A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.

Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.

Is it roadworks, too many vans ferrying online shopping, badly conceived
low-traffic neighbourhoods? I’m not sure, but whatever the reason, the
cities of Britain are impossible to traverse without causing you a hernia.

There is, however, a solution and it is curiously old-fashioned: the
bicycle. Or at least the modernised version: the electric bike.

There was an assumption, from the viewpoint of the late 20th century,
that the bicycle was the transition vehicle, the bridge between the era
of the horse and the jet age. But a motor car just is not suited for
short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
commuting.

The bicycle, especially one with a rechargeable battery that aids (but
doesn’t replace) pedalling, gets you from A to B so much more efficiently.

Global production figures suggest that we instinctively know this. Back
in the 1950s and 1960s sales of automobiles matched sales of bicycles
but in recent years the trusty old bike has overtaken the car. There
were an estimated 79 million cars built last year, considerably less
than the 100 million-plus bikes, an increasing number of which are electric.

Inevitably, Silicon Valley has jumped on this two-wheeled bandwagon with
an insane amount of investment along with equal amounts of hype and
jargon but, so far, no profits. They are calling it the micromobility
industry.

I am a huge fan, not of the language (micromobility sounds like they’re
building tiny zimmer frames, not e-bikes) but of the idea that, with a
smartphone app, you can hire bikes, e-scooters or even e-skateboards to
get around, saving the planet from carbon emissions and cities from
pollution and traffic.

Of course you could own your own e-bike, but they are expensive. Most
half-decent ones cost more than £1,000; one that is light enough to drag
up some stairs will set you back more than £2,500.

The best thing about the e-bike hire schemes is not so much that you can
whizz miles across a busy city and arrive at your meeting not dripping
in sweat (as I do with a push bike) but that it can be used for a
single, not a return leg, journey. This is because you can park it
pretty much anywhere. Yes, many people get rightly furious at bikes
dumped in the middle of the pavement, but for responsible riders it is a
transformative bit of tech. It enables spontaneity; it frees you up to
get places without planning.

Everything about them is great. Except . . . well, they just don’t work.
Or rather they don’t work well enough. This week I had a meeting in
King’s Cross in central London, about 2.5 miles from where I live. The
perfect distance for an e-bike. If I took the bus I would have needed to
allow at least half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, to battle through the
gridlock; on an e-bike it takes a mere 11 minutes, even taking into
account a very steep hill.

As I strolled to the end of the road, where my phone said there was a
glut of two-wheelers to hire, I prided myself that for once I would be
on time. But when I got to the parking zone, of the five bikes there not
one was actually available to hire. Sometimes it’s because the battery
is too low, but often you just get a cryptic message suggesting it might
have already been reserved by another rider or that it needs
“maintenance”. No matter, I still had plenty of time and could see a
couple more bikes across the road.

One was branded Tier, a German hire firm. I had yet to sign up to this
app, so I downloaded it and even uploaded a picture of my driving
licence (a level of security that seemed completely unnecessary). After
three minutes of faffing about I was ready to go, unlocked the bike, sat
on it and got ready to pedal. Disaster then struck, as the seat sank and
would not budge. My knees were up to my elbows. Even a circus clown
could not have ridden it.

I could not abandon it, however, because it would not allow me to lock
it up again to end the ride. A call to their helpline number involved a
Kafkaesque conversation about my identity, with me in exasperation
saying: “You’ve got my driving licence, how much more information do you
need?!”

After walking about half a mile I finally found an available bike,
supplied by Lime, whose new vehicles are very well designed (an earlier
version lurched you over potholes). One problem: this trip cost me £3.52
for 11 minutes, which is too expensive. It was, by then, an emergency
and I was happy to pay, but if you want to encourage thousands out of
their cars or taxpayer-subsidised public transport you need to price the
journey competitively. The equivalent of 32p a minute is just too pricey.

Those in the industry point out that for micromobility to be truly
sustainable it has to be profitable. They can’t, as so many Silicon
Valley ventures have done in boom times, spray consumers with free rides
without any expectation of making money.

And I want it to be sustainable because we need to get our cities moving
again, ideally on two wheels. The hire companies have work to do.

Harry Wallop is a consumer journalist and broadcaster. Follow him on
Twitter @hwallop

colwyn <guddiesx@btinternet.invalid> wrote:

> A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
> an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
> of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.

It was much the same sixty years ago.

So they take cars out if Oxford City centre but busses move just as slowly
as before.

Any ideas as to why this should be?

> Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.

They are all shitholes, that’s why no-one wants to go there.

> Is it roadworks, too many vans ferrying online shopping, badly conceived
> low-traffic neighbourhoods? I’m not sure, but whatever the reason, the
> cities of Britain are impossible to traverse without causing you a hernia.

If you restrict the free flow of traffic, by cutting the number of lanes,
calming measures, and the rest, it can only come as a surprise to a loony
that traffic moves more slowly.

> There is, however, a solution and it is curiously old-fashioned: the
> bicycle. Or at least the modernised version: the electric bike.

There is a solution: stop wasting taxpayers money on silly measures.

> There was an assumption, from the viewpoint of the late 20th century,
> that the bicycle was the transition vehicle, the bridge between the era
> of the horse and the jet age. But a motor car just is not suited for
> short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
> impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
> commuting.

So is a bicycle. Arrive wet, cold, need a shower and a change of clothes -
who wants that?

With no apparent knowledge of history, this article appears to have been
written by someone who is completely unaware that bicycle mileage fell by
80% over the 20 years from 1950, never to recover, and is living in a
fairy-tale world.

> The bicycle, especially one with a rechargeable battery that aids (but
> doesn’t replace) pedalling, gets you from A to B so much more efficiently.
Define ‘efficiency’ before hand-wavingly using the term.

> Global production figures suggest that we instinctively know this. Back
> in the 1950s and 1960s sales of automobiles matched sales of bicycles
> but in recent years the trusty old bike has overtaken the car. There
> were an estimated 79 million cars built last year, considerably less
> than the 100 million-plus bikes, an increasing number of which are electric.

Nice mix of data and vagueness. Almost a sleight of hand…,

> Inevitably, Silicon Valley has jumped on this two-wheeled bandwagon with
> an insane amount of investment along with equal amounts of hype and
> jargon but, so far, no profits. They are calling it the micromobility
> industry.

MRDA

> I am a huge fan, not of the language (micromobility sounds like they’re
> building tiny zimmer frames, not e-bikes) but of the idea that, with a
> smartphone app, you can hire bikes, e-scooters or even e-skateboards to
> get around, saving the planet from carbon emissions and cities from
> pollution and traffic.

No mention of the pollution caused by the production of the bicycles and
the demands on scarce resources. Or the fact of exporting the pollution
caused by their use.

> Of course you could own your own e-bike, but they are expensive. Most
> half-decent ones cost more than £1,000; one that is light enough to drag
> up some stairs will set you back more than £2,500.

> The best thing about the e-bike hire schemes is not so much that you can
> whizz miles across a busy city and arrive at your meeting not dripping
> in sweat (as I do with a push bike) but that it can be used for a
> single, not a return leg, journey. This is because you can park it
> pretty much anywhere. Yes, many people get rightly furious at bikes
> dumped in the middle of the pavement, but for responsible riders it is a
> transformative bit of tech. It enables spontaneity; it frees you up to
> get places without planning.

Didn’t Manchester’s bike scheme cost over £400 per journey? It would have
been cheaper to provide a fleet of stretch limos.

> Everything about them is great. Except . . . well, they just don’t work.
> Or rather they don’t work well enough. This week I had a meeting in
> King’s Cross in central London, about 2.5 miles from where I live. The
> perfect distance for an e-bike. If I took the bus I would have needed to
> allow at least half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, to battle through the
> gridlock; on an e-bike it takes a mere 11 minutes, even taking into
> account a very steep hill.

> As I strolled to the end of the road, where my phone said there was a
> glut of two-wheelers to hire, I prided myself that for once I would be
> on time. But when I got to the parking zone, of the five bikes there not
> one was actually available to hire. Sometimes it’s because the battery
> is too low, but often you just get a cryptic message suggesting it might
> have already been reserved by another rider or that it needs
> “maintenance”. No matter, I still had plenty of time and could see a
> couple more bikes across the road.

> One was branded Tier, a German hire firm. I had yet to sign up to this
> app, so I downloaded it and even uploaded a picture of my driving
> licence (a level of security that seemed completely unnecessary). After
> three minutes of faffing about I was ready to go, unlocked the bike, sat
> on it and got ready to pedal. Disaster then struck, as the seat sank and
> would not budge. My knees were up to my elbows. Even a circus clown
> could not have ridden it.

> I could not abandon it, however, because it would not allow me to lock
> it up again to end the ride. A call to their helpline number involved a
> Kafkaesque conversation about my identity, with me in exasperation
> saying: “You’ve got my driving licence, how much more information do you
> need?!”

> After walking about half a mile I finally found an available bike,
> supplied by Lime, whose new vehicles are very well designed (an earlier
> version lurched you over potholes). One problem: this trip cost me £3.52
> for 11 minutes, which is too expensive. It was, by then, an emergency
> and I was happy to pay, but if you want to encourage thousands out of
> their cars or taxpayer-subsidised public transport you need to price the
> journey competitively. The equivalent of 32p a minute is just too pricey.

The poor chap should have done some prior reading on the real-life
situation rather than believe the hype.

> Those in the industry point out that for micromobility to be truly
> sustainable it has to be profitable. They can’t, as so many Silicon
> Valley ventures have done in boom times, spray consumers with free rides
> without any expectation of making money.

> And I want it to be sustainable because we need to get our cities moving
> again, ideally on two wheels. The hire companies have work to do.

> Harry Wallop is a consumer journalist and broadcaster. Follow him on
> Twitter @hwallop

No thanks.

Tip: don’t believe what you read about how wonderful bicycles are.

--
Spike

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 10:47:33 AM UTC+1, colwyn wrote:
> A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
> an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
> of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.

As you say, horse drawn carts used to travel faster than that - that's progress for you. :-)
Meanwhile, apparently cyclists are "speeding" everywhere in contrast.

On 09/09/2022 10:47 am, colwyn wrote:

> A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
> an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
> of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.
>
> Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this.

No doubt.

But that doesn't mean that they often did.

Perhaps the author (see below) could usefully check the gradations of
meaning as between "average" and "marginal" too.

> No wonder
> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.
>
[snip much in the same vein]

> Harry Wallop is a consumer journalist and broadcaster. Follow him on
> Twitter @hwallop

Harry is amusing enough. A sort of pound-shop version of Martin Lewis.

But he'll find a useful niche one of these days.

QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS

This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival forms of transport.

On 09/09/2022 12:10 pm, Spike wrote:
> colwyn <guddiesx@btinternet.invalid> wrote:
>
>> A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
>> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
>> an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
>> of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.
>
> It was much the same sixty years ago.
>
> So they take cars out if Oxford City centre but busses move just as slowly
> as before.
>
> Any ideas as to why this should be?

Buses have to keep stopping to pick up passengers and again to let them off.

There's no obvious easy way around that. There was a time when I had to
take a bus every morning and afternoon to go to, and return from,
school. Bus-stop to bus-stop (which, of course, is not door-to-door)
used to invariably take thirty minutes (and that was going *against* the
preponderant flow of rush-hour traffic). Google Maps reports that the
distance between those bus-stops was 4.2 miles. So that was an average
of 8.4 mph (with virtually no traffic impeding the bus either way).

>> Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
>> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
>> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.
>
> They are all shitholes, that’s why no-one wants to go there.
>
>> Is it roadworks, too many vans ferrying online shopping, badly conceived
>> low-traffic neighbourhoods? I’m not sure, but whatever the reason, the
>> cities of Britain are impossible to traverse without causing you a hernia.
>
> If you restrict the free flow of traffic, by cutting the number of lanes,
> calming measures, and the rest, it can only come as a surprise to a loony
> that traffic moves more slowly.
>
>> There is, however, a solution and it is curiously old-fashioned: the
>> bicycle. Or at least the modernised version: the electric bike.
>
> There is a solution: stop wasting taxpayers money on silly measures.
>
>> There was an assumption, from the viewpoint of the late 20th century,
>> that the bicycle was the transition vehicle, the bridge between the era
>> of the horse and the jet age. But a motor car just is not suited for
>> short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
>> impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
>> commuting.
>
> So is a bicycle. Arrive wet, cold, need a shower and a change of clothes -
> who wants that?
>
> With no apparent knowledge of history, this article appears to have been
> written by someone who is completely unaware that bicycle mileage fell by
> 80% over the 20 years from 1950, never to recover, and is living in a
> fairy-tale world.
>
>
>> The bicycle, especially one with a rechargeable battery that aids (but
>> doesn’t replace) pedalling, gets you from A to B so much more efficiently.
>
> Define ‘efficiency’ before hand-wavingly using the term.
>
>> Global production figures suggest that we instinctively know this. Back
>> in the 1950s and 1960s sales of automobiles matched sales of bicycles
>> but in recent years the trusty old bike has overtaken the car. There
>> were an estimated 79 million cars built last year, considerably less
>> than the 100 million-plus bikes, an increasing number of which are electric.
>
> Nice mix of data and vagueness. Almost a sleight of hand…,
>
>> Inevitably, Silicon Valley has jumped on this two-wheeled bandwagon with
>> an insane amount of investment along with equal amounts of hype and
>> jargon but, so far, no profits. They are calling it the micromobility
>> industry.
>
> MRDA
>
>> I am a huge fan, not of the language (micromobility sounds like they’re
>> building tiny zimmer frames, not e-bikes) but of the idea that, with a
>> smartphone app, you can hire bikes, e-scooters or even e-skateboards to
>> get around, saving the planet from carbon emissions and cities from
>> pollution and traffic.
>
> No mention of the pollution caused by the production of the bicycles and
> the demands on scarce resources. Or the fact of exporting the pollution
> caused by their use.
>
>
>> Of course you could own your own e-bike, but they are expensive. Most
>> half-decent ones cost more than £1,000; one that is light enough to drag
>> up some stairs will set you back more than £2,500.
>
>> The best thing about the e-bike hire schemes is not so much that you can
>> whizz miles across a busy city and arrive at your meeting not dripping
>> in sweat (as I do with a push bike) but that it can be used for a
>> single, not a return leg, journey. This is because you can park it
>> pretty much anywhere. Yes, many people get rightly furious at bikes
>> dumped in the middle of the pavement, but for responsible riders it is a
>> transformative bit of tech. It enables spontaneity; it frees you up to
>> get places without planning.
>
> Didn’t Manchester’s bike scheme cost over £400 per journey? It would have
> been cheaper to provide a fleet of stretch limos.
>
>
>> Everything about them is great. Except . . . well, they just don’t work.
>> Or rather they don’t work well enough. This week I had a meeting in
>> King’s Cross in central London, about 2.5 miles from where I live. The
>> perfect distance for an e-bike. If I took the bus I would have needed to
>> allow at least half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, to battle through the
>> gridlock; on an e-bike it takes a mere 11 minutes, even taking into
>> account a very steep hill.
>
>> As I strolled to the end of the road, where my phone said there was a
>> glut of two-wheelers to hire, I prided myself that for once I would be
>> on time. But when I got to the parking zone, of the five bikes there not
>> one was actually available to hire. Sometimes it’s because the battery
>> is too low, but often you just get a cryptic message suggesting it might
>> have already been reserved by another rider or that it needs
>> “maintenance”. No matter, I still had plenty of time and could see a
>> couple more bikes across the road.
>
>> One was branded Tier, a German hire firm. I had yet to sign up to this
>> app, so I downloaded it and even uploaded a picture of my driving
>> licence (a level of security that seemed completely unnecessary). After
>> three minutes of faffing about I was ready to go, unlocked the bike, sat
>> on it and got ready to pedal. Disaster then struck, as the seat sank and
>> would not budge. My knees were up to my elbows. Even a circus clown
>> could not have ridden it.
>
>> I could not abandon it, however, because it would not allow me to lock
>> it up again to end the ride. A call to their helpline number involved a
>> Kafkaesque conversation about my identity, with me in exasperation
>> saying: “You’ve got my driving licence, how much more information do you
>> need?!”
>
>> After walking about half a mile I finally found an available bike,
>> supplied by Lime, whose new vehicles are very well designed (an earlier
>> version lurched you over potholes). One problem: this trip cost me £3.52
>> for 11 minutes, which is too expensive. It was, by then, an emergency
>> and I was happy to pay, but if you want to encourage thousands out of
>> their cars or taxpayer-subsidised public transport you need to price the
>> journey competitively. The equivalent of 32p a minute is just too pricey.
>
> The poor chap should have done some prior reading on the real-life
> situation rather than believe the hype.
>
>> Those in the industry point out that for micromobility to be truly
>> sustainable it has to be profitable. They can’t, as so many Silicon
>> Valley ventures have done in boom times, spray consumers with free rides
>> without any expectation of making money.
>
>> And I want it to be sustainable because we need to get our cities moving
>> again, ideally on two wheels. The hire companies have work to do.
>
>> Harry Wallop is a consumer journalist and broadcaster. Follow him on
>> Twitter @hwallop
>
> No thanks.
>
> Tip: don’t believe what you read about how wonderful bicycles are.

Harry is an entertainer.

On 09/09/2022 02:33 pm, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 10:47:33 AM UTC+1, colwyn wrote:

>> A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
>> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
>> an hour. This is not a rogue outlier. Traffic on the A-roads of the City
>> of London was last clocked at 8.5 mph.

> As you say, horse drawn carts used to travel faster than that - that's progress for you. :-)
> Meanwhile, apparently cyclists are "speeding" everywhere in contrast.

....more on the footway than anywhere else?

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
>
> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival forms of transport.

Including this infamous one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
>> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
>> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS

>> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival
>> forms of transport.

> Including this infamous one.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY

Of course, it’s never set up to favour the cyclist…

--
Spike

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:00:56 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
>>> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
>>> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
>>>
>>> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between
>>> rival forms of transport.
>> Including this infamous one.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY

> Clarkson said that the bike's victory had ruined the show for drivers.

MRDA…..🙄

--
Spike

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:29:27 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:00:56 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
> > > so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
> > > Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
> > >
> > > This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival forms of transport.
> > Including this infamous one.
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY
> Clarkson said that the bike's victory had ruined the show for drivers.

Clarkson was in a speedboat on the Thames and still lost.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
>
> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival
> forms of transport.
>
>
>

They ignore traffic lights, ride on pavements, ride down one way streets
the wrong way, ……and don’t stop after hitting, even killing, pedestrians.

QUOTE: The best thing about the e-bike hire schemes is not so much that you can
whizz miles across a busy city and arrive at your meeting not dripping
in sweat (as I do with a push bike). ENDS

If you got a little fitter, you would find that you don't sweat.
I did 25 miles just commuting and didn't sweat at all.

On 09/09/2022 05:29 pm, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:00:56 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
>>> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
>>> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
>>>
>>> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between rival forms of transport.
>> Including this infamous one.
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY
>
> Clarkson said that the bike's victory had ruined the show for drivers.

The fairy-cycle did not win.

Winning would be over the entire route from home to destination. Not
railway station to railway station or similar.
>

QUOTE: But a motor car just is not suited for
short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
commuting. ENDS

You only have to look at the pain on drivers' faces to realise that.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> QUOTE: But a motor car just is not suited for
> short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
> impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
> commuting. ENDS
>
> You only have to look at the pain on drivers' faces to realise that.
>

Your ignorance is overwhelming.

The three most common UK cars:

1. Ford Fiesta – 1.54m on UK roads
2. Ford Focus – 1.3m on UK roads
3. Vauxhall Corsa – 1.11m on UK roads

(https://motorway.co.uk/sell-my-car/guides/most-popular-cars-in-the-uk)

Fiesta kerb weight under 1.3 tonne but that includes fuel, driver, all
other materials….
Focus 1.519 tonne but that includes fuel, driver, all other materials….
Corsa 1.530 tonne but that includes fuel, driver, all other materials….

Note: cars include a lot of material which isn’t metal - plastic, rubber,
glass, ….. kerb weight includes fluids etc to allow the vehicle to be in
‘running order’ and an allowance for a driver- normally 75kg. I’ve used
maximum kerb weights, some models are lower. Manual cars tend to have lower
kerb weights.

Some cars are way under your ignorant claim. The Aygo is 840kg. The old
Smart Cars ( the new ones are electric) were around 800kg and had ‘plastic’
body panels - even less metal.

You should really track down whoever you donated your brain to and ask for
it back.

QUOTE: Global production figures suggest that we instinctively know this. Back
in the 1950s and 1960s sales of automobiles matched sales of bicycles
but in recent years the trusty old bike has overtaken the car. There
were an estimated 79 million cars built last year, considerably less
than the 100 million-plus bikes, an increasing number of which are electric. ENDS

An increasing trend - especially among the elderly.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

> QUOTE: The best thing about the e-bike hire schemes is not so much that you can
> whizz miles across a busy city and arrive at your meeting not dripping
> in sweat (as I do with a push bike). ENDS

> If you got a little fitter, you would find that you don't sweat.
> I did 25 miles just commuting and didn't sweat at all.

There was a posting on this group within the last 24 hours which
essentially was a tale of woe concerning hiring an ebike, suggesting the
picture is less rosy than its supporters claim.

--
Spike

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

> QUOTE: But a motor car just is not suited for
> short city journeys, a power-hungry tonne-and-a-half of metal that is
> impossible to park and expensive to run. It is a terrible vehicle for
> commuting. ENDS

> You only have to look at the pain on drivers' faces to realise that.

A car expensive to run in a city?

You mean like the Manchester bike hire scheme that cost taxpayers some £436
per bicycle journey?

And that was said to be a success!

🙄

--
Spike

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:29:27 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5:00:56 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 4:56:37 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> QUOTE:Horse-drawn cabs in Victorian times could go faster than this. No wonder
>>>> so few people want to commute into city-based offices. Leeds,
>>>> Birmingham, Manchester, London; they are all gridlocked.ENDS
>>>>
>>>> This is why cyclists ALWAYS win these commuting challenges between
>>>> rival forms of transport.
>>> Including this infamous one.
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY

>> Clarkson said that the bike's victory had ruined the show for drivers.

> Clarkson was in a speedboat on the Thames and still lost.

Wow! The bicycle must have been doing 50mph!

--
Spike

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> QUOTE: Global production figures suggest that we instinctively know this. Back
> in the 1950s and 1960s sales of automobiles matched sales of bicycles
> but in recent years the trusty old bike has overtaken the car. There
> were an estimated 79 million cars built last year, considerably less
> than the 100 million-plus bikes, an increasing number of which are electric. ENDS

> An increasing trend - especially among the elderly.

And the figures to prove that claim are where, exactly?

--
Spike

On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 9:20:21 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
> QUOTE: I am a huge fan, not of the language (micromobility sounds like they’re
building tiny zimmer frames, not e-bikes) but of the idea that, with a
smartphone app, you can hire bikes, e-scooters or even e-skateboards to
get around, savi.ng the planet from carbon emissions and cities from
pollution and traffic. ENDS

Good news for the poor sods suffering from breathing problems caused by toxic fumes being spewed out by ICE vehicles.

Air pollution: Coroner calls for law change after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah's death.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56801794

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 9, 2022 at 9:20:21 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:
>> QUOTE: I am a huge fan, not of the language (micromobility sounds like they’re
> building tiny zimmer frames, not e-bikes) but of the idea that, with a
> smartphone app, you can hire bikes, e-scooters or even e-skateboards to
> get around, savi.ng the planet from carbon emissions and cities from
> pollution and traffic. ENDS

> Good news for the poor sods suffering from breathing problems caused by
> toxic fumes being spewed out by ICE vehicles.

Yes! We can export the pollution elsewhere and kill people well away from
the cause of it! What a well-thought-out plan! Do those that will be put at
risk get a say in this wonderful plan? Or is it another case of ‘fuck you
Jack’ from the cycling world?

> Air pollution: Coroner calls for law change after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah's death.

> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56801794

Ten thousand or more died in the London smog of 1952, I was in Oxford
Street when the smog came down.

“Health effects

There was no panic, as London was infamous for its fog. In the weeks that
ensued, however, statistics compiled by medical services found that the fog
had killed 4,000 people.[21] Most of the victims were very young or
elderly, or had pre-existing respiratory problems. In February 1953, Marcus
Lipton suggested in the House of Commons that the fog had caused 6,000
deaths and that 25,000 more people had claimed sickness benefits in London
during that period.[22]

Mortality remained elevated for months after the fog. A preliminary report,
never finalised, blamed those deaths on an influenza epidemic.[1] Emerging
evidence revealed that only a fraction of the deaths could be from
influenza.[23] Most of the deaths were caused by respiratory tract
infections, from hypoxia and as a result of mechanical obstruction of the
air passages by pus arising from lung infections caused by the
smog.[24][25][26] The lung infections were mainly bronchopneumonia or acute
purulent bronchitis superimposed upon chronic bronchitis.[27][28]

Research published in 2004 suggests that the number of fatalities was
considerably greater than contemporary estimates, at about 12,000.[1][2]”

(From Wikipedia)

--
Spike

QUOTE:A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
an hour. ENDS

Imagine how slow the buses would be if there was no ban on cars!

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

> QUOTE:A report this week claimed that the average bus speed in Oxford, which
> has pretty much banned the car from its city centre, was a mere 8 miles
> an hour. ENDS

> Imagine how slow the buses would be if there was no ban on cars!
Exactly the same!

The controlling factor isn’t other traffic, no matter what the cycling
world says.

🙄

--
Spike