It’s nice to see larger outlets talking about urbanism topics and Vox has made a few videos in this area recently.

  • ntzm [he/him]@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Erm how am I meant to take my grandma to hospital and also drop off three fridges and my kids to school and then an entire building’s worth of bricks? Therefore cargo bikes will never work in any situation. I am very smart.

  • mrpants@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    I haven’t read the article and am here to give my ignorant opinion. This wouldn’t work ever anywhere for any reason. Thank you.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    These vans are a hell of a lot better than semis, which IMO should not be allowed in cities. I’d be fine with more of these vans being around if it meant we could get rid of large 18 wheelers in urban areas.

  • SuiXi3D@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    Having been a driver for Amazon in the past for around a year and a half, I’ll tell you right now that these bucks wouldn’t work in a lot of places Amazon delivers. In dense urban areas? Sure, but certainly not out in the ‘burbs or rural areas.

    Package counts on those routes can top out around 500. There’s no way Amazon would purposely reduce the amount of work they lay onto one driver.

    Now that being said, if they loosened their iron grip over the drivers then I can absolutely see this happening in downtowns and some apartment complexes. Outside of really densely packed areas, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    Some routes have drivers going well over 100 miles in a day. No way anyone’s gonna do that on a bike. And in the middle of summer in southern cities? Forget about it. Amazon doesn’t even give drivers enough time to find a bathroom, no way they’ll allow drivers to take breaks to cool off.

  • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Instinctually, I don’t like this idea. I’m all for eliminating cars and roads, but delivery drivers are already vulnerable and exploited enough. I can’t imagine delivering packages for Amazon in the searing heat here in Florida while every car tried to run you off the road.

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I was in Paris a couple weeks ago and literally everyone delivering things were on cargo e-bikes or e-trikes. Bikes and cars coexisted on roads but there was also a lot of dedicated bike and pedestrian roads too.

    • johnthedoe@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think cars should be prioritised for commercial use. It serves more people like a bus or train does to public transport. In fact a van with more parcels would eliminate more trips from individual homes to the post office by car. That said. Cars shouldn’t be the only option for delivery for sure. Depending on the city and delivery region.

      • scv@discuss.online
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Exactly, this post completely misses the point. The human in a delivery van is not even desirable. It would be great to completely automate this job. Let people enjoy their lives more instead of peeing in a bottle.

  • Freeman@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why is noone mentioning that this video was sponsored by Delta Airlines?

    I am not saying that the content isnt good but it is somehow strange to me that an Airline of all companies is sponsoring such a video

  • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Outside of dense urban core there just isn’t enough packages per mile to make this even slightly sane. Outside of temperate areas this would be awful when the weather is very cold or very hot. In all areas you would have to secure the packages against trivial theft and rain further adding to the weight and decreasing maximum cargo area.

    Even in the fraction of places where this would be practicable differences in speed and cargo capacity means you would need more drivers to achieve the same results. It makes 100x more sense to to push ebikes as an alternative to commuters.

  • Starb3an@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    I would absolutely use one of these and my bike (except when the temp is over 100°F/38°C) if the infrastructure was there. My previous apartment was on a road with a bike lane that led to a bike path near my work so I used to take that when weather permitted.

  • icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    First let me start by saying fuck cars, i dont like the fact that the world infrastructure is centered around them when trains (be it coal or electric) and rails exist. And now on to the rage baith:

    I dont like that this pretty much shifts the reaponsibility from big corporations polution onto its workers, if delivery people had a union this would be an absolute no no, because its asking way more phisical push with what is going to be the same amount of packages with the same low pay with way more effort from the part of the worker, when we know that the polluting monsters are the companies they work for and the tech the companies employ and refuses to change into more sustainable ones, like planes, factories in some cases and the waste they produce and irresponsibly dump, be it abroad with uncaring legislations or locally. While i too would like a total redesign of urban infrastructure to suportt more sustainable transportation technologies, whe are gonna have to do with what we have (at least for the moment) and a better answer for that specifically imo would be fully electric vehicles, and in keeping with the taking less space theme, electric cargo motorbikes (the ones that dont have pedals). The same as the ones like the pizza delivery ones but with rechargable batteries instead of a gas engine.

    Oh btw downvotes to the right.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    In my city this wouldn’t work, the millisecond the delivery guy turns away his head, assholes would have stolen all the deliveries. It could be used only from point to point, not fully loaded with hundreds of small deliveries

    An armored crate would increase the weight too much for human propulsion

  • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    14
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    How can we make life even more dangerous and difficult for delivery drivers? Now they can’t even hope to escape the weather even a little. Let alone the dangers of biking in traffic. Making the excuse that we should improve bike safety does absolutely nothing to save lives now and is pretty fucking insensitive and elitist.

    • mrpants@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      More bike infrastructure and non-car road users would make it safer for them and all of us.

      “We can’t ever do anything about how bad it is.”

      You know tons of them are already zipping around on dangerous roadways with no protection available to them right?

      • ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        Who are you quoting?

        They’ve already taken dangerous jobs so clearly their lives aren’t worth considering right?

  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    No thank you. This can work in maybe a small town. Or a small NY neighborhood.

    But in most situations:

    • A fleet of bikers is more expensive than a single van. I’m referring to human cost.

    • The amount of product that gets shipped cannot scale with how many bikers we would need.

    • the weight of products puts more physical labor on the biker.

    • A biker carrying 500lbs of product on the road is dangerous for everyone. Products falling. Losing control over their bike. You can create artificial limits, and companies will ALWAYS hit the max and go a bit more. Always been the case.

    This isn’t solving the root issues, of why people hate cars, which is Single occupancy cars flooding highways and creating pollution.

    • mondoman712@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      This isn’t a theoretical, it already exists and it already works. Cargo bikes can deliver parcels faster than vans in some cases, they can carry large loads, ebikes make up for the labour, riders have much better awareness of the world around them than van drivers, and don’t have all the extra mass of a van that will cause damage in the event of a crash. And it doesn’t have to work in every situation, it can take vans off the road sometimes and that’s still good.

      • scv@discuss.online
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I like what someone else mentioned of bikes doing the last mile or two. Vans could do the last 20 miles or whatever, and bigger trucks or trains the long haul.

        I would also not put vans and box trucks (not that you did, I’m speaking in general) in the same bag, a van is almost the same as a car when it comes to driving.

        And of course if we could lower the demands on delivery drivers (and riders? Not sure what you call them on bikes) it would lower accidents. I recently saw one of the new Amazon electric vans, and while I liked some things (no air or sound pollution), the driver was accelerating like crazy every time.

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m amazed by the level of cognitive distortions employed when attempting to rationalize choosing cars over bikes!

      Arguing that bicycles pose a greater danger than motorized vehicles like trucks or cars requires a significant amount of fact twisting.

      When you consider the safety of everyone involved, bikes are just considerably safer than cars. Just think about how many pedestrians were fatally injured by bikes last year, and compare that to the number killed by cars.

      This is only accounting for direct fatalities. Cars also contribute to a substantial number of indirect deaths due to air pollution in urban areas, and they accelerate climate change, which will have huge consequences on everyone’s life.