Are you avoiding buying an e-bike because you’ve heard of scary battery fires? No need to live in fear, instead just purchase a battery that isn’t illegal. I have an e-bike battery that I charge inside with nary a worry as it’s a legit battery that is safe to use. You don’t need to take my word for it, in the video above Evan Edinger breaks down why people think e-bike batteries are a concern and the reality of how dangerous they are. Spoiler: not that dangerous, in fact they are likely less dangerous than the gas you use in your car or in your house.
Tag: bicycle
A Human on a Bicycle: Incredibly Efficient
With the recent Israeli and American attack on Iran the price of oil has shot up and shows no signs of going back down. This seems like a good time to remind people that a bicycle is the most efficient form of human-powered transportation. Indeed, the graph above is an update to a popular graph showing efficient transportation, but grouped into the animal kingdoms. Save gas, save money, and get fit by riding a bike this summer.
Travel involves two main expenditures of energy: fighting gravity and propelling yourself forward. Most terrestrial animals must expend energy first to stand up, then to take each step forward. (Longer-legged land creatures tend to be more efficient because they get more distance out of each step, which explains why mice are so inefficient.) Flying animals, though, can move forward cheaply by gliding through the air, carried more by currents than by their own power. Swimming animals can similarly glide through water while letting their natural buoyancy minimize the need to fight gravity.
Expand Houses by Shrinking Lanes
Seemingly everywhere there’s a crunch on housing and there’s a surplus of roads, so let’s change some car space to sleeping space. If we take away even just one lane of parking for cars we can create towers of housing for people. Cities can benefit from increased revenue since housing makes more money for cities than stationary cars. What’s more, when a developer wants to build and take away a lane then part of the development fees can be specified to increase transit and biking infrastructure.
He argues that highway conversions make more sense than using lanes on regular city streets for housing, at least in most cases. “Most street right-of-ways are can only be reduced by a lane or two, which can generate enough extra space for a bike lane or expanded sidewalk but not enough for the addition of housing,” he says. “Moreover, trading street width for a housing tract typically requires a public/private land swap. These are possible, but add enough red tape to only make sense when a significant amount of housing can be added.”
In Boston, Speck’s firm is working on a plan, now in its second design phase, to use excess road space in Kenmore Square to add new housing and public space. “The plan results in considerably more housing than originally conceived, plus a beautiful plaza,” Speck says. The plan would also more than triple the space available for pedestrians.
Bike Riding is Not Just a Phase
Every cyclists knows that riding a bike equals freedom, you can go where you want when you want and don’t need trillions of dollars of infrastructure to operate one. Electric bicycles are getting more affordable every year and more and more people are buying them instead of getting a car. Interest in car driving continues to decrease while interest in biking increases. Now cities need to change their car dominated approach to embrace a faster, safer, form of transportation.
As much of the media is still trying to understand the phenomenon of this massive growth in e-bike use, cities are already grappling with just how to handle it. Not only are cities around the US seeing their own rise in e-bike usage, but several are helping to support the shift away from cars by providing incentives for purchasing electric bikes.
Even without incentives though, e-bikes are surprisingly affordable. Like anything, you’ll find fancier expensive options. But a good e-bike can be bought for under $1,000. When you compare that to the cheapest $40,000 Tesla, you can see why young people are moving to e-bikes in droves.
The Largest GPS Bicycle Reminds us Bicycles are Rad
The most efficient form of transportation is the bicycle, and to remind us how great the two wheeled vehicles are a couple drew a giant bike in Europe. They used a GPS to record their trip as they rode through multiple countries, and that meant riding in giant circles to create the wheels. Along the way they shared their enthusiasm for two wheels.
You can see the map of their route on their site (linked below).
As a reminder that transport alternatives to the car exist, we have cycled 7237 km to draw the shape of a huge bicycle across 7 countries of western Europe.
We hope that our mad endeavour might motivate others to ditch their car in favour of the bicycle for daily transport needs. We sincerely believe that bicycles can take us a long way in our battle to tackle climate change and environmental breakdown.
As a side note, with this project we have set an unofficial world record for the largest ever made GPS drawing (7237 km). We beat the previous record of 7163.67 km, which was obtained by multiple means of transport. We also beat the previous unofficial record for the biggest GPS drawing undertaken by bike, which was 4106 km. Far more importantly, we are quite happy to have drawn the biggest bicycle ever!
Thanks to Craig!