There are cheap electric bikes out there (at least much cheaper than a car). No need to be an athlete.
Disabled people are among those who suffer the most under car dependency. There should exist public transportation to go to parks for everyone, including disabled people.
Not to mention disabled people can get a free annual pass to all national park/land/wilderness and most (if not all) states you can get free passes to state parks as well.
There should exist public transportation to go to parks for everyone, including disabled people.
Yes that would be wonderful.
Unfortunately that world doesn’t yet exist.
Let me know when the light rail, or even a bus goes from Seattle to the Hoh Rainforest.
At the rate the light rail is expanding, maybe 2250.
Maybe a bus by 2075?
There are cheap electric bikes out there (at least much cheaper than a car). No need to be an athlete.
Actually motorcycles are still more performant (greater ranges, better suspension, greater speeds) and cheaper than the kinds of eBikes you are talking about, capable of making a 100+ mile journey.
One of those kinds of eBikes is about 1/4 of my yearly income from SSDI.
Before rent, before food.
Not that it would matter anyway:
How is my crippled ass, who literally cannot even balance on a stationary bike, due to the nature of my injuries, nor grip the handle bars, who would topple over within 30 seconds…
… who can barely walk 10 minutes at 1mph in braces and with a cane before I have to lie down, not sit down, lie down…
How am I gonna ride this eBike 160 ish miles to the Hoh Rainforest? Up a literal mountain range?
…
I am not in favor of car or ICE dependency.
Far from it.
But you are acting like all your proposed ideas just… already exist. That they could basically magically be implemented at the snap of a finger.
This is nonsense.
You have to actually transition to the new paradigm in a way that doesn’t just immediately fuck over people who are the edge cases that are not compatible with your vision.
Oh I am very aware and compassionate towards the dire state of mobility in the US. It’s just that you were dismissive of biking as if it had inherent insurmontable problems, whereas alternatives to cars are viable but have been suppressed politically.
Second point, it is not realistic to bike 3h one way to go to a far away park. But the question would be: does it make sense to go that far for a single day getaway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have nice spaces in or around cities that people could go for an afternoon, but not expect to have true natural reserves commodified? People should have the right to accessible natural spaces, but the priority of reserves should be the nature, not the people. A massive presence of humans does damage.
… Do you not understand the context that arose to the comment I made?
Person 1: Its dumb that you need a parking pass, for a car, to use isolated national parks in WA, most of which are very far away from civilization.
Person 2: Just bicycle to national parks.
Me: Disabled people cannot bicycle tens or hundreds of miles to a national park, nor is that really reasonable for non disabled people generally, that is a ludicrous suggestion.
You: sp3ctr4l is obviously using disingenuous anti bkcycling, pro car strawmen arguments.
… Please learn to read before you wildly throw out nonsensical accusations.
The entire discussion here … it inherits the details and context of its parent comments.
The discussion is particular to a specific set of circumstances in Washington state, USA.
Proposing bicycling as a universal transit solution, or long distance solution, or a solution to get to remote areas, in a highly mountainous region… is wildly impractical.
I don’t know for 100% certain, but you have a .nl user account, which to me implies a decent chance you live in the Netherlands.
… A place that is about 1/4 the size of WA, and is extremely flat.
This would be like proposing bicycling as a reasonable long distance travel solution for… basically the southern half of Norway if you bisected its area at the appropriate latitude line.
That is about the same size and has comparable elevation extremes, although the climate varies much more in WA, from temperate, to temperate rainforest, to a literal desert on the east side of the Cascades.
(Indeed, this is why WA has a very sizeable population of Norweigian ancenstry, because much of the state reminded them of much of Norway.)
… Finally: Many, many people who live in WA fairly regularly do indeed go on 3hr trips to visit a distant national park for either one day, or a weekend. Mt St Helens, the Hoh Rainforest, vist the Grand Coulee Dam, etc.
I have actually known a decent number of people in my life, living in WA, who have a, 2+ hour daily commute to work, 2+ hr commute back, either by car, or involving a ferry ride, or via public transit.
I myself had such a commute via bus routes at one point.
I agree with you that truly set aside for civilization, natural parks… should indeed be difficult and remote and hard to access.
… Which is why I mocked the idea of bicycling being proposed specifically as a way to get to them.
So would you support removing cars with disability transport being one of the few exceptions? Because that would make it easier for most disabled people without making it harder for any.
In my ideal world, there would be general, semi-individualized, semi on demand, or at least ‘request a ride in advance’, electric or hydrogen or hybrid (or perhaps even locally sourced bio diesel powered, if electric or hydrogen is too cost prohibitive) mini busses or vans that would help people with mobility difficulties get to and from daily tasks within a city or multi city region.
This would be like ambulances, like fire trucks, like … other busses.
Some important services just cannot be practically un-car-ified, and still function at all effectively.
This is why most busses in Seattle, and much of the US broadly, have deployable disability ramps and internal wheelchair attachment point zones, so that wheelchair bound folks can get around.
It would probably be more generally time effiecient to have just a seperate fleet dedicated to them/us in particular, given that a single wheel chair pickup/deboard for a city bus can throw off its entire planned timetable by a good amount, in high density, high traffic, peak ridership hours.
… but thats getting a bit into the precise technicalities.
…
For long distance disabled travel? Yeah, this is a legitimately more difficult logistics problem to solve in a general way that isn’t wildly costly to either the rider, or the ride provider… but bicycles are probably the least sensible solution to this problem I’ve ever heard.
My entire musculature system needs to basically be reconfigured, retrained, now that all the fractures have healed.
My PT told me oh yeah, your nervous system has gotten so accustomed to being in constant pain that you basically go from a background level of 8 out of 10, which you now find generally tolerable, to 10, which you find immensely painful, whenever… well pretty much any tendon or muscle on your right side goes ‘‘just slightly’’ out of its safe range of motion.
Don’t even have painkillers, by the way. Just ibuprofen and acetometaphen.
I’ve been immobile, literally bed ridden, for the past 6 months, barring the excrutiatingly painful PT routine, hobbling to the bathroom/shower (got a shower seat), and microwaving soup or whatever.
Typing these messages is quite painful, but it does actually count as part of the PT if I use the right position/grip.
I will probably be in aquatherapy for at least another 3 months, if not 6, or 12.
A local charity drives me to and from the visits… which i hobble out to the car in my braces, with my cane.
… You’re not gonna theory craft your way into a more effective mobility solution for my entire life situation than myself and my doctors, unless that involves cashapping me several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars.
Dude, I’m truly sad that you felt like you had to explain your issues with them. These guys acting like asshats think that they’ll be healthy forever and have money no matter what. That might be true, but it also might not. I think these diehard bicyclists have too much testosterone or something. I really don’t know what it is, but they act super smug and entitled when it comes to bikes vs cars.
I’m used to casual ableism in general, but these folks have some weapons grade, fucking Clydesdale, Belgian Draft level high horses they rode in on to this discussion.
Normally when you just point out… hey disabled people exist, 99% of people go, oh fuck, shit, i forgot… good point…
Years ago I noticed a trend on Seattle based subreddits that… there’s a lot of just unbelievably perma online debatelord bullshit culture going on.
I know there was some massively stupid meta drama with there being like dueling Seattle subreddits and I think a third one at one point?
Its like tankie levels of utter certainty that anyone who could ever disagree with them on any minor issue, or even the precise language or framing talking about such is obviously a bad faith shit disturber employed by the CIA to detract from the… whatever worldview it is they have… which they also just… assume you already know all the details of… before you ever talk to them.
My guess would be these people are basically trauma molded by that, and brought it here to lemmy.
…
I ran into another person yesterday in some other thread, a meme about jesus telling people to cut off the tips of their dicks.
I threw in some historical background about why it is that… that’s really only an American Christian thing.
… and some rando is like ‘oh my god. i just got here from reddit and I am SICK of people obsessing over male circumcision, its not that big a deal, why are people here like this too, not a good look lemmy!’
Told im Ive been using lemmy for over a year (recently switched over to dbzero because yargh mateys!)… and I’d never even brought up this topic before.
He replies that he is going to rebutt any discussion of male genital mutilation anywhere he sees it!
… And I laugh at his hypocritical understanding of the word ‘obsession’.
…
Maybe we need like some kind of resocialization, decompression zone, type of comm.
Gotta unlearn the hyperdefensive reflex, the undo the antisocial personity disorder that happens when you OD on toxic corpo social media.
… Either that or if these people actually ride bicycles, and don’t just debatelord about them on the net…
One good T-Boning on a bike by a car running a red at 30 mph and they’ll be about as fucked up as I am.
I was there for 4 Seattle subreddits, lol. Those guys were Doug, CharlesGrodinFan, Rainier?, etc. Doug found me over here awhile ago.
They were trolls, I’m pretty sure Rainier was a legit Russian troll. He would change personalities during the weekends and forget entire discussions, so I think his account was a russian account. He kind of admitted it early on once, before they all got better at it. Too bad, he was super smart and funny. The rest are Maga trolls.
As for the bicyclists, I think they might be doing this type of shit (same as in this thread). I’m not 100% that they’re legit bicyclists.
“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”
The goal is to keep opinions we don’t want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can,…
Frankly, that does not sound like 2 functional limbs. Now consider that it would be easier for your charity team to drive you around if there was less traffic. Meaning the more healthy people cycle, the less traffic there is (assuming there’s bike infrastructure, which is much cheaper than car infrastructure) the better you can get around. Alternatives to car driving even helps people who are actually dependent on the car.
… Fucking obviously duh, yes, if abled bodied people generally got around via actually safe, seperated bike lanes, or busses, or light rail, or trolleys, or trains, then of course this would generally reduce traffic and generally improve other transit options within an urban area.
But the inciting incident of this whole discussion is:
People should just bicycle tens or hundreds of miles to get to national parks far away from urban areas.
This is still an absurd suggestion, even generally, for most people of average health/fitness/ability.
Ebikes are still not even a sensible solution to this in a practical, affordability sense: Entry level motorcycles have greater ranges, speeds, more comfortable rides at the same price point as an Ebike that has roughly half the range and speed.
Nobody even legally can drive an Ebike on a highway with a minimum speed limit of 50 mph.
Please learn how to read the entire context of a discussion before jumping into it.
… The thing being discussed here is the problem of parking passes being used as your ticket in to a national park.
The suggestion was… have you considered bicycling?
… Presumably, bicycling to and from the park, so as to avoid using a car, and the parking pass.
… It is 160ish miles from Seattle to say, the Hoh rainforest park.
Up a literal mountain range.
I think you climb up about uh… yeah, very steep hills, most of the way, up from sea level to 5330 ft, a total of about 11000 feet travelled uphill and 11000 ft traveled downhill in the whole 18 hour journey.
Sure, put your bike in the car, drive it there, ride it around the park, go home in the car.
But then you’d still be using a car, and its parking pass.
… You can’t expect everyone, muchless disabled people… to just put in 18hrs of strenuous bicycling to get to a national park, which currently has no real public transit method of getting anywhere near it from most actually concentrated population centers.
Super fun and challenging, most likely. Some of the roads are likely difficult on a bike.Lots of other state parks that are accessible by bike besides those two. Heres a great list that includes a bunch.
Paying in $35/yr so the state parks can be maintained and improved is a very reasonable cost, especially with all the damage people and cars do to them.
Like Paradise at Mt. Rainier, Hoh Rain Forest, 4 Caves, and Wallace Falls. Actually at Wallace Falls, you can ride your bike once you get it there, but you might be chased and killed by a mountain lion. You can be killed as a hiker too, but people on bikes look like prey.
Neat article. Can you link me to one about the tens of thousands of mountain bikers in Washington that were not chased by cougars?
All outdoor activities in nature carry risk, some more than others. By far the most dangerous thing for cyclists is motorists, not wildlife. If you can safely navigate the roads to get to a park, your other risks are minimal in comparison.
I can’t get over your sense of entitlement on this. You think everyone is healthy enough to ride a bike and be excluded from the amazing views and experiences of national and state parks because they’re poor and drive a car? You are in a bubble. I’m glad you like bikes and feel that sense of superiority when you don’t have to pay parking. The point is, the commons have to be paid for.
Do you understand how far everything is in the US and how much there is a lack of public transportation? Again, you are acting entitled because you have an amazing infrastructure that we don’t have.
The US, Washington State specifically, is incredibly gorgeous but these amazing parks are 4 hours away from Seattle by car sometimes. It would probably take you days to get within 2 hours distance with public transportation.
The “amazing infrastructure” I used to get to the shops included an unpaved road and muddy track along with having to carry my bike over a fence depending on the route I took. But there was a short section of road that didn’t have that many holes in it once I got to the middle of town.
Ha, sense of entitlement eh? That’s a quick pivot away from your weak point about “bikes are dangerous because of rare mountain lion attacks” i guess. Now trying to call me abelist and classist as a random jab? Sure thing, pal.
The common is the commons and has to be paid for. Without funding the commons falls to “the tragedy of the commons,” where the common good is destroyed by overuse and neglect. Washington has opted to protect the parks with a minimal, once a year fee to the people doing the most damage to the commons, drivers, that you are complaining about.
So you think the people using a common good and doing the most damage to it should not pay for that use? Why should the poor people without cars, the people who aren’t able to bike or drive, pay for your visit?
So you think the people using a common good and doing the most damage to it should not pay for that use? Why should the poor people without cars, the people who aren’t able to bike or drive, pay for your visit?
Because that’s what our taxes are for. That’s what we’re paying for, the commons. Drivers licenses, car registrations, etc., yeah sure, I can see why we pay for that.
I’d also prefer this to be rolled into an income tax, but Washington doesn’t have one. The state only has a regressive sales taxes, one that has an outsized impact on our poorest citizens.
By making this a “fee for use,” it at least minimizes the damage to the poor who can’t access the parks at all.
Yep, someone who expresses confusion at the idea of bicycling 10s or hundreds of miles to a national park… obviously they must be rolling coal and hate mother earth.
Have you tried cycling?
Yes everyone who ever wants to go to a truly set aside, lovely natural park is a Tour de France level bicyclist.
Fuck disabled people, why should they enjoy nature?
Two common strawmen in favor of car dependency.
There are cheap electric bikes out there (at least much cheaper than a car). No need to be an athlete.
Disabled people are among those who suffer the most under car dependency. There should exist public transportation to go to parks for everyone, including disabled people.
Not to mention disabled people can get a free annual pass to all national park/land/wilderness and most (if not all) states you can get free passes to state parks as well.
… But it is a free parking pass for a car, so the suggestion of using a bicycle, to avoid using a car, is still utterly nonsensical.
Yes that would be wonderful.
Unfortunately that world doesn’t yet exist.
Let me know when the light rail, or even a bus goes from Seattle to the Hoh Rainforest.
At the rate the light rail is expanding, maybe 2250.
Maybe a bus by 2075?
Actually motorcycles are still more performant (greater ranges, better suspension, greater speeds) and cheaper than the kinds of eBikes you are talking about, capable of making a 100+ mile journey.
One of those kinds of eBikes is about 1/4 of my yearly income from SSDI.
Before rent, before food.
Not that it would matter anyway:
How is my crippled ass, who literally cannot even balance on a stationary bike, due to the nature of my injuries, nor grip the handle bars, who would topple over within 30 seconds…
… who can barely walk 10 minutes at 1mph in braces and with a cane before I have to lie down, not sit down, lie down…
How am I gonna ride this eBike 160 ish miles to the Hoh Rainforest? Up a literal mountain range?
…
I am not in favor of car or ICE dependency.
Far from it.
But you are acting like all your proposed ideas just… already exist. That they could basically magically be implemented at the snap of a finger.
This is nonsense.
You have to actually transition to the new paradigm in a way that doesn’t just immediately fuck over people who are the edge cases that are not compatible with your vision.
Oh I am very aware and compassionate towards the dire state of mobility in the US. It’s just that you were dismissive of biking as if it had inherent insurmontable problems, whereas alternatives to cars are viable but have been suppressed politically.
Second point, it is not realistic to bike 3h one way to go to a far away park. But the question would be: does it make sense to go that far for a single day getaway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have nice spaces in or around cities that people could go for an afternoon, but not expect to have true natural reserves commodified? People should have the right to accessible natural spaces, but the priority of reserves should be the nature, not the people. A massive presence of humans does damage.
… Do you not understand the context that arose to the comment I made?
Person 1: Its dumb that you need a parking pass, for a car, to use isolated national parks in WA, most of which are very far away from civilization.
Person 2: Just bicycle to national parks.
Me: Disabled people cannot bicycle tens or hundreds of miles to a national park, nor is that really reasonable for non disabled people generally, that is a ludicrous suggestion.
You: sp3ctr4l is obviously using disingenuous anti bkcycling, pro car strawmen arguments.
… Please learn to read before you wildly throw out nonsensical accusations.
The entire discussion here … it inherits the details and context of its parent comments.
The discussion is particular to a specific set of circumstances in Washington state, USA.
Proposing bicycling as a universal transit solution, or long distance solution, or a solution to get to remote areas, in a highly mountainous region… is wildly impractical.
I don’t know for 100% certain, but you have a .nl user account, which to me implies a decent chance you live in the Netherlands.
… A place that is about 1/4 the size of WA, and is extremely flat.
This would be like proposing bicycling as a reasonable long distance travel solution for… basically the southern half of Norway if you bisected its area at the appropriate latitude line.
That is about the same size and has comparable elevation extremes, although the climate varies much more in WA, from temperate, to temperate rainforest, to a literal desert on the east side of the Cascades.
(Indeed, this is why WA has a very sizeable population of Norweigian ancenstry, because much of the state reminded them of much of Norway.)
… Finally: Many, many people who live in WA fairly regularly do indeed go on 3hr trips to visit a distant national park for either one day, or a weekend. Mt St Helens, the Hoh Rainforest, vist the Grand Coulee Dam, etc.
I have actually known a decent number of people in my life, living in WA, who have a, 2+ hour daily commute to work, 2+ hr commute back, either by car, or involving a ferry ride, or via public transit.
I myself had such a commute via bus routes at one point.
I agree with you that truly set aside for civilization, natural parks… should indeed be difficult and remote and hard to access.
… Which is why I mocked the idea of bicycling being proposed specifically as a way to get to them.
Ebikes/trikes can help for the elderly or some disabilities. Plenty of disabled people can cycle but not drive too.
And plenty of them can’t, and can barely tolerate being in even a mobility scooter.
So would you support removing cars with disability transport being one of the few exceptions? Because that would make it easier for most disabled people without making it harder for any.
Yes! Of course!
In my ideal world, there would be general, semi-individualized, semi on demand, or at least ‘request a ride in advance’, electric or hydrogen or hybrid (or perhaps even locally sourced bio diesel powered, if electric or hydrogen is too cost prohibitive) mini busses or vans that would help people with mobility difficulties get to and from daily tasks within a city or multi city region.
This would be like ambulances, like fire trucks, like … other busses.
Some important services just cannot be practically un-car-ified, and still function at all effectively.
This is why most busses in Seattle, and much of the US broadly, have deployable disability ramps and internal wheelchair attachment point zones, so that wheelchair bound folks can get around.
It would probably be more generally time effiecient to have just a seperate fleet dedicated to them/us in particular, given that a single wheel chair pickup/deboard for a city bus can throw off its entire planned timetable by a good amount, in high density, high traffic, peak ridership hours.
… but thats getting a bit into the precise technicalities.
…
For long distance disabled travel? Yeah, this is a legitimately more difficult logistics problem to solve in a general way that isn’t wildly costly to either the rider, or the ride provider… but bicycles are probably the least sensible solution to this problem I’ve ever heard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handcycle
Cool.
Anyway, my right wrist, and arm and right leg are royally fucked up.
What about amputees?
People with muscular dystrophy?
People prone to seizures, spasms, fainting?
People with unhealthy hearts?
People who are blind, or deaf?
Is your right arm or your left arm fucked up? If you have at least two functional limbs, there’s probably a way to make this work.
My entire right side is fucked.
My entire musculature system needs to basically be reconfigured, retrained, now that all the fractures have healed.
My PT told me oh yeah, your nervous system has gotten so accustomed to being in constant pain that you basically go from a background level of 8 out of 10, which you now find generally tolerable, to 10, which you find immensely painful, whenever… well pretty much any tendon or muscle on your right side goes ‘‘just slightly’’ out of its safe range of motion.
Don’t even have painkillers, by the way. Just ibuprofen and acetometaphen.
I’ve been immobile, literally bed ridden, for the past 6 months, barring the excrutiatingly painful PT routine, hobbling to the bathroom/shower (got a shower seat), and microwaving soup or whatever.
Typing these messages is quite painful, but it does actually count as part of the PT if I use the right position/grip.
I will probably be in aquatherapy for at least another 3 months, if not 6, or 12.
A local charity drives me to and from the visits… which i hobble out to the car in my braces, with my cane.
… You’re not gonna theory craft your way into a more effective mobility solution for my entire life situation than myself and my doctors, unless that involves cashapping me several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars.
Dude, I’m truly sad that you felt like you had to explain your issues with them. These guys acting like asshats think that they’ll be healthy forever and have money no matter what. That might be true, but it also might not. I think these diehard bicyclists have too much testosterone or something. I really don’t know what it is, but they act super smug and entitled when it comes to bikes vs cars.
I appreciate the sentiment.
I’m used to casual ableism in general, but these folks have some weapons grade, fucking Clydesdale, Belgian Draft level high horses they rode in on to this discussion.
Normally when you just point out… hey disabled people exist, 99% of people go, oh fuck, shit, i forgot… good point…
Years ago I noticed a trend on Seattle based subreddits that… there’s a lot of just unbelievably perma online debatelord bullshit culture going on.
I know there was some massively stupid meta drama with there being like dueling Seattle subreddits and I think a third one at one point?
Its like tankie levels of utter certainty that anyone who could ever disagree with them on any minor issue, or even the precise language or framing talking about such is obviously a bad faith shit disturber employed by the CIA to detract from the… whatever worldview it is they have… which they also just… assume you already know all the details of… before you ever talk to them.
My guess would be these people are basically trauma molded by that, and brought it here to lemmy.
…
I ran into another person yesterday in some other thread, a meme about jesus telling people to cut off the tips of their dicks.
I threw in some historical background about why it is that… that’s really only an American Christian thing.
… and some rando is like ‘oh my god. i just got here from reddit and I am SICK of people obsessing over male circumcision, its not that big a deal, why are people here like this too, not a good look lemmy!’
Told im Ive been using lemmy for over a year (recently switched over to dbzero because yargh mateys!)… and I’d never even brought up this topic before.
He replies that he is going to rebutt any discussion of male genital mutilation anywhere he sees it!
… And I laugh at his hypocritical understanding of the word ‘obsession’.
…
Maybe we need like some kind of resocialization, decompression zone, type of comm.
Gotta unlearn the hyperdefensive reflex, the undo the antisocial personity disorder that happens when you OD on toxic corpo social media.
… Either that or if these people actually ride bicycles, and don’t just debatelord about them on the net…
One good T-Boning on a bike by a car running a red at 30 mph and they’ll be about as fucked up as I am.
Happens every day.
I was there for 4 Seattle subreddits, lol. Those guys were Doug, CharlesGrodinFan, Rainier?, etc. Doug found me over here awhile ago.
They were trolls, I’m pretty sure Rainier was a legit Russian troll. He would change personalities during the weekends and forget entire discussions, so I think his account was a russian account. He kind of admitted it early on once, before they all got better at it. Too bad, he was super smart and funny. The rest are Maga trolls.
As for the bicyclists, I think they might be doing this type of shit (same as in this thread). I’m not 100% that they’re legit bicyclists.
https://archive.is/PoUMo
Frankly, that does not sound like 2 functional limbs. Now consider that it would be easier for your charity team to drive you around if there was less traffic. Meaning the more healthy people cycle, the less traffic there is (assuming there’s bike infrastructure, which is much cheaper than car infrastructure) the better you can get around. Alternatives to car driving even helps people who are actually dependent on the car.
… Fucking obviously duh, yes, if abled bodied people generally got around via actually safe, seperated bike lanes, or busses, or light rail, or trolleys, or trains, then of course this would generally reduce traffic and generally improve other transit options within an urban area.
But the inciting incident of this whole discussion is:
People should just bicycle tens or hundreds of miles to get to national parks far away from urban areas.
This is still an absurd suggestion, even generally, for most people of average health/fitness/ability.
Ebikes are still not even a sensible solution to this in a practical, affordability sense: Entry level motorcycles have greater ranges, speeds, more comfortable rides at the same price point as an Ebike that has roughly half the range and speed.
Nobody even legally can drive an Ebike on a highway with a minimum speed limit of 50 mph.
Please learn how to read the entire context of a discussion before jumping into it.
Plenty of disabled people ride adaptive bikes in nature. Also electric assist bikes exist nowadays so level of fitness is less of a limiter.
… The thing being discussed here is the problem of parking passes being used as your ticket in to a national park.
The suggestion was… have you considered bicycling?
… Presumably, bicycling to and from the park, so as to avoid using a car, and the parking pass.
… It is 160ish miles from Seattle to say, the Hoh rainforest park.
Up a literal mountain range.
I think you climb up about uh… yeah, very steep hills, most of the way, up from sea level to 5330 ft, a total of about 11000 feet travelled uphill and 11000 ft traveled downhill in the whole 18 hour journey.
Sure, put your bike in the car, drive it there, ride it around the park, go home in the car.
But then you’d still be using a car, and its parking pass.
… You can’t expect everyone, muchless disabled people… to just put in 18hrs of strenuous bicycling to get to a national park, which currently has no real public transit method of getting anywhere near it from most actually concentrated population centers.
Have you tried cycling to Deception Pass or Hurricane Ridge? Let me know how much fun that is.
Super fun and challenging, most likely. Some of the roads are likely difficult on a bike.Lots of other state parks that are accessible by bike besides those two. Heres a great list that includes a bunch.
Paying in $35/yr so the state parks can be maintained and improved is a very reasonable cost, especially with all the damage people and cars do to them.
Like Paradise at Mt. Rainier, Hoh Rain Forest, 4 Caves, and Wallace Falls. Actually at Wallace Falls, you can ride your bike once you get it there, but you might be chased and killed by a mountain lion. You can be killed as a hiker too, but people on bikes look like prey.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/washington-bikers-fight-cougar/
I’m not anti-bike, I’m anti bike for everything and all situations. A lot of bike enthusiasts are not living in reality.
Edit: Also, because your poor and can’t afford parking, you can’t take your family? Or do you expect everyone to have bikes?
Neat article. Can you link me to one about the tens of thousands of mountain bikers in Washington that were not chased by cougars?
All outdoor activities in nature carry risk, some more than others. By far the most dangerous thing for cyclists is motorists, not wildlife. If you can safely navigate the roads to get to a park, your other risks are minimal in comparison.
I can’t get over your sense of entitlement on this. You think everyone is healthy enough to ride a bike and be excluded from the amazing views and experiences of national and state parks because they’re poor and drive a car? You are in a bubble. I’m glad you like bikes and feel that sense of superiority when you don’t have to pay parking. The point is, the commons have to be paid for.
TIL I am entitled for being too poor to ever learn to drive.
Fortunately I live in the UK so it is pretty easy. Grew up in a small town, easy to get anywhere in under 15 mins by bike.
Do you understand how far everything is in the US and how much there is a lack of public transportation? Again, you are acting entitled because you have an amazing infrastructure that we don’t have.
The US, Washington State specifically, is incredibly gorgeous but these amazing parks are 4 hours away from Seattle by car sometimes. It would probably take you days to get within 2 hours distance with public transportation.
The “amazing infrastructure” I used to get to the shops included an unpaved road and muddy track along with having to carry my bike over a fence depending on the route I took. But there was a short section of road that didn’t have that many holes in it once I got to the middle of town.
Ha, sense of entitlement eh? That’s a quick pivot away from your weak point about “bikes are dangerous because of rare mountain lion attacks” i guess. Now trying to call me abelist and classist as a random jab? Sure thing, pal.
The common is the commons and has to be paid for. Without funding the commons falls to “the tragedy of the commons,” where the common good is destroyed by overuse and neglect. Washington has opted to protect the parks with a minimal, once a year fee to the people doing the most damage to the commons, drivers, that you are complaining about.
So you think the people using a common good and doing the most damage to it should not pay for that use? Why should the poor people without cars, the people who aren’t able to bike or drive, pay for your visit?
Because that’s what our taxes are for. That’s what we’re paying for, the commons. Drivers licenses, car registrations, etc., yeah sure, I can see why we pay for that.
I’d also prefer this to be rolled into an income tax, but Washington doesn’t have one. The state only has a regressive sales taxes, one that has an outsized impact on our poorest citizens.
By making this a “fee for use,” it at least minimizes the damage to the poor who can’t access the parks at all.
… You are the one who jumped from:
Cougar attacks are a legitimate concern for hikers and bikers.
(which is absolutely a true statement)
to…:
Oh yeah? 10,000 bicyclists get attacked by Cougars each year in National Parks?
SOURCE PLEASE!
…
Bro you astonishingly hyperbolized and strawmanned pele and then got mad about shit you made up in your head that they didn’t say.
This is the most twitter brained ‘discussion style’ I’ve seen on lemmy in a while.
Good job pointing out @pelespirit@sh.itjust.works’s disingenuous argumentation!
Just make sure you never leave your F-150, in case a bear or cougar gets you. Wal-Mart parking lots are the most dangerous.
Yep, someone who expresses confusion at the idea of bicycling 10s or hundreds of miles to a national park… obviously they must be rolling coal and hate mother earth.
You are delusional.