Properly, it lastly occurred. That’s proper, it’s the Gravel/Highway Inversion. For years now, we’ve been listening to that the gravel bike is the reply to the restrictions of the highway bike, so it was solely a matter of time till somebody went the opposite means and transformed a gravel bike right into a highway bike:
So, principally a motorcycle…like those we had for years earlier than they determined everybody wanted a gravel bike.
Anyway, I tried to look at the video, however the hair-splitting shortly broke my mind:
[“A skinny gravel bike tire is a fat road bike tire and a gravel bike on the road is a road bike on the gravel and if you put fat road tires on a gravel bike and skinny gravel tires on a road bike the effect is inverse to the pressure you’re running multiplied by tire width and divided by the diameter of your front rotor squared…”]
These are actually the questions that preserve me up at evening:
He additionally says you a fair use a gravel bike as a highway bike and WHO WOULD HAVE IMAGINED IT?
In fact he’s not the primary YouTuber to try to place a highway tire on a gravel bike:
I couldn’t make myself watch it however I’m simply going to imagine his bicycle imploded and he was by no means heard from once more.
Simply ensure that in case you do try to make use of a highway tire in your gravel bike or a gravel tire in your highway bike, otherwise you put on gravel socks along with your highway sneakers or gravel sneakers along with your highway socks, you alter your handlebar width accordingly:
So having the ability to shortly change your bar top has been largely confined to historical past, however now you may alter the width?
Go determine.
And if that wasn’t sufficient, now bicycles are turning into SUVs:
Goodbye bicycles, howdy electrical bikes:
Hell hath no fury like an indignant Frenchman:
I put “visibly aggravated and now geared up with a rear-view mirror” into the AI and right here’s what I received:
That cockpit appears to be like like one thing Canyon would provide you with for its metropolis bike line.
However sure, it’s unusually comforting to know that issues are simply as unhealthy in Paris as they’re right here in New York, the place they’re now pushing an e-bike registration invoice:
This invoice would require each bicycle with electrical help, electrical scooter, and different authorized motor vehicle that isn’t in any other case required to be registered with the DMV, to be registered with DOT and obtain an figuring out quantity which might be displayed on a visual plate affixed to the automobile.
As normal, I’m torn. On one hand, that is in all probability too far-reaching, and is nearly actually means an excessive amount of of a stretch for a metropolis and state that may’t even take care of all its fraudulently registered vehicles. However, there are some critically quick and annoying electrical automobiles on the market that defy straightforward categorization and run amok on the sidewalks and within the bike paths, and it may be extraordinarily irritating–nearly as irritating as advocates’ fixed makes an attempt to deflect:
No, it’s actually not. It’s about this stuff being actually fucking annoying to completely everyone besides the folks really using them.
So what’s the answer? Properly, a legislation nearly actually gained’t assist (you may bust somebody for breaking site visitors legal guidelines whether or not they have a plate or not, as I do know all too nicely), however neither will the advocates’ counter-proposal:
If completely none of this stuff are taking place now–to the extent that we’re about to activate congestion pricing–why would they occur with much more of them? Wouldn’t you count on to have already seen diminished automobile use and congestion in mild of this?
They don’t break it down, however anybody who rides in New York is aware of a big chunk of that site visitors is e-bikes, e-scooters, and motor scooters each fuel and electrical. I’d even wager it constitutes nearly the whole lot of the rise.
In the meantime, oddly it’s laborious to discover a comparable chart from the DOT for automobile site visitors on the East River bridges, however it’s clear from second-hand sources that it’s not happening:
I notice we’re not supposed to have interaction in New York exceptionalism right here, however you may’t actually logic your means out of site visitors in a metropolis ruled solely by the Legal guidelines of Extra. Right here, extra scooters and e-bikes doesn’t imply fewer vehicles. It simply means extra of all the things:
Because of this, because the panorama of personal floor transportation continues to evolve, I’m simply gonna keep on with my Bike Lane of the Thoughts and let everybody else preserve duking it out.
Might the most effective (and hopefully least lethal and annoying) conveyance win.