Even electric bikes are not the solution, at least not in many parts of the world. What happens when it rains / snows? I don't know what the solution is though, maybe small electric cars, self driven, as part of public transportation service?
> Even electric bikes are not the solution, at least not in many parts of the world. What happens when it rains / snows?
What happens when it rains?
As someone who lives in the developing world, I'm always a bit taken aback when people seem to be so unaware of the lived experience of the billions of people outside of America & Europe. This isn't some hypothetical scenario that we don't know how it plays out. It is the lived experience of hundreds of millions of people who get by just fine.
I live in a city in Southeast Asia where every day over 6 million people commute on two wheeled vehicles. We have monsoons, so 6 months of the year are the rainy season.
What happens when it rains? We don't need to make theories. We just look at the real world in places where people can't afford cars and have to deal with rain. They get by just fine.
Go to almost anywhere in Asia, from India to Taiwan and everywhere in between, and you'll find hundreds of millions of people that get to work, school, hospital, and everywhere else they need to be on two wheels despite torrential rain and sweltering heat.
I regularly ride my "normal" bicycle (including 2 little kids in a trailer) in the rain in Berlin (where it rains for 167 days per year on average, which is ~45% of the year).
where it rains for 167 days per year on average, which is ~45% of the year
Well, neighbouring country in which it rained on 199 days on average in the past 20 years or so, but since it doesn't rain all 24hrs of those days, a more interesting figure would be that it apparently only rains about 10% of the time here. Meaning about 90% of the whole time there is no rain.
There's proper clothing which keeps you dry. Personally I find fresh snow awesome to ride in. Not so fresh snow is less fun, but I still do it. But indeed if you cannot / do not want to take the risk then in most places infastructure is not quite ready yet and we do need solutions. Shared electric vehicles combined with decent public transportation services would be my bet.
And when there's a lot of snow, a bicycle is "wrong gear".
(N.b. I ride in the snow for hundreds of kilometers every winter. I know you can take a fatbike to powder snow but that's just too strenuous for most people.)
idk, people seem to commute by bike even in the winter in Anchorage, AK... It isn't like there is a fresh dump of 6" powder every day. Most places, you get a dump of snow, it's sloppy for a day or two, then back to packed down snow and ice.
When faced with something like that, I usually just switch to the bus for a day
But clearing snow takes time and equipment and main routes have the priority.
For example my commute of about 20km has about 10km that gets cleared early in the morning if humanly possible; maybe 9km that usually gets cleared during the evening; and maybe 1km that may take 3-5 days after a big snowstorm.
