Parking lot 2 miles out of town, with plenty of electric bikes you can take into town (And the other way have bikes with trailers to get back to the car)
Get rid of cars in town, leave a few single-lane roads with a 10mph limit for deliveries etc at specific times.
I live near a couple of big supermarkets. I can ride to them easily but it's an uphill journey back and my last bike was stolen.
If I solve the stealing problem by adding some sort of bike shed and get an electric bike I'll be very happy to ride most of the time to do shopping.
The key issue is that I don't live miles from shops that have all the basics. I think if zoning laws allowed it then many trips could be satisfied by a bike.
So the best way would be to just use electric bicyclea and scooters for daily commutes, trains for long range transport of people and delivery service backed by trains and electric cars and other vehicles, possibly state sponsored to some degree for all deliveries long range and short range.
Parking space? Ride your bike or take public transport, individual cars are not the best option. Electric buses and trains and bikes (for moving people) and electric trucks (for moving goods) are really where the future is going to be.
I live in one of those European cities where cars are just about banned from the city center. (They can access parts of the city center, but driving is limited to 30kmh and mostly one-way traffic. There's 3 dominos near me and they all use scooters. Bikes wouldn't cost them a lot of extra time.
The furtest one away from me is about 10-15 minutes by bike. And that's at a comfortable pace.
Deliveroo (delivery by bike) is already quite popular here.
It's ironic that you ask where to park cargo bike while at the same time proposing EVs. Where do they park? Where do they drive? We are occupying massive amounts of land for car infrastructure completely covering it in concrete and thus contributing to urban heating. At the same time we have study upon study that shows that people are happier in places where they can walk/bike instead of driving.
Small EVs are the type of cars that are needed the least. They are a car for those cases where you essentially did not need a car.
I've got a cargo electric bike. My route has a few 35 mph roads that wind through rolling hills and no bike lanes. I've tried biking it, but the cars are aggressive. I really want a car for this commute.
Electric bikes and cargo bikes are having a very big growth world wide. They are ideal for taking over small trips under eight miles.
Whereas self-driving cars have the potential for taking over the bigger trips. A self-driving car does not need to park, so ideally it drops you of at a 'bus' stop nearby and you walk the part yourself. This also separates the cars from the urban centres and makes the self driving problem much less hard.
I got an electric cargo bike 3 years ago and it has fundamentally changed the way I move around my little suburban town. I can do pretty much every errand I'd normally do with a car.
If it weren't for the heavy snowfall we get I would be able to get rid of one car; for now it just sits unused for 1/3rd of the year.
Cars are great for all that, and an electric cargo bike like an urban arrow is great for all the things nearby, IF you have safe infrastructure. Plenty of people have cars in my Dutch city but it's still safe to do local things by biking and walking
Ebikes would help, but I honestly don't think anything of that sort other than electric cars and trucks will get much uptake. As you said, there's often no shoulder, and, due to low population density, there's little upkeep done on roads, especially in the winter and after storms. In short, unless your vehicle can handle snow, ice, and animals, it isn't a complete solution, not to mention the cargo capacity needed to not have to go shopping every day when the grocery store is miles away.
Well, can I at least have an EV on my bicycle for commuting? To me the biggest challenge once cities get cars off the road is to deal with motorcycle traffic (assuming they're not in a city where cars were always secondary to motorcycles). That allows a wider range (distance from transit) of commuters to avoid fully-powered vehicles.
Ideally I'd love to see more of these bicycle silos, both attached to transit hubs and in office environments:
They help solve the safety issues with leaving your bicycle somewhere. More traditional parking is great where space and trust allows, too (say, in a private office or behind a monitored door).
Taking advantage of bike lanes in cities is a huge advantage for a battery/motor assisted bicycle, but I do most of what you describe with a Yamaha XT250. Just don't go out if it looks like rain. You have your helmet and pack a raincoat in case you get unlucky. To carry some groceries you could easily rig a small rack on the back where you can attach/detach a grated plastic crate. Then put some in a backpack.
I don't do all of that but I could easily do it. I'm at the stage of my life where owning a small truck like a Tacoma or Maverick makes a lot of sense due to the utility. You have a lot of good ideas. On your negatives for EVs, I'd say walking infrastructure can't really occur without living in a dense city. Pipedream otherwise. Acceleration is less of a problem rather than people not paying attention at all, smartphones. As far as the weight, that will go down over time as solid state batteries come around.
I wouldn't trade my motorcycle for an EV motorcycle without significant advances, I also don't see interstate towing being overtaken by EVs anytime soon. You just can't beat a diesel for that whether it be in a pickup, van, or semi, and it will be tough to do so. Yet EVs in general are definitely inevitable as they are already better for countywide travel.
We need to quit thinking trade the car for a bike and start thinking use the bike for a few trips.
I live near a major bike path. Every bar along it has a lot of bike parking ,but none of the other stores and restaurants have any at all, not even the bike shop. Many people drive their bike to the bike trail instead of riding.
How do we get people to ride their bikes to get groceries? They could also ride to church on Sunday, or other similar activities. These little trips need to be tackled before we think about getting rid of cars.
The right answer is the tool for the job. Chances are you don't need a huge pickup truck when you buy $200 of groceries. I can do it in a bike with some panniers so that means everyone can do it with an ebike. Need more than $200? Just take multiple trips a week and cancel your gym membership. Need to haul a few hundred pounds of manure? By all means take the truck. It's just when you look around at the modern world today, a lot of people are sitting in traffic by themselves in a vehicle on their way to work less than 10 miles away, or buying a few things from the store less than 2 miles away as soon as the need arises. Its a lot of wasted vehicular capacity. If you were a business buying a machine that you only used a fraction of its capabilities, you'd consider getting away with a leaner machine for most use cases.
For a lot of people I talk to about getting around when it comes up, the major stopping point with biking is just the lack of infrastructure and feeling afraid of cars. Most people aren't comfortable taking the lane while biking so it becomes a dangerous experience when they don't. As the saying goes, though, if you build it, they will come. Any city I've been in that has built out a gridlike network of bike lanes seems to have a lot of people riding around. Once you build them that network you enable a lot of trips for those people uncomfortable with the existing road network.
E-bike then. I can get anywhere in a 2 mile radius in Seattle faster with my e-bike than with my car, and I always get a prime parking spot right outside where I’m going.
Get rid of cars in town, leave a few single-lane roads with a 10mph limit for deliveries etc at specific times.
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