Comment by buran77
4 years ago
> a <$1000 road bike with drop bars and 25-32mm tires can hit 30-40mph in the hands of novice/moderately experienced riders
A novice rider will have a very hard time hitting 65km/h without going downhill or a strong back wind, even on a light bike. It's a challenge even for trained cyclists. So you won't see this on a city's streets but rather on open road.
But stopping fast and safe at those speeds is even harder than reaching them because you can't take your time to do it. A bike that can make it easy to reach them shouldn't share a lane with much slower and unpredictable participants, like regular lanes on sidewalks.
As someone who has biked for decades and puts on nearly ~1,000 miles per month - August I did ~850 - Sept/oct was less due to some rainy days... (All on a 29" x2.1" hard tail mtn bike)
But I used to bike from Alameda into SF for nearly a decade. I even biked occasionally from Alameda to Menlo Park...
That being said, while I really want an E-bike, I am also cautious: I have fallen a lot, and I used to get my bikes up to 44 was the fastest I ever went, down the long bike path along Lexington Reserviour which we used to bike up every morning...
Going ~40 on ANY terrain on a mike is dangerous/scary as heck.
I've had bikes just literally vanish from beneath me and I went sailing through the air.
Never would I want to do that on something that weighs more than me....
PLUS - how do you carry Jacques bike up/down stairs to transition between trains/levels/whatever...
That wonderful hack looks heavy as heck, but lovely.
It has walk assist if I need to move it uphill while walking next to it, I wouldn't want to move it up or down a flight of stairs but if that would ever be a requirement I'm pretty sure there will be a law mandated elevator nearby as well.