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The Year of the E-Bicycle
theodp writes "Electric bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they have never quite captured the imagination of auto-obsessed Americans. That may be about to change. At CES this month, Sanyo showed off its sleek, lightweight Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle. Priced at $2,300, the e-bike sports a black lithium-ion battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat. Press a button on the left handlebar, and a 250-watt motor kicks in, providing about twice as much power as your own pedaling. Some basic e-bike models, like the Ezip Trailz can be had for as low as $500. Both Trek and Schwinn began selling e-bikes last year, and Best Buy is offering e-bikes in three test markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, OR."
The price point for these seems way off.
As an avid cycle commuter I spent 3 years in the 90's in Houston: after experiencing that cycling was impractcal, inconvenient and not entirely safe in the 290/1960 area and then around the Galleria, I did commute to downtown from the Montrose area; and, as posted above, if one stay inside the loop, biking is not so bad, but outside is totally a nightmare.
Note: After Houston I lived in Portland Oregon and now Munich Germany, both of which are a totally different world where cycling is a normal, expected, desirable, supported and respected form of transportation.
As noted by others, the problems in Houston are multifold: designed only for cars, citizens do not expect to see bicycles (= lack of safety), cycling is not respected or desired, etc.) --- the most difficult aspect to comprehend is how socially undesireable it is to be a cyclist in Houston (or most of Texas for that matter): everyone assumes that anyone on a bicycle is either too poor to own a car or pay for gas or has had his driver's license revoked for DWI. When I used to commute the 4 miles to downtown my colleagues would continuously offer me a ride home, ask compassionately what finincial problems i had and if they could help (i couldn't possibly be choosing to cycle so it must be because i had no money!), offer to loan me money, etc. Even after I explained that my car was all good and well but sitting at home in the garage, they simply didn't believe me! THAT is an anti-cycling environment!
P.S. although I love the percetant of bicycle usage in the Netherlands, I do not believe its bike system should be taken as the model, as its system is based on "separate but equal" facilities for bikes, autos and pedestrians (i.e. lots of bike lanes but bikes are generally forbidden to ride on the roads if bike paths are available). Germany follows a similar system in theory where cyclists are often grouped with pedestrians (leads to higher rate of minor accidents), but in practice is somewhat less restrictive as fewer bike paths are available. (It has been shown numerous times in studies that the safest system in urban areas involes biking not on completely separate facilities (i.e. bike paths) nor along with pedestrians (i.e. sidewalks), but along side cars on the roads (either with or without bike lanes), with large numbers of cyclists on the road such that car drivers both expect and respect cyclists on the road).