Make me a climate controlled hyper-efficient one seat vehicle thats safe and I’d be so there.
Where I live, only the enthusiasts and the ones who live really close to work only have like 40 non-contiguous days a year that they can reasonably commute in anything but a car without showing up soaked with rain, sweat, or frozen boogers.
I’d love to give up my car. I work from home. I legit only need it two days a week to pick up my kid from preschool. Even when I commuted I hated that I had to take 4 empty seats and 3000 pounds with me.
Even to take the train (whose schedule is now completely incompatible with anybody’s work schedule unless they work within walking distance of a train stop thanks to a wildly underfunded subway/bus/streetcar infrastructure), I still have to drive that pile of metal to the train station, and that’s too far to reasonably walk, and too dark to safely bike thanks to poorly lit winding roads and non-existent bike lanes.
The whole system is fucked, but even scooters and unicycles aren’t filling that niche. And they won’t until they can at least protect you from the elements in some capacity, and provide some modicum of safety against every idiot with a drivers license and a pavement princess they can’t see past the hood on.
You did kind of cite the actual issue, the one we want to fix, right in your complaint. A well-funded subway/bus infrastructure tends to suit most people’s needs, such that the short trip to take one of these dinky ebikes/e-unicycles to the train station (or, taking a frequent bus on its route) would rarely be so uncomfortable. The key here is that climate-controlling an individualized vehicle is going to be inefficient no matter what.
The environment will always be a potential concern. If you live in a rainy area, but vacuum-seal yourself into your hamster ball before heading to work, you’ll still need an umbrella after depositing your hamster ball into the Ball Collective before going into the office building. From my point of view, it seems like you’re pushing the “problems” into the wrong domain of concern, and also kind of pretending cars solve that issue 100% - which they don’t.
I’ll give up climate control as long as there’s decent protection from wind and rain and some level of safety.
Carrying an umbrella for a walk a couple of blocks is no big deal. Carrying an umbrella for 10 miles while traveling 15MPH is a bit much. Especially when you’re traveling against frigid winds.
And safety. Until cars are out of the picture almost entirely, any two-wheeled vehicle that has to share space with them is almost entirely out of the picture.
Yeah, in case it’s not clear, I’m definitely not suggesting carrying an umbrella in one hand on a bike; or sharing a 4-lane road with Son Unaliving Vehicles.
Rainy days would basically be when a bus is a better option, if not a straight walk to a train station.
Requiring CDLs for these huge monstrosities would finally put pressure on automakers to return to more reasonable car bodies and it would make sure that people who have to drive big vehicles at least are qualified to do so. Traffic tickets should also scale with the size of the vehicle since a speeding Range Rover presents different risks to the public than a speeding Smart Car.
Real investment in walkable cities and suburbs is the harder solution but the better one. If you could walk your kid to preschool that eliminates a car trip. Walking exposes you to the elements, but walking speed doesn’t amplify rain, cold, or heat like biking does. Zoning laws should allow a preschool, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a community space, and a hardware store to exist within easy walking distance for you. Bike paths should connect you to the next community. Miles of uninterrupted residential-only zoning is choking our planet.
![[meme] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to transportation](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0bfe1df9-1b6b-414f-88b3-4e7d57514682.webp){kind=link}
Make me a climate controlled hyper-efficient one seat vehicle thats safe and I’d be so there.
Where I live, only the enthusiasts and the ones who live really close to work only have like 40 non-contiguous days a year that they can reasonably commute in anything but a car without showing up soaked with rain, sweat, or frozen boogers.
I’d love to give up my car. I work from home. I legit only need it two days a week to pick up my kid from preschool. Even when I commuted I hated that I had to take 4 empty seats and 3000 pounds with me.
Even to take the train (whose schedule is now completely incompatible with anybody’s work schedule unless they work within walking distance of a train stop thanks to a wildly underfunded subway/bus/streetcar infrastructure), I still have to drive that pile of metal to the train station, and that’s too far to reasonably walk, and too dark to safely bike thanks to poorly lit winding roads and non-existent bike lanes.
The whole system is fucked, but even scooters and unicycles aren’t filling that niche. And they won’t until they can at least protect you from the elements in some capacity, and provide some modicum of safety against every idiot with a drivers license and a pavement princess they can’t see past the hood on.
You did kind of cite the actual issue, the one we want to fix, right in your complaint. A well-funded subway/bus infrastructure tends to suit most people’s needs, such that the short trip to take one of these dinky ebikes/e-unicycles to the train station (or, taking a frequent bus on its route) would rarely be so uncomfortable. The key here is that climate-controlling an individualized vehicle is going to be inefficient no matter what.
The environment will always be a potential concern. If you live in a rainy area, but vacuum-seal yourself into your hamster ball before heading to work, you’ll still need an umbrella after depositing your hamster ball into the Ball Collective before going into the office building. From my point of view, it seems like you’re pushing the “problems” into the wrong domain of concern, and also kind of pretending cars solve that issue 100% - which they don’t.
I’ll give up climate control as long as there’s decent protection from wind and rain and some level of safety.
Carrying an umbrella for a walk a couple of blocks is no big deal. Carrying an umbrella for 10 miles while traveling 15MPH is a bit much. Especially when you’re traveling against frigid winds.
And safety. Until cars are out of the picture almost entirely, any two-wheeled vehicle that has to share space with them is almost entirely out of the picture.
Yeah, in case it’s not clear, I’m definitely not suggesting carrying an umbrella in one hand on a bike; or sharing a 4-lane road with Son Unaliving Vehicles.
Rainy days would basically be when a bus is a better option, if not a straight walk to a train station.
Requiring CDLs for these huge monstrosities would finally put pressure on automakers to return to more reasonable car bodies and it would make sure that people who have to drive big vehicles at least are qualified to do so. Traffic tickets should also scale with the size of the vehicle since a speeding Range Rover presents different risks to the public than a speeding Smart Car.
Real investment in walkable cities and suburbs is the harder solution but the better one. If you could walk your kid to preschool that eliminates a car trip. Walking exposes you to the elements, but walking speed doesn’t amplify rain, cold, or heat like biking does. Zoning laws should allow a preschool, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a community space, and a hardware store to exist within easy walking distance for you. Bike paths should connect you to the next community. Miles of uninterrupted residential-only zoning is choking our planet.