I’m going to sound like a carnivore on a Vegan sub now, but genuinely I’m disabled and not easily able to use the bike/transport options.
Apparently 36 minutes walk away from my nearest train station if I walk on a grass verge on a 60mph road with no pavement, there is a bus but that is 28 minutes to the train station with a change of bus and 9 minute walk.
I could probably manage the 2nd option, but not a lot else for the rest of the morning.
Mihies@programming.dev 15 hours ago
Bad weather and payload capacity wants a word with you.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
For bad weather I just wear a poncho or rain clothes when bicycling. Or a shirt and plenty of water. Etc. Our bike pathes also get salted in winter.
For payloads – most people don’t need to tow anything more than a backpack more than once or twice a year. And even then, there are bicycle bags that you can put on the back of the bike. And bike trailers as well.
FishFace@piefed.social 14 hours ago
Most people buy groceries more than once a year, and as soon as I wasn’t living alone that became an unreasonable quantity of groceries to transport by bike. Even before then, I was carrying them in panniers - it was always way more than would fit in a backpack.
Cycling is great - ideal, even. But I bought a(n electric) car a year and a half ago, and now my nose wrinkles at the fuck cars mindset. The ability to take big items to the recycling centre, freedom from public transport schedules, not having to worry about falling off and breaking my instrument when riding to a music lesson - it has a lot of advantages.
And riding in the rain is fine, and people make a bigger deal out of that and a lot of other things than they should if they haven’t tried it, but driving is an improved experience on almost all of them.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
And? I do my groceries by foot or bicycle and it goes just fine. Same with public transit. There’s also home delivery, that goes by bicyclists.
The public transit schedules being shit in your region is most likely because of defunding of their lines, intentionally reducing the amount of coupes/buses, not paying their employees a decent wage, and strike busting (eg prohibiting strikes where the transit continues to ride but without raising a fee). Realise that car and petrol lobbies worked a ton to do that.
And also… seriously? “Your instrument falling off” out of all worries? C’mon. Then you need a good bicycle bag and to bike more often to learn to do it well. I’ve never fallen off my bicycle and I’ve biked for 25 years. And that’s with snow, rain, heatwaves, potholes and bad roads.
The car isn’t really an improvement for me. Stressing out about other drivers, all the honking, needing to look for parking, fuel costs, maintenance costs, and the enormous space it takes up for so few people – it’s incredibly inefficient.