he can't park a bike indoors. So while it was thankfully never stolen, he was sufficiently nervous about it that he eventually sold his and replaced it with an escooter.

bought my ebike a year ago for 600 usd, lock it up in a good place and its jist as likely to get stolen as anything else. i wouldnt be cycling to work daily if i had to push my bags up the hills to work, the motor helps my little legs get stronger without killing my motivation

Why not a normal bike then?

I've lived and worked in several large european cities, commuting in most of them by bicyle, and the most I ever spent on a commuting bicyle was €250 and generally it was more like €100 because I usually bought them used.

Finding a cheap bicycle was definitelly easier in The Netherlands, but I also got some nice cheap second-hand ones in London and Berlin.

Absolutelly, those things get stollen (which is why you get a lock, but even then, all it takes is a mistake and it's likelly you'll never see that bicycle again), which is why you don't pony up for a brand new carbon fibre bicycle for commuting unless you're planning on making a big involuntary charitable donation to a random bicycle thief.

I'm not even against you advice to walk - were I am it's quite dangerous to cycle (here in Portugal drivers are some of the worst in Europe) plus I live in a small city nowadays, so unlike most people here I refuse to buy a car and mainly walk - it's just that human-powered cycling is a more natural alternative to E-Bikes than walking in places were drivers aren't quite as bad.

Thanks for digging up/translating the info!

Good, but not really surprising. The Netherlands is the best case example of what good bike infrastructure means in its "consequences" (no negative connotations). That's why I get terribly annoyed when I see people constantly argue against it, or wanting to do a couple hundred more feasibility studies and whatnot for every single street, or even just parts of it. It's exhausting how humankind keeps working against its own self-interest.