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Comment by w0utert | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to split out the results between regular bikes and electric ones, now that they are becoming very popular. On an electric bike, distance is much less of threshold for choosing bike over car, and e.g. weather or ‘amount of stuff to take with you’ become the main deciding factors. Maybe electric bikes could bring opportunities for US cities where everything is far apart?

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The main advantage of an electric bike is less about distance and more about terrain. The distance is nice too, but while electric assist it might have some impact on how long a trip you're willing to make, it'll have a huge impact on your willingness to take trips through hilly areas. This can open up whole new parts of the city for accessing casually by bike.

Of course, we're talking about the Netherlands here... the country is mostly flat.

Sure, there are some places with hills, but the majority lives in the flatter-than-pancake flat part.

Where e-bikes can really shine, is increased speed. If you can do 40 an hour (km's), biking becomes a viable alternative to traffic jams. And that's happening already in NL.

I thought electric bikes and scooters was going to be the "secret". They are abundant in Netherlands bike lanes and apparently controversial.

It's a good thing since smaller vehicles are replacing cars in many places, to make it more accessible to people who can't ride a regular bike, but has some safety and regulation issues to iron out.

I personally hate these very polluting moped abominations on the Dutch bicycle paths. They should’ve been banned (or heavily taxed) a decade ago when the Greens asked questions in parliament due to appalling emissions findings of a Dutch research institute. But, the coward politicians pointed to the EU and implicitly said the health of our bicyclists need to be decided in Brussels.

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