Because it isn’t faster and cheaper in the majority of the US. The nearest Pizza place to me is about 2 miles, the nearest that actually delivers? About 4 miles. And I’m within the city limits of one of the top 20 largest cities in the US. Our population densities are on a completely different scale than the Netherlands. Not saying we have good city designs, but as it is, a bike would a terrible way to deliver food to me.
4 miles (approx. 6km?) would be 3mins by bike
Where is the problem?
In my city in Austria like 90% of the deliveries are done by bike/e-bike
There is even a platform/app where it's guaranteed to be delivered by bike.
How long do you thing does it take to bike a few kilometres?
Yeah, maybe your infrastructure isn't bike friendly, but that's a problem that can be solved.
I just don't get the mentally of "well, it is that way and everything else can't apply here"
And here, it can be as little a 6 minutes by car, assuming good light timing, and a max of 15 minutes, assuming terrible timing and unusual traffic.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 5 months ago
You’re saying that 6.5 kilometers by car would be faster than by bike in a city? In a car you’d be stuck in slow moving traffic or waiting for a traffic light like 80% of the time.
6.5km by bike would be like 20 minutes max, depending on city and time of day it would be 30-60 minutes by car.
greybeard@lemmy.one 5 months ago
That is correct, the median speed, as a rough guess, from the pizza place near my house, to my house, would be 35mph, including the 2 stoplights in the way. Assuming we had proper bike infrastructure(which we don’t); you’d be hard pressed to top the speed a car can go, and you would still have to stop frequently at lights, just like a car. And remember, that is the nearest place, not the only. And a small sub note, this area is not flat, at all. The gradient changes are brutal for bikes and they can’t sustain a decent constant speed. Well, at least before electric bikes.
I am not defending, in any way, America’s horrible car centric infrastructure. It is what we have though, and as a result, bike deliveries aren’t an option for the vast majority of America. Of course, when you leave the city, it gets worse.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 5 months ago
Here it’s the exact opposite. There is no way a car can keep up with a bike in the city. Let’s say I wanted to go to the city center by car, which is about 2 kilometers. I would encounter 5 traffic lights just in that short drive. On a working day it would be slow, on a Saturday? Forget it. It would probably be faster to walk. Alternatively, I could go by bike and encounter exactly zero traffic lights. I would ride from my house to the bicycle highway (few hundred meters), and from there it’s an uninterrupted route to the city center. It’s a completely separate path and there are bridges crossing all major roads. Near the city center it turns into a shared space where bicycles have priority over cars. The city center isn’t accessible by car at all, so if you go by car you have to park your car at the edge of the city center (paid) and walk the rest. By contrast, I can cycle right up to any store and park my bicycle right in front of it.
Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Our cities aren’t densely built up, except for New York. The actual urban area of most cities generally has far fewer people than the suburban metroplex surrounding it. 6.5km is literally larger than all of downtown Dallas, depending on how you define downtown.
Even our cities are designed for car travel, so unless it’s rush hour you’re still faster by car. Unless there’s a concert or other event happening, it doesn’t take nearly 20 minutes to traverse downtown Dallas in a car.
loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I lived in Dallas, this is bullshit. Dallas has traffic jams all the time and it gets worse and worse. There are more than enough studies you can find, just search them on some search engine and look at the data.
Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I live in DFW right now. I’ll admit i don’t commute through downtown proper daily, but even when i do go through downtown after work it’s bad, but not nearly as bad as plenty of other places in thr US.