Watch the video here: Let’s talk about traffic and bikes
Hey there Nantucket, it’s Grant Sanders from the Nantucket Owner’s Manual again and today let’s just talk about the traffic getting around the island. It’s pretty bad out there, right? Well, not for everyone. I’ve actually solved this problem for myself, and you probably can do the same thing. The solution is to ride a bike. Specifically, to ride a bike one out of the four times you would normally take your car. 25%. You can almost assuredly get in and out of downtown faster on a bike on most days. And when you get there, you can park on just about any street, free of charge. You don’t have to worry about a ticket or wasting time searching for parking.
Now you might say, I can’t bike I have kids. Well, there are ways to carry kids on bikes. And also at a certain age kids can bike on their own. So, you know, many people use cargo bikes and trailers and things like that with kids.
Then again, you might say “Hey, I can’t bike to work. I am in construction. I need my truck.” Well, that may very well be true. Hard to pick up a load of sheet rock on a bike. But we’ve all driven past construction sites on the island, where there were five trucks there, and five people working, not everybody needs to jump in their own truck to get to work. Some people can bike to work and then if you need to go to Island Lumber, you get somebody else’s truck to do.
You might say hey, I’m too old to bike. I need my car. “And that may very well be true, and for good reason. It’s great that you can get in and out of town safely in your car, but if you want to try to bike, you could use a trike type, bike, you know, one with three wheels that’s very secure. Some of them have motors, and this is also good for people who have a disability. I own a cargo bike that has a pedal-assist motor. I can go an average of 11 or 12 miles an hour, it’s great. It doesn’t require a ton of athleticism to go. And I get in and in and out of town just fine.
The other thing about my cargo bike is. It can carry eight bags of groceries, you know, almost 250 pounds of cargo. So, it is my vehicle of choice when I go to the Stop and Shop. Because nobody wants to drive around that parking lot six times, justifying one parking space. So there you have it. You don’t always have to replace every trip with a bike, but replacing one out of every four trips with a bike is something that can make a massive difference if everyone did it. Or if even half the people did it on the island. Or even a third, we wouldn’t have a traffic problem, we would have a bunch of healthy happy people. Less to complain about. I know now people are going to complain about not having enough to complain about. If we solve all the problems. But there you go. Anyway, it’s an idea, we ought to talk about it more. This is grant from the magic gun owners manual. Thank you for watching, and please support us on Patreon, please click like and subscribe. And visit us on Nantucket owner’s manual.com And we’ll see you on bike path. Thanks.