This morning's commute and other commuting stories

All memes to green...Fire up Critical Mass signal..."Go Go London Cyclists...ENGAGE!".

MP's all about the car for shopping. Would love a sea of bikes muck up her dastardly plans for automotive retail domination. Perhaps take a leaf out of the anonymous playbook and all wear a pair of Kinky Knickers on their heads.

They will see you rolling and they be hatin' and then you'll whizz past them in a stream of catchmeifyoucan.

(didn't meant to be nasty about them, it's just my experience growing up in The Netherlands that they were massively uncool and for old people, so we weren't found dead on one. Unless of course somebody fiddled with the small petrol engine (well before batteries) and turned it into a death mobile)

You can do both, there are front wheel electric motors made for bromptonists, the battery goes in the bag on the front and the little wheels fly up hills past all the whingey fuckers shouting cheat at you

Well, given that they are limited to 15mph* you'll fly past the cyclists who are not making that much of an effort.

*They can of course be de-limited, but then you are classed as a moped and would need an MOT, VED etc.

I have one caveat about all electric vehicles, I get really P'd off when electric vans and the like plaster CARBON NEUTRAL all over their livery. Ahem, coal fired power stations, anybody?

• Carbon offsetting
  
• Green electricity tariffs
  

Make sure your old batteries don't go in a landfill.

Chuck them in a reservoir.

Took the train today because #rainstorm, died a little inside

I tested one for a company that was based across the road from my old work and that was my biggest issue. Most of the time I was riding faster than the auto cut out, so the only benefits were that it was quicker at accelerating and much easier up hills. The downside was that it was heavy enough to almost put my back out carrying it up stairs so for me it was a no-go. Trackstanding it at the lights in top gear was an easy way of out-accelerating absolutely anything, it would take under a second for the motor to engage and then you were off like a rocket.

I was dying up a mountain climb in France once, in 37 degree heat, when a bike flies past me at beyond-pro speeds. Had a few seconds of utter demoralisation before I realised it was an e-bike.

I think they're good things, anyway. Loads of people don't want to be all hot and sweaty on their way to work, and if it gets them out of a car or not contributing to overcrowding on the tube, ace.

Plus it's deeply, deeply satisfying to blast past a powered bike on the roads (mountains not withstanding).

ohai Deliveroo couriers!

I notice that when you're not RLjing, you're staring at maps on your phone while weaving like a drunk.

Can your employer not afford basic training on where things are in London? Or perhaps some lights for when it gets dark?

http://road.cc/content/news/170695-deliveroo-criticised-letting-inexperienced-riders-loose-without-lights

Yeah i've seen some really terrible Deliveroo drivers about the last couple of weeks

And some of those deliver boxes also don't look remotely secure..

It's the boxes I don't get, like they looked at a pizza scooter with it's box and decided to copy it onto a bike in the worst ways.

They're always glued to their phone because they don't know where anything is. Sillies.

@Oliver Schick will have something useful to say about 'motor-dependence' here.

Well. That can come into it; there is some data emerging that rather than switching from driving to e-bikes, which would be a good thing, more people are switching to them from cycling. Not in this country, and that data is mostly based on the sales boom in the Netherlands (if you want to get any realistic understanding, you have to wait for that to settle down first) and, to a lesser extent, Germany.

Sales boom or not, there is evidence that e-bike use has so far contributed to increased cyclist casualties. I also saw a rider along the Walworth Road recently on my way to Cycle PS who had clearly 'opened' his e-bike, probably much like people used to tune limited mopeds. He was doing at least 40kph on it along the high street.

Part of the problem in London is that travel distances are increasing (a lot of Central London salaried workers are having to move out further and further), and I expect this is where a future market for these machines will lie. It's all still too new to say much with certainty, really.

E-bikes are the new cross/tourer/fixie with basket.

I'm getting a velomoteur, obv #oldskoolizbest

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One of them leaves his bike with box locked up in Paddington every day. I'd be tempted to pinch it if I had any use for it.

@Skülly

Is where it's at... :p

E-bikes

Get one of these instead:

Problem solved.

Can I borrow pls..?

road.cc/content/news/170695-deliv­eroo-criticised-letting-inexperienced-ri­ders-loose-without-lights

Donnachadh McCarthy, co-founder of StopPED READING

They are very easy to 'open' most of the time just set the wheel size differently and it feels it's going a legal 15.6mph on 16inch wheel when really it's going much faster on a 28inch wheel.

Would be interesting to see how the statistics are split between regular bikes and cargo bikes, having dhl add 1000s of ebikes to the fleet is a great way to fudge statistics.

It's not all bad, a fair amount of the cyclists who switch to using them it's for medical reasons when the only other option would have been a motorbike or car. All the people I have known in the last few years(in the uk) using ebikes daily it's been for medical reasons to prolong the time they can enjoy riding.

Yet to meet anyone who used it to take the edge off a long commute, I think ebike use is rather limited in that aspect as the cheaper ebikes aren't great quality and wouldn't withstand a long daily commute, when you jump up into the £2k+ ebikes you then can't realistically lock it anywhere. Also once you hit the outskirts of london and hills the motor on your 'opened' ebike is going to overheat and break. They might improve a little but at the moment buying an ebike that will be reliable enough to commute like that vs a cheap scooter, it's more practical and cheaper to just get a scooter.

We're in the planning stage for an eCargo bike at the moment, using teh ~250watts to offset the weight of two small children.

better a coal fired power station in the middle of nowhere than a diesel in my face...

@Backstop that should probably be aimed at me...

Good point.