Comment by Avicebron
1 day ago
Not really, the cross section of people who lose their license/insurance and those that could use something like an ebike reliably for their commute is practically zilch. The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes where it snows ~6 months out of the year.
Oh I was’t clear: I’m not talking about an ebike but a very small and underpowered car like this one https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35210572
There’re somewhat popular here for those that doesn’t have a licence and offer some of the advantage but are less dangerous to others.
> The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes
The size of the country in which a commute is contained is immaterial to the length of that commute. What you mean is not "the US is big" but "things are really far apart in the US". Which they are, but precisely because of car-centric (car-only, actually) design.
Things being far apart in the US predates cars. Rail made that possible.
Rails encouraged density around the train stations.
Rail is not responsible for the car sprawling type of communities which are mostly a 20th century phenomenon.