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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • I’d be willing to bet that for most Americans the main barrier to commuting by bike is the threat of cars and lack of bicycle infrastructure as a whole.

    I ride my bike to class often, and when I do it’s great. Well-maintained trails and frequent bike racks make it very convenient. My college is good with bicycle infrastructure, and I happen to be lucky that there are good trails between my apartment and campus. A faster ride would be nice, but I don’t see it making me bike more often. It wouldn’t affect the things that prevent me from biking on the days that I don’t: weather, time of day, or how I feel physically.

    Despite how much I bike to class, I’ve never biked to the grocery store, restaurants, or any other place that’s not on campus. This is because I’d have to ride on busy roads without bike lanes. Once you get closer to the center of the city, there are bike lanes, but they’re just painted. Actual separated bike lanes basically don’t exist in the US, which means that cyclists are still at risk of getting hit by cars even when bike lanes are present. A faster bike wouldn’t fix this. Investment in infrastructure would.

    I do understand the appeal of eBikes and I recognize them as a viable alternative to cars. But I only think people will make the switch if they live somewhere that’s already got the necessary infrastructure to make their commute safe and efficient. This is not even close to the majority of Americans. If we want people to move away from cars and toward bikes, we need to think of infrastructure first and the bikes themselves second.











  • I wasn’t talking about the electoral college at all, more about congressional elections, which are already decided by popular vote within voting districts and states. If we didn’t group voters by location (in this case state) no individual state would have representation in Congress, instead just having Representatives elected by the country as a whole through a proportional representation system. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, but it would be a major change from what Americans are used to, so I was curious about people’s opinions on it.