Most of the stores I frequent are within a 5 km circle from me, and the more esoteric ones within 10 km. So while I don’t need the car at all for my regular shopping, it’s still a fixture in my life due to friends and family that live some 30 km away, with no hope of decent, orbital public transport around the metropolitan area.
So the best I can do for now is to be car-lite, reserving the car for those longer trips. This adds some 2000 miles [3200 km] per year, which also helps keep my running and maintenance costs down. Although I’ve had my eye on taking a Class 3 ebike and pressing it into service as my long distance machine. This could also potentially be useful for inter-city trips by rail, as Amtrak has a commuter rail service here to the next metropolitan area, and can accommodate bicycles free of charge.
But basically, as a single person, I presently don’t have the need to move a bunch of stuff when I go biking, but rather want to solve the problem of getting just myself somewhere farther and with reasonable speed, to backfill the non-existent public transport in specific directions. Still, these cargo bikes are cool and maybe one day I’ll see one in the wild here.
Most of the stores I frequent are within a 5 km circle from me, and the more esoteric ones within 10 km. So while I don’t need the car at all for my regular shopping, it’s still a fixture in my life due to friends and family that live some 30 km away, with no hope of decent, orbital public transport around the metropolitan area.
So the best I can do for now is to be car-lite, reserving the car for those longer trips. This adds some 2000 miles [3200 km] per year, which also helps keep my running and maintenance costs down. Although I’ve had my eye on taking a Class 3 ebike and pressing it into service as my long distance machine. This could also potentially be useful for inter-city trips by rail, as Amtrak has a commuter rail service here to the next metropolitan area, and can accommodate bicycles free of charge.
But basically, as a single person, I presently don’t have the need to move a bunch of stuff when I go biking, but rather want to solve the problem of getting just myself somewhere farther and with reasonable speed, to backfill the non-existent public transport in specific directions. Still, these cargo bikes are cool and maybe one day I’ll see one in the wild here.