My modest Goals with electric biking
3 Modest goals for raising a kid using an electric bike.
Photo by Mark Stosberg on Unsplash
How many of you dismissed me as some hippie when I introduced this blog? That’s something I’ve encountered, along with a range of silent judgment from other parents I’ve told or shown. In other places, like Europe, this would hardly be a huge deal: when biking is an everyday occurrence, biking with kids is hardly a radical step.
However, I live in the car-centric US, and I live in one of the most car-filled traffic areas of the United States. So deciding to buck the trend and use an electric bike seems like a crazy idea. It almost seems like I’m having a mid-life crisis and completely uprooting my life. But that’s hardly the case.
To explain this, I’ll lay out the three main goals I’m trying to achieve by making an electric bike a part of my parental routine.
Go from a two-car home to a one-car home.
There’s no getting around it: there’s no way I could support all of my transportation needs living where I am in the US. Having no car meant I couldn’t access the highway, most large roads, and I couldn’t journey outside a 5-10 mile radius. This is not even mentioning things like the weather.
But that’s not what I would want to do, anyways. There are too many situations in my life where a car is just too convenient not to use, but what I’m trying to do is reduce myself to a one-car household.
This way, we can use a car when necessary and a bike for most other trips. For example, if we wanted to drive for several hours on vacation, we’d use the car. Same if we intend to make medical trips, use the highway, and more. In that case, what exactly would I be using the electric bike for?
Make the majority of my trips under 5 miles with a bike
Believe it, over half of your car trips are likely under 5 miles. That almost seems ridiculous, but consider several common trips you likely make in your car:
Grocery trips
Your kid’s school or daycare
Going to the playground
Going to a pharmacy
Picking up food
etc.
They may be 5-15 minute errands by car, so how long would it take you by bike? Well, if I considered a regular bike, this might be 15-30 minutes, as I’m not some super fit person who can bike at high speeds. In those cases, it’s hard to justify using a bike instead of a car.
But using an electric bike changes a whole lot of stuff. How? For one, my electric bike can easily reach speeds of around 20 MPH with little effort. In addition, a lot of the difficulties with using bikes (such as weight limits and accelerating from 0 MPH) are alleviated with electric bikes.
This can result in those 5-15 minute car errands taking around 5-20 minutes by electric bikes. How is this possible? Well, consider what you might go through when you use a car going 45 MPH for an errand:
Stopping at stop lights
Yielding for turns, other cars, and more
Low-speed limit areas like schools and shopping centers
Parking
etc.
As a result, you never really spend much of your time at 45 MPH unless you’re speeding.
Now consider what you might do on a 20 MPH bike:
There may be shortcuts like bike paths that you can take, such as separated bike lanes, residential roads, and more.
You may rarely have to slow down (since you’re going pretty slow in the first place) for speed limits. In addition, with electric bikes, you can quickly get up to speed.
As long as you know where to park, you often don’t have much trouble parking a bike.
Etc.
As a result, if you know how to get around, you might be able to maintain a 20 MPH speed, which often leads to a similar travel time.
This is why these short trips are often better with an electric bike. Not to mention how I’m saving myself money (and slightly improving society).
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20200103090956/https://thediscourse.ca/scarborough/full-cost-commute
Improve my kid’s happiness
A ton of research suggests that biking improves the mental and physical health of kids. So whether it’s how kids in the Netherlands are among the happiest in the world or how being outside can protect against anxiety or depression, I want my children to be happy. I’m sure that you want the same for your kids.
However, my kids aren’t old enough to ride alone, and my neighborhood is still meant for cars. So I want them to grow up exposed to nature and see the autonomy biking can provide them early on.
If that mean I get looked at strangely while being on my bike? I’m okay with that. But hopefully, by laying out my goals like this, I don’t seem like a hippie, a crazy person, or something else. These are modest and achievable goals, and I think I can live this sort of life and encourage you to do the same.
(Bonus goal) Get more people to speak up for biking infrastructure
Throughout reading my parental adventures, I hope I can encourage you to consider electric bikes as a potential transportation method. In addition, I hope that by doing so, you can speak up for the biking infrastructure in your city (especially if you live in America).
No, we won’t ever make highways with bike lanes, but certain types of roads could be better served by adding bike lanes. Clever street design with bike lanes often reduces the amount of car traffic that more minor roads experience. For example, in the DMV area, tons of side roads are clogged with traffic as people try to get in and out of DC in any way possible.
Many of these are two or 4-lane roads that an additional bike lane might better serve. And with the advent of electric bikes, where even out-of-shape riders can go at fast speeds without sweating a ton, many people might use them to avoid sitting in traffic.
So I hope to raise awareness of the potential of bike lanes and the benefits they can offer to parents and the larger public.
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