People in this thread are getting really hung up on the idea that someone with a bike == cycling enthusiast. In Europe a huge amount of people just own a bike. Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop and use to commute or meet friends. Maybe it's fallen into a state where it's unrideable. The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they can start using it again or sell it to somebody who will use it.
> Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop
In Belgium, Belgian people buy mostly new ones in the range of 500-1000. People who don't earn much or students, buy the cheap/used bikes you mentioned.
Electrical bikes are > 2000 € and pretty popular.
In general, a whole family can bike together and it's very popular during the summer. We can bike were-ever we want during Covid as long as it's in the 25 km. range.
I actually have 2 bikes ( 1 normal and 1 race bike) and a bike lending subscription when friends come over ( 1 € / bike / 24 hours for 12€ / year)
One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all.
I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home!
I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will get stolen within 3 years.
What I've learned while I lived in Amsterdam is that you want to invest ~30% of the value of your bike to purchase a bike lock. Basically make it not worth the effort to break the lock.
Also second-hand and rusty ones are better than new ones. Some Dutch cities have a free-of-charge engraving mechanism where you basically engrave a serial number on a bike to make it easier to track down stolen bikes, as well as to know that you're not actually buying a stolen bike.
Also, you'll be responsible if you're caught with a stolen bike, which is a nice deterrent to actually use a reliable source when purchasing a bike. Shops act as a middlemen between you and the person selling the bike, and they're responsible for making sure that the bike you're purchasing from them isn't stolen. On the downside, that drives the cost up a bit, but on the bright side, you usually get some months of warranty period in which they'll repair your bike free of charge in case anything happens to it.
> What I've learned while I lived in Amsterdam is that you want to invest ~30% of the value of your bike to purchase a bike lock.
That advice predates the battery-powered angle grinder, which many bike thieves in Western Europe now use. Even the toughest, most expensive U-lock can be broken in about a minute with an angle grinder.
Having two locks can also be a good tactic, especially two locks in a different style e.g. a d-lock and a cable lock. The theory being that a thief would need to have two tools to steal your bike which means it's likely more hassle than other bikes that'll only have been secured with a single lock.
Founder of a bicycle insurer here and I can tell you that the only way to deter people is by parking in secure private or public spaces (never, ever semi-public) and by making your bike less attractive than the one next to it.
2 locks is indeed the standard in big cities. Also make sure they are sold secure gold rated or Art 3. Anything else is a waste of money. There are a few new lock types which are supposed to work better against angle grinders like Tex-lock or LitLok.
Because the average bike price is going up it also becomes interesting to steal parts. A decent handlebar + shifters are easy to sell individually. Companys like Hexlox or Pinheads are working on locks to tackle that.
Where would you install them on the bike where they couldn't be removed easily? I've thought you could place one in the frame, but that would be difficult to do aftermarket and the GPS and WWAN antennas would need to exit it somewhere.
Shaft were the seat affixes, maybe use the frame as the antenna - dunno, was more interested in what is out there already in a way that is respected enough for insurance companies to make a difference. That's the true test of a security product - how much of a discount does your insurance get for having it ;).
A cable lock can be cut with a dozen pocket-sized tools. They're not worth the money if you think theft is remotely an issue; D-locks are far more secure.
I challenged a guy I saw fiddling with one of the locks on a motorbike with its alarm sounding, by asking if he'd mind unlocking one of the other locks to show it was his bike. Which he promptly did - his alarmed disc brake lock had jammed.
Of course, my confidence to do so was buoyed by the fact there were two other bikers parking at the same time as me, it was in a busy public area, and I was wearing a bunch of leather and kevlar.
I’m from America, but I visited Copenhagen a few years ago and was amazed by how many bikes there were. On top of it, most bikes were parked with only a wheel lock and not chained to anything.
You need a bike friendly road network. Where I am at in suburban Illinois, I have a 45 - 55 mph lane with no shoulder and no continuous sidewalk. There is no way I'm risking life and limb to commute on that with my bike.
On the other hand there are multiple trails which I can and will use now that spring/summer is here.
I think the reluctance to use bikes for basic transport is more to do with lack of space on the road rather than theft.
Theft plays a major role when you're thinking of buying an e-bike... When you're shelling 2+kEUR and you must put the fscking lock eeeeverytime you go somewhere, pause to buy bread, or whatever, and it's the same one or 2 minutes circus (first lock, then second lock, then don't forget the computer...). It gets tiring and discouraging.
Man visiting Copenhagen truly was a cultural shock, I walked past a street at midnight that may have had like 30 bikes in it without a lock. Those wouldn't last an hour without getting stolen where I'm from
I was in a suburban ward in Tokyo two years ago and it didn't look like any bikes had locks on them. They were all identical bikes with large kickstands.
Yeah. I think it's more likely to stop someone accidentally taking the wrong bike. Since they aren't secured to anything and the locks aren't beefy, defeating it would be pretty trivial.
I have a number of friends with anecdotes about forgetting items on a bus/train and the lengths to which individuals or companies will go to return them is pretty impressive.
I've been commuting by bike my whole adult life and I get a bike stolen once every 3 years on average. I typically spend around $1000 on my bikes, and the cost is still dick-all compared to transit or driving.
I'm from Sweden and biked NY to SF a few years ago. During the two months it took I never locked my bike (didn't brought a lock at all). Just a related a anecdote ;)
Did you pass through many major cities? In suburban and rural america, you can absolutely leave a bicycle unlocked and expect it to be there when you return.
I’ve have used bicycles as my main mean of transportation most of my 43 years of life in Sweden. I’ve had exactly one bicycle stolen during all those years. But I’ve always been very careful to lock my bike to something with a good lock.
Exactly why I have a pawn shop beater with some minor upgrades for cycling to work and my well it was super cool when I bought it road bike that never gets left locked up anywhere.
> no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will get stolen within 3 years.
I'd neither, but a friend of mine did. He got his bike insured (replacement value), for a pretty reasonable amount, considering. And AFAIK most people with expensive bikes do, which is probably also the reason police is not too keen on acting.
Yes! Bike insurance is the way to go once you have a nice bike. I don't and carry a big lock. But I have friends with quality bikes (~1500 EUR) and they park at the train station with laughable locks because it's insured.
It’s certainly a massive problem in the UK. Stealing bikes is almost decriminalized by the fact that it’s too minor a crime for the police to take seriously. And there’s a complete lack of secure bike ‘parking’ space.
Seems to be common in many countries, more so city sized area's as statistically, you will get a larger spectrum of humanity and the odds of having more bike thieves will be higher. Let alone, drunken students taking the wrong bike or the like.
Which is one of the reasons I don't have one, that and the types of drivers make it more dangerous, got better from my observations, but still, I'll walk more as unlike the country - not as far to go for most things.
That and if I'd endured a few thefts, I'd just end up getting angry and knocking up a bobytrapped bike and probably go too far and that's probably another reason for me to not own a bycicle. Though I did checkly suggest upon twitter once to the local police that they should have a bait bike, maybe has a spike in the seat that raises up. They liked the idea with supportive comment. But I'm sure it would not playout well legally. Besides, imagine some poor person, drunk for the first time, gets on the wrong bike by mistake.
Though I'd probably build some form of electric shock into it, though again, I'd know I'd go too far.
Reminds me of an initiative in Amsterdam many decades back, 90's era iirc. The city had put a a large number of bikes in town for people to use, park up, free for all to use - early bike hire, ride and drop thing without any paying - just free use bikes. Coz what happened was people stole many of them, not everybody lived in Amsterdam and with that, maybe a good initiative, but needs to be done on a large scale to work.
Until then, i'd not buy anything new, second hand end-user type of affair as locks are just not that good and anything close to good would be more than the cost of a use and abuse bike.
The bike-locks are enough, the bike-locks are normally integrated with the bike themselve ( normal bikes), i've noticed a lot of foreign people are suprised by this.
Racing bikes don't need locks, since you stall them at your garage or a private place during the night.
Bike theft is usually common in student cities, were cheap bikes have cheap locks and one "steals" from another. The more expensive ones (> 400 €) are normally not stolen, since they also have more decent locks.
Also, bikes can be engraved ( eg. like a serial number).
Fyi: My bike is parked at a "big" train station at night (in Bruges) and it never got stolen in 2 years.
Here in the UK, there are bike thieves who will drive a van up to a bicycle park, load the van with as many bikes as they can get with some bolt cutters in a few minutes, then drive off. It would be surprising to see someone using a lock that allowed a bike to be carried away for this reason!
Of course it's mostly a problem at universities and train stations at night, where you can find big bike racks and no-one around. Lesser locks might be fine away from crime hotspots.
According to the stats 48% of Belgians own a bike, but only 8% of the trips are by bike.
In China 37% of the population owns a bike, but in Shanghai 60% of the daily trips are by bike.
There are more people riding bikes everyday in northern Italy (which has about 2 times the population of Belgium) than in Belgium, even though the amount of bikes per capita on a national level is much lower than Belgium.
Numbers of bikes sold alone doesn't say much, more so because in some countries bikes are a status symbol, just like being member of a golf court is in Florida.
Most do it because it says something about their life styles more than their likings.
500 euros is a tad expensive. Every few months, Belgian supermarkets like LIDL sell them for €250-300, and I see thes models everywhere. Mike is more expensive, but I bike to work every day.
If you bike every weekday: (52 weeks/year * 5 days/week * 1€/day) + 12 = 272€.
Add in however much you think these bits of hassle are worth:
• various amounts of time spent looking for a bike, especially if you go somewhere they don't tend to cluster and someone else took the one you're using
• bikeshare bikes are typically kind of heavy and clunky, possibly with solid tires that don't blow out but transmit every bump in the road to you
• bikeshare bikes are usually one-size-fits-all, which I guess is fine if you're the perfectly average size, but they're always too small for me; an improperly-sized bike is harder to ride and can create more strain on your body
And of course you can subtract maintenance costs, I'll pull 50€ out of my ass as a yearly number for that.
> bikeshare bikes are usually one-size-fits-all, which I guess is fine if you're the perfectly average size.
I think they are tiny. I have wondered how they got this so wrong, but decided that it must be intentional. It prevents long journeys and limits the frequency of curb hopping and other damage causing activity.
One size fits all cannot be average, it has to be tiny. You can fold a tall person into a small bike, but you can't stretch a short person onto a large bike.
There seemed to be a series of Chinese companies that offered particularly small bikes in Paris. Ofo and Mobike were (are?) just tiny. Maybe they came from a market where the average person was significantly smaller? The bikes were pretty much unusable on a shallow incline if you were of even average height. For comparison, my 9 year old child has a bike that has a larger frame than those ones.
> The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they can start using it again or sell it to somebody who will use it.
Certainly do more to increase bike usage and keep the momentum of usage going than any marketing thing.
What would be nice would be better incentive to use public transport and to not use cars, we have used the stick with taxes for a while, carrots like this can only work better.
If they could get that balance right and maybe focus on cheaper public transport, incentivise ride sharing and bikes, more so bikes over electric as they are more accessible to the whole populus, not just those who can afford to cash in on incentives out of many peoples reach.
Been all well having subsidies for solar paanels, electric cars, but when the outlay and means to get those put those out of the reach for so many, let alone people who rent, or indeed walk or cycle. Perhaps the focus would perhaps incentivise using less electricity, incentivise public transport and bicycles, not just expensive hire bikes for hipsters in which most will end up being stolen by those who can't afford to access them via other means.
But this initiative as a one off is both timely and good on many levels as you say, getting unused bicycles into action over the whole disposable mentality of most objects, is fantastic. Also nice boom for the bicycle repair industry, though unsure how they have been impacted by things currently.
At least in the Parisian context, moving people to bikes is probably the most cost effective way to green transport, since the trains are all packed to the gills and getting some people on bikes is a cheaper way of making space than spending billions of euros on new lines (which they are also doing, but it's good to have more than one arrow in the quiver.)
Where I live, in Seattle, the bus system has been wildly popular over the past several years and the transit system has had high ridership growth (in total rides and as % of commutes) in North America while most of the peer agencies have seen total declines. The problem is that they stopped scaling:
- For a while Seattle has been unable to hire enough drivers to run the schedules, because there is simply more demand than supply of bus drivers in the entire US
- Seattle has also run out of space to store buses, and for various reasons people do not like having a bus depot located in their neighborhood (parking lots are unsightly, the bus depot generates traffic and lots of diesel buses are unpleasant; electric is not mature enough for widespread fleet replacement and it would be a massive capital cost)
- the amount of buses being run is now so high that buses get stuck in bus congestion, even with a whole four lane road dedicated only to buses in the downtown area, and several more bus lanes on parallel roads
So now we are hurriedly spending $50B to replace buses with rail, because
- trains carry more people in one vehicle and with one driver
- trains have full or mostly full separation from traffic, which means higher average speed and thus better fleet utilization and running less vehicles for the same frequency
...but how is this controlled? Do they ask for a picture of the bike? ...or maybe it's a voucher for repair work? ...or are they just giving everyone 50EU?
Answered my own question by READING THE ARTICLE...
> A network of 3,000 registered mechanics will be set up, and €50 of repairs will be redeemable, such as tyre changes or chain replacements. The mechanics will provide the repairs and then be reimbursed by the government, meaning citizens will not actually receive any money
> A network of 3,000 registered mechanics will be set up, and €50 of repairs will be redeemable, such as tyre changes or chain replacements. The mechanics will provide the repairs and then be reimbursed by the government, meaning citizens will not actually receive any money
> the idea that someone with a bike == cycling enthusiast
Very common rhetorical technique. Not everyone who does this is calculating; a lot of people just parrot what they hear. But the goal of the messaging is to make marginalize, to make it sound like some tiny group whining about their hobby, which inconveniences "normal" (car driving) people.
Turn it into a game - start talking about the motorist lobby as just another special interest, compare them to some other lobby your conversationalist will find distasteful - guns, animal rights, mountaintop removal, something will push their buttons. If you do it well, the cognitive dissonance is fun to watch.
I don't ride my bike much anymore; have had repeated bad experiences with shithead motorists (live in SF) and just won't risk it anymore. But when I did, I never spent more than $100 on a bike, because it was just going to be stolen within a year.
Friction levers. You can still get them! I built a touring bike with them because they’re comparatively cheap and very easy to maintain. They’re indexed (click into place at the center of each sprocket) but you can disable this feature quickly if you need to, which is nice if you’re forced to use a different cassette or there’s an issue with your cable.
I absolutely love them. They wouldn’t work on a racing bike where you need to shift quickly without taking your hands off the bars but for a commuter or a touring bike they’re ideal.
> People in this thread are getting really hung up on the idea that someone with a bike == cycling enthusiast.
I’m an American, and literally everyone I know owns at least one bike, and it’s rideable. I’m not even in a big city - in fact I live closer to cows and sheep than to anything resembling a skyscraper...
Sounds about right, the bike I use for my daily commute from the train station to the place I work needs things like new tires, new brakes, some new spokes etc about every 1-2 years. Usually totaling around 50 euro. For that amount a good bike repair shop can do a lot for a bike.
