this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars

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It's nice to see larger outlets talking about urbanism topics and Vox has made a few videos in this area recently.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Erm how am I meant to take my grandma to hospital and also drop off three fridges and my kids to school and then an entire building's worth of bricks? Therefore cargo bikes will never work in any situation. I am very smart.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You forgot to mention that you do this each day every day. Not a once a year or once a quarter thing.

[–] jscummy 2 points 11 months ago

Go to a third world country, they'll get that done with a cargo bike no sweat

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (4 children)

For those of you getting riled up to point out how this wouldn't work in rural Nebraska - yeah no shit!

This video is taking about how it can be very beneficial for urban areas to use electric cargo bikes rather than vans, and how it helps everyone to remove the amount of vehicles in inner cities by providing safer ways for bikes to move around (and better for emissions too!). The parcel services in my city all have hubs where lorry's drop off pallets, and then bike porters to take the parcels for the final mile. It works great.

Everytime there's a video about the benefits of bike infrastructure or public transport the online discourse gets filled with pointless bad faith drivel about how public transport or bike lanes don't work in an area with a population density of 0.000001/km^2. No one is claiming that's the case, and no one benefits from you pointing that out. Get a grip.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I haven't read the article and am here to give my ignorant opinion. This wouldn't work ever anywhere for any reason. Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

It's not even an article, it's a fucking video.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Having been a driver for Amazon in the past for around a year and a half, I’ll tell you right now that these bikes wouldn’t work in a lot of places Amazon delivers. In dense urban areas? Sure, but certainly not out in the ‘burbs or rural areas.

Package counts on those routes can top out around 500. There’s no way Amazon would purposely reduce the amount of work they lay onto one driver.

Now that being said, if they loosened their iron grip over the drivers then I can absolutely see this happening in downtowns and some apartment complexes. Outside of really densely packed areas, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Some routes have drivers going well over 100 miles in a day. No way anyone’s gonna do that on a bike. And in the middle of summer in southern cities? Forget about it. Amazon doesn’t even give drivers enough time to find a bathroom, no way they’ll allow drivers to take breaks to cool off.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (8 children)

@SuiXi3D @mondoman712 From the OP: "It's time to replace *URBAN* delivery vans."

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

These vans are a hell of a lot better than semis, which IMO should not be allowed in cities. I'd be fine with more of these vans being around if it meant we could get rid of large 18 wheelers in urban areas.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Outside of dense urban core there just isn't enough packages per mile to make this even slightly sane. Outside of temperate areas this would be awful when the weather is very cold or very hot. In all areas you would have to secure the packages against trivial theft and rain further adding to the weight and decreasing maximum cargo area.

Even in the fraction of places where this would be practicable differences in speed and cargo capacity means you would need more drivers to achieve the same results. It makes 100x more sense to to push ebikes as an alternative to commuters.

[–] Starb3an 8 points 11 months ago

I would absolutely use one of these and my bike (except when the temp is over 100°F/38°C) if the infrastructure was there. My previous apartment was on a road with a bike lane that led to a bike path near my work so I used to take that when weather permitted.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why is noone mentioning that this video was sponsored by Delta Airlines?

I am not saying that the content isnt good but it is somehow strange to me that an Airline of all companies is sponsoring such a video

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Air travel is quite polluting, of course I would expect such companies to have a PR budget focused on that kind of thing..

[–] icepuncher69 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

First let me start by saying fuck cars, i dont like the fact that the world infrastructure is centered around them when trains (be it coal or electric) and rails exist. And now on to the rage baith:

I dont like that this pretty much shifts the reaponsibility from big corporations polution onto its workers, if delivery people had a union this would be an absolute no no, because its asking way more phisical push with what is going to be the same amount of packages with the same low pay with way more effort from the part of the worker, when we know that the polluting monsters are the companies they work for and the tech the companies employ and refuses to change into more sustainable ones, like planes, factories in some cases and the waste they produce and irresponsibly dump, be it abroad with uncaring legislations or locally. While i too would like a total redesign of urban infrastructure to suportt more sustainable transportation technologies, whe are gonna have to do with what we have (at least for the moment) and a better answer for that specifically imo would be fully electric vehicles, and in keeping with the taking less space theme, electric cargo motorbikes (the ones that dont have pedals). The same as the ones like the pizza delivery ones but with rechargable batteries instead of a gas engine.

Oh btw downvotes to the right.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In my city this wouldn't work, the millisecond the delivery guy turns away his head, assholes would have stolen all the deliveries. It could be used only from point to point, not fully loaded with hundreds of small deliveries

An armored crate would increase the weight too much for human propulsion

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

@Moonrise2473 @mondoman712 you can have locked boxes on cargo bikes... It ain't rocket science

[–] CookieJarObserver 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't think these bikes are enough to supply supermarkets...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Not watching some dumb video to know how dumb inefficient and ineffective this is.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Isn't this a big step backwards?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Idk. We have moped delivery here in Vietnam, and I w incredibly fast and efficient. Packages are even moved daily in transit buses that connect cities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The capacity, i think its a downgrade of the capacity. ( Could lead to multiple trips i guess RIP driver )

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

yeah faster but less in cargo.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

From the video in the OP:

One study in London found that only a small share of vans used more than 3/4 of their capacity. Most use less than half.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

yeah but cargo bikes has like max 1/4 capacity. But yeah i am nothing against cargo bikes ;) Its a better alternative. I am just pointing that out.

[–] emergencyfood 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not all routes would need that much capacity, right? The less busy ones can use two-wheelers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

The öess busy ones are outside the city ( where they would drive like 30+ minutes ), its a good exercise i guess. I am fully for such delivery bikes. They literally block the whole street and say "fuck cars" directly out to the world.

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