"Big Clearance! 12 in place of 1!"
"Big Clearance! 12 in place of 1!"
"Big Clearance! 12 in place of 1!"
"Grande offerta! 12 per 1!"
ENFB cyclists' union, Woerden, 1993; poster by Theo van den Boogaard
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I'll speak from experience here, but biking with groceries is the biggest pain in the ass ever.
Oregonian here... biking with groceries in the rain...
No way been biking to get groceries for decades. You just need the right luggage. Personally I have a folder with a low rack so a 70L trekking pack with an aluminum frame works great. Before that I used the 4 kitty litter panniers. But easiest is probably just a cargo bike
Yeah, when I was at uni I'd bike for almost all my shopping trips, the only bad one was when I decided it would be a great idea to not get a set of weights delivered
Where are you putting them? On the front?
Two large panniers and/or a trailer and it’s easy.
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Yeah no, having bags on your handlebars is just a disaster waiting to happen. Some basket in front for some light carrying, maybe.
There are many good options, panniers, trailers, etc.
Two panniers on the rear rack and I can carry like 20kg of groceries.
It does throw off the balance of the bike a little bit since you've shifted the weight so far back, but you just need to be a bit careful when accelerating and it's fine.
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do it for 10 years year round in all weather with no other option for transportation and get back to me. I’m fucking sick of it.
Just need the right bike for the job.
Honestly it's not that bad... At least if the weight is low
Let alone 2 to 4 feet of snow, ice on the roads and people struggling to walk, let alone riding a bike, as cars have shovels out trying to get unstuck, and snow piled up where people used to bike in the summer
People thinking bikes are the solution live in climates with mild weather. There is no possible way for that to work where I live. When I do see people biking it is very specialized gear, and no chance they could pull a trailer on top of things.
Plenty of people in Oulu, Finland bike literally all year round. Fully 12% of all trips in winter are made by bike.
Their secret? Just as the roads are plowed, so are the bike paths. If we didn't plow and salt the roads up north, cars would also seem ridiculously impractical compared to a snowmobile or cross country skis.
Oulu invests in making winter biking safe and practical, while American cities of comparable size and climate like Syracuse, NY don't. The results are predictable.
Yeah, bike paths are seen as a luxury or pleasure activity in most US cities. The idea that, despite that fact that people do, are actually trying to get places or get shit done by biking isn't really considered...
I mean, you also see that in the US with bike path design in general.
Bike paths around me in the US mostly go along creeks and railroads. There's one in the suburbs that's an abandoned rail line out into farmland. They're mostly designed as places for suburbanites to drive to for exercise. They're more of a park than a piece of transportation infrastructure.
Oulu, on the other hand, has bike paths that go through the center of town, out to the suburbs. There's over 300 bike underpasses on the main bike paths. It's designed for commuters, for people running errands, and for kindergarteners to bike to school. They're a practical bit of transportation infrastructure.
I want that so bad tbh, I've been trying to float the idea of at least getting bike lanes built for kids in the surrounding area of schools here. A kind of starting somewhere plan.
Just look at street cam footage of any Dutch town. Heavy rain, hail, wind etc. doesn't stop those madmen on their grandma bikes.
they could be snow plowing the bike lanes but they don't feel like it
There's so many solutions to the problem that could easily be funded if there were less cars on the road.
It's quite clear there's not much experience going on, if it was truly awful enough to leave a comment like this then you were doing something wrong.
That something could literally be living in the US, but still.
