icemilkcoffee 

Swimming also doesn't load the bones. Weight training is the best bone-loading exercise. I should get back to it. I've been slacking off of using my resistance bands.

TC1

We don't.... but education has gone severely downhill, and people no longer understand the meaning of words nor the use of a dictionary.

Referring to motorless bicycles as "acoustic" is just like wearing a sandwich board that says "My education is woefully embarrassing." In some ways, this is convenient, because as soon as you hear someone call a motorless bicycle 'acoustic', you know that you can safely ignore everything else they might say.

Iride01 

If acoustic bothers y'all, then what does shred the gnarly do to you?

Of course technically acoustic relates to sound. But in the colloquial fads of hip talk, the implied meaning is relational. IE, acoustic guitar means non-electric guitar. Therefore the you have to think outside the box of some terms used. So non electric guitar and non electric bike makes perfect sense to be called "acoustic" when use colloquially.

Level of education has nothing to do with such phrasing when trying to be whatever the term is for cool person today.

Garfield Cat

Further to this, I looked up Roland, the makers of digital pianos

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AN ACOUSTIC PIANO AND DIGITAL PIANO

An acoustic piano produces sound with felt-covered hammers hitting steel-wire strings. A digital piano doesn’t use hammers; instead it features electronic speakers to playback high quality recordings taken from the very best acoustic pianos.

indyfabz

I’m ok with it, but “shred the gnar” crosses some lines.

Garfield Cat

Donald Fagan on Fender Rhodes

mschwett 

that's a very specific use case. most utility cyclists just have a bike, rack, maybe a pannier bag, a lock and some lights. typically 25-30lb. lightweight motor and battery clock in at around 8lb. sure, there are very big and very heavy motors and batteries. there are also super heavy touring/bulletproof setups like yours. but those are edge cases. the difference between a quality "commuter/fun/utility" bike that serves the needs of a huge swath of riders, say, a sirrus 4 and a vado SL is 24lb vs 33lb. yes. it's heavier, but not enough to disqualify it for almost any use case.

i have a 14lb bike, a 28lb bike, and a 42lb bike. they all get carried up and down stairs quite often. two are electric, one is not. the only thing i don't do is carry the 42lb one with my 6 year old IN the child seat. she gets off and walks up or down the stairs

CrimsonEclipse

Eh, get people off the couch and improve their cardiovascular, since that tops the list of deaths.

Is bone density REALLY the primary problem with e-bikes?

Wildwood 

Here's a person that has a view on the scene in Paris cycling.

There's always a variety of opinions. Some opinions like some body parts are odorous. Unlike e-bikes.

Cyclists have turned Paris into hell on earth (yahoo.com)

MinnMan

This thread has mostly gotten off track, without recognizing *why* ebike use is so popular in Germany and. other European countries. it is not mostly people buying bikes for fitness, but rather for transport and commuting. They live in communities, including rural communities, where point-to-point distances are relatively short and where an e-bike makes commuting or transport possible for them whereas a bicycle would, for whatever reason, be more difficult, slower, less practical.

The ebike demand is mostly lessening the demand for cars, not for other bikes.

Increasingly, I see lots of commuters on ebikes here in the Twin Cities also. But I doubt it will take hold as it has in Germany and similar places on the other side of the pond. As has been lamented many times here and elsewhere, many of our cities don't have the infrastucture and our suburbs/exurbs/rural communities have distances that are too great.

TC1

Nothing at all -- although I usually hear it without the trailing 'ly', in which case it is more-or-less grammatically correct.

The problem is not that we cannot understand how it was derived, it is that they are using the word lazily and incorrectly -- and the huge majority of them are unaware of that fact. Not being electrically-powered does not make an item acoustic. You wouldn't call your toothbrush acoustic. You wouldn't call a hacksaw acoustic. You wouldn't call a gas-powered vehicle acoustic. You wouldn't call a fire an acoustic oven. Etcetera.

So, it just sounds dumb to call a bicycle 'acoustic' -- unless perhaps it has a speaker mounted, or at least an acoustic NFT flapping in the spokes.

PeteHski

The thing is that non-cyclists have less issues with bone density than road cyclists and those who cycle the most (pros) appear to be most at risk in this respect. So casually riding an e-bike is not likely to put you at more risk of losing bone density compared to a conventional cyclist. If anything it will probably reduce that particular risk. It is certainly a very weak argument against e-biking!

TC1

If you think it's expensive to buy a home now, imagine what it'd cost if we all had to live within a few miles of the cities where all the jobs would be clustered.

That'd result in vastly more areas with population densities like those of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, New York City, and Honolulu -- the five most dense cities in the country. And what are housing prices in those cities like? They are numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, and 10 in most-expensive housing in the country.

All those people living in the suburban single-family homes that you decry would be forced to move into the cities -- which would skyrocket those housing costs, and force current residents to move, or more likely, simply become homeless.

MinnMan

The most dense major cities the US are, in order

New York
San Francisco
Boston
Miami
Chicago
Philadelphia
Washington D.C.
Providence R.I.

(2020 Census)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lation_density

But far be it from me to suggest that you should let facts get in the way of your opinions.

TC1

"Major city" != "city", first of all.

Your list is not found on that citation, second of all. "Metropolitan area" also does not equal "city". You also didn't even quote your source properly if you were trying to list metro areas in order. You may wish to try again -- or preferably not.

Ibid, there pal.

All that said, apart from your failed attempt to argue about precisely which are the highest-density cities in the country, are you seriously arguing against the point that high-density cities have the highest housing costs? If so, and after you learn to do research more accurately, look up the locations in the US with the lowest housing costs.

Once you do that, you will find that "my opinion" on this issue is completely correct.

MinnMan

It's not my problem that you can't read. indeed my list is found on that source. You just have to find the cities listed that are in bold, which are the ones that form their own metropolitan area. Was that too challenging for you?

And anybody who thinks that Los Angeles and San Jose have the highest housing or population densities in the country has no idea what they are talking about. More likely, they've taken their information from policy pieces from notoriously-biased right wing think tanks like newgeography

If you want to take this further, post something in P&R, where it belongs.

TC1

You are talking a lot of **** for someone who just embarrassed themself with a half-assed attempt at challenging accurate data. And yeah, I can read, which is how I know that "major city" is different from "city" which is different from "metropolitan area".

https://homebay.com/price-per-square-foot-2022/
https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn...ties-in-the-us
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/10-m...sing-in-the-us
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/22/us-c...of-living.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...e-list-prices/
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/10-...in-america/11/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...a/72930811007/

Tell you what, rather than me continuing to humiliate you all night, why don't you provide some data that supports your claim, that high density areas are cheap?

It'd be much better if you simply heeded Mark Twain's sage advice about silence and fools.

Duragrouch

I saw something on TV years ago, study of chickens about that, saying you needed a certain minimum amount of shock loads to maintain bone density, this was the same time as touting of "low-impact" workouts. However, as I recall, it doesn't take much, you don't need high-volume of impacts. So my question is, I wonder if hard climbing out of the saddle, is enough, or do I still need a small amount of running or walking?

rsbob 

By 2025, the projected US e-bike market at its current rate of growth is expected to reach 1.77 billion USD. Source: Market Data Report. It also discusses world-wide projections. Alas, not one mention of regular bicycle sales projections. It would make an interesting comparison.

The following post was provided by someone with a woefully inadequate education. But what can one expect from someone with a HS education and some other stuff?

Found this too. Projected US e-bike and regular sales for the future: https://www.statista.com/outlook/mmo.../united-states

Duragrouch

The big list of links a couple posts back, are related to housing costs, not housing density. The two could line up if based purely on market demand, but often do not, due to zoning, large swaths of low-density suburban areas built in past generations and whose residents want to keep it that way, desires to preserve the character of a neighborhood for aesthetic or historical reasons (such as the huge swath of single story houses between San Francisco's peaks all the way down to the ocean to the west), not blocking the sights (as my French teacher said with regard to building height limits around the Eiffel Tower), and a host of other reasons. In many of the above, a small ranch (single story) house on a small lot will cost you a million dollars, and the density is low.

MinnMan

Take it to P&R.

TC1

Yes. The point is that the highest-density areas in the United States have the highest housing costs.

Now price the equivalent square footage in Manhattan, or San Francisco, etc.

https://metrocosm.com/us-housing-markets-map.html

The only exceptions are in resort areas like Hawaii, and Aspen.

Duragrouch

Seattle is very high housing prices and low density. The vast majority are single-family homes, because they were built when land was cheap. No foresight. Now there is no more land except an hour out of town, so if you want to live close, very expensive. A few new high-rise apartments downtown, but just outside of downtown they are building more but all limited to six stories, not sure if to keep from blocking the view, or above that is much greater expense due to earthquake codes. But overall for the area, low density. There's a push (may have gotten passed?) to allow people to build Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADUs, aka tiny houses) in their backyard, fought tooth and nail by existing homeowners, realtors, developers, etc, who want to keep prices high.

San Francisco is very high housing prices and low density. The vast majority is single-family homes, because they were built when land was cheap. Now there is no more land, the city is bounded by water on three sides. But all those small houses remain. Low density, extremely high cost.

Los Angeles, same story. Millions of houses, low density, extremely high prices.

New York City proper, a bit different story. NYC was at its peak, in my opinion, when most of the people who worked in the city, lived in the city. Now, the population increases 3-4X every day I think, from people commuting from out of the city. So do they build more high-density housing? Yes, all for the megawealthy, a skinny skyscraper next to central park where an apartment runs $30-40 MILLION. And, more business construction, for many decades. NYC is very high housing prices, but only sort of high density; Lots of high rise housing, but not enough of it, so if you average with all the business space, it is semi-high-density. Post pandemic, high-rise business realty has tanked. I hope it stays tanked, and they convert a lot of it to housing.

The fact is, the USA let developers expand at will, destroying some of the most productive farmland in the world, especially around NYC, Philly, Chicago, Detroit, et al. Once that land was filled, high prices, low density.

Now let's contrast this with Europe. In Europe, farmland is precious. Housing in the cities is more dense. But if you drive out to the countryside, you don't see suburbs, you see *high rise apartment buildings, next to farm fields*, which would be unheard of in the USA. Because farmland in europe is precious. I grew up in a suburban house that was built on a farm field. Across the street, there was still a farm field, you walked and the dirt was rich and soft. Until it was developed a few years later. Bulldozers scraped off all the topsoil down to clay, they built houses, and they sold an inch of topsoil back to homeowners when they all installed sod for lawns. Now all the vacant land within an hour of employment is gone. High prices, low density. We've been socialized to desire single family homes, with two, and now three car garages, all with their 1/4 acre of yard, which they cover with lawns, a useless drain of precious drinking water, and the government lets folks deduct mortgage interest off taxes, due to lobbying by developers, realtors, and banks, who all make big bucks off it.

Hong Kong? Tokyo? Seoul? Yes, high prices and high density. In the USA, we are spoiled and gorged ourselves on cheap farmland and crapped out single-family homes as far as the eye can see. And in areas that are hot with employment, high prices, low density.

If you look up a map of population density for the USA, you'll see it light up around all major cities as "higher" density than the surrounding land. But the only places that light up as the HIGHEST density, are NYC, Washington DC, and a bit of Boston.

Regarding this thread, hopefully e-bikes will help more people to commute by bike, people who can't manually bike the distance from the suburbs, to at least reduce CO2 output, if the government provides safe bike routes. In cities where that has happened, biking is way up, especially kickstarted during the pandemic, when contagion on buses and other public transport was a problem.

TC1

Seattle has about 3400 persons per km^2 which puts it in the top 200 cities in the country -- with no size threshold. Among cities over 500k, it is 7th in the country. That's not low.

Again, no. San Francisco has 7200 persons per km^2, which is 4th in the country among cities over 500k -- and highest outside the NYC area.

Once again, no. Los Angeles is 8th among cities over 500k.


Rather than wasting everyone's time spitballing your opinions, how about you do your homework and present accurate facts?

Land around New York City and Chicago is not particularly productive farmland -- I own some of each. It's not bad, but it is nothing like what you are attempting to claim. Again, stop with the nonsense and do your homework.

Again, no. First of all, Europe has 50% more people in the same area, so density everywhere is necessarily higher. The US uses over 50% of its land for agriculture, while the EU is at 38%.

This is increasingly ridiculous -- you have not gotten one thing right yet.

Do you know anything about statistics or visualization? That depends entirely on the selected scale. And you're wrong anyway:

https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/upl...on-density.gif

https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/upl...-1536x1152.jpg

Please stop embarrassing yourself.

Herzlos

I don't entirely understand the argument of going back to a manual bike to improve strength, since e-bikes usually have multiple assist settings and in Europe at least you still need to pedal and the assistant stops at 15.5mph. So to build up leg strength you'd either just drop an assist level or pedal harder and go faster (albeit that's precarious on a trike). You can still put in as much or little work as you want when riding one.

Though I do understand that in the US at least, there are classes of e-bikes that are essentially electric motorbikes, which is obviously going to result in minimal exercise. Those won't be the ones the German article is about though.