#transportation alternatives

[charleswilliams2619]

Exploring the Exciting World of E-Bikes: DYU's Offerings

Hey everyone! I'm really excited about the possibility of diving into the e-bike industry, especially with the great options available from the brand DYU. I've been searching for an e-bike and DYU has some fantastic models that combine style, efficiency, and affordability.

E-bikes are such a fun and eco-friendly way to get around, and I love that they offer an alternative to traditional transportation. With DYU's innovative designs and advanced technology, I think they might just be the perfect fit for my needs. Plus, the convenience of being able to zip around town while reducing my carbon footprint is a huge bonus!

If anyone has experience with DYU bikes or knows where I can find an e-bike, I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations. Let's embrace this sustainable mode of transportation together!

[kendraross2679]

Exploring the Exciting World of DYU Electric Bikes Foldable

I've recently been diving into the e-bike industry, and I have to say, I'm absolutely thrilled about the advancements, especially with DYU's range of foldable electric bikes. Their designs are not only sleek but also incredibly functional, making them perfect for urban commuting.

I came across the DYU electric bike and was instantly impressed by how lightweight and easy to fold it is. It’s perfect for those who need to navigate through busy city streets and then easily store it at home or in the office. The convenience of folding it up means I can take it on public transport without any hassle.

What I love about DYU is their commitment to quality and sustainability. They have a fantastic battery life, allowing me to travel longer distances without worrying about recharging constantly. Plus, the electric assistance is a game-changer, making my rides smooth and enjoyable.

Recently, I took my DYU out for a spin around the neighborhood, and I felt so free and invigorated. The reactions from passersby were positive, with many asking about the model and expressing their interest in getting one for themselves. It’s great to see more people getting excited about eco-friendly transportation options.

Overall, I���m genuinely optimistic about the future of the e-bike industry, especially with brands like DYU leading the way in innovation and style. I can’t wait to see how they continue to evolve and inspire more people to embrace foldable electric bikes as a fantastic alternative to traditional transportation.

What are your thoughts on electric bikes? Have you tried any from DYU yet?

[xtruss]

Arguments For And Against E-Bike Registration And Licensing

— August 15, 2024 | By Charlotte Robertson

Photograph By Daniel Krieger

Last month, with great fanfare, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed State Legislation intended “to raise awareness about the safe use of e-bikes and products that contain lithium-ion batteries and protect New Yorkers,” she announced in a press release.

The eight-bill package, set to go into effect in January, 2025, makes important strides in the area of battery safety. It also requires mopeds to be registered at the point of sale, and alters Department of Motor Vehicle accident reports to include a new category for e-vehicle collisions with pedestrians, so they can be tracked.

What is not included in the package, to the consternation of some public-safety advocates, is “Priscilla’s Law.”

Named for Priscilla Loke, a teacher who was killed in Chinatown in 2023, by the driver of an electric Citi Bike who fled the scene, Priscilla’s Law would have required all e-bikes to be registered and display license plates. It was introduced by Queens City Councilmember Robert Holden last fall, and accrued 34 co-sponsors — the amount required to trigger an automatic hearing in the City Council.

But the hearing never happened. According to Holden, two councilmembers, Rita Joseph and Sandy Nurse, rescinded their support after Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is “to reclaim New York City from cars,” Wrote a Letter to every councilmember, urging them to reject Holden’s bill, leaving it at a legislative standstill.

West Side Rag reached out to Holden, Transportation Alternatives, and the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance (NYC-EVSA), a grassroots organization of pedestrians, many of whom have been hit by e-vehicles, for insight into the opposing sides of the e-bike-registration controversy.

The Arguments

“By licensing e-bikes, bikers can be held accountable for accidents,” Holden contended in a call with West Side Rag. Without a clearly identifiable license plate, reporting bike accidents is difficult, he added, as it is not uncommon for riders to leave the scene.

“Priscilla’s Law is clearly part of a much more concentrated war on bikes generally,” said Alexa Sledge, director of communications for Transportation Alternatives, also in a phone interview with the Rag. “E-bike licensing would be both ineffective and a bureaucratic nightmare … ” she added.

Those were the reasons local Councilmember Gale Brewer cited for not signing onto Holden’s bill. “I do not believe a blanket e-bike registration rule will make streets safer,” she said, “nor is NYC DOT [Department of Transportation] equipped to establish, manage, or enforce it.” Brewer did support the lithium-ion safety bills.

Carol Hilfer, who was hit by an e-bike on June 24 of this year, believes that e-bikes should be treated differently than regular bicycles. “An e-bike, to me, is just a motorcycle. It’s not a bicycle.”

Hilfer was crossing Central Park West at 90th Street this past June when an e-biker ran a red light and knocked her to the ground. The resulting hematoma on her leg took weeks to heal. “The idiot on the e-bike — it was a Citi Bike — he’s got earbuds in his ears, oblivious to everything,” she said. Once she managed to stand up, the biker sped away.

Marian Lewis, 85, another e-bike hit-and-run victim, agreed that e-bikes pose a new danger to pedestrians. “I’ve timed [e-bikes] on Central Park West [to see] how long it takes one in the bike lane to go one block. It’s just a couple of seconds. They’re so fast.” In March 2021, an e-biker collided with Lewis on 93rd Street and Central Park West, breaking her hip. The biker fled and Lewis was rushed into emergency surgery, remaining in the hospital for eight days before being transferred to rehab.

“This bill is really trying to bring order and get the chaos out of our city,” Holden told the Rag. “If you’re reckless, if you hit people, you should be held accountable.”

Sledge set forth the following argument: “The more people on the road riding bikes at any point in time, the safer that area is going to be for people on bikes, because cars are used to seeing them. Licensing e-bikes would dissuade ridership and, therefore, make the streets more dangerous.”

“Well, why would it dissuade ridership?” demanded Janet Schroeder, co-founder of NYC-EVSA. “Because someone doesn’t want to be held accountable for their egregious riding? Then those are exactly the people that should be dissuaded,” she said.

E-bike licensing could lead to discriminatory police stops, Sledge said. She pointed out that a large percentage of e-bike users are delivery workers, who are predominantly immigrants and men of color: “If we institute this bike licensing law, that’s giving a brand-new power to the NYPD to allow them to pull over anyone they want who’s riding a bike. Time and time again, when it comes to traffic stops…we’ve seen it’s been done in a racist way.”

“Transportation Alternatives is playing the race card,” Councilmember Holden responded. “[The NYPD] is going to stop bike riders breaking the law, period. They’re not going to distinguish between the color of their skin,” he said.

As for other safety measures the city could adopt, Sledge suggested better protections for delivery workers. “If you’re a worker for DoorDash, and DoorDash is requiring that you do what is safely a 20-minute bike ride in 12 minutes — that’s not acceptable,” she said.

She also called for the city to build more protected bike lanes, which would deter riders from biking on the sidewalk, she said. “The root of the problem of e-bike safety is that there is not enough space for bikers,” she said. “With these massive levels of density and not enough space for anyone in our streets except for people who are driving cars, this problem becomes even more serious.”

According to Sledge, cars pose a much greater threat to pedestrians than bikes, and if more people rode bikes, less people would drive cars.

Holden, on the other hand, expressed skepticism about waning car use. “There’s record registration for cars in New York City,” the councilmember said. He argued that more bike lanes do not prevent bikers from breaking the law, but licensing and registration will.

“An e-bike doesn’t have any restrictions. You’re really a phantom — you’re invisible,” he said. “That’s why so many of them don’t adhere to any traffic regulations at all. You need penalties,” he added.

Holden told the Rag that “a lot of councilmembers get, you know, campaign donations from Transportation Alternatives,” and that’s why they hesitate to support his bill. “I’m not represented or paid for,” he said. “I’m doing this for the cause.”

Jacob deCastro, interim associate director of communications for Transportation Alternatives, denied these allegations in a phone interview with the Rag. He pointed out that Transportation Alternatives is a 501C Organization and is, therefore, prohibited from contributing to political organizations.

[kiranherbert]

Better Bike Infrastructure Saves Lives

[fandommothlady]

Imagining a shamelessly self-indulgent fanfic where Vi gets transported to the Everything's Happy Universe, somehow finds out she died there and that her family survived, assumes she's the cause of everything bad ever, and goes rogue.

Like she doesn't think she can go back home because she's scared that her presence will fuck things over for everyone. And she also can't risk interacting with the alternate versions of her family that she has here (despite how much she wants to), because what if that screws up their timeline and everything goes to shit for them too? She has nothing and no one, and she's not going to kill herself, so she ends up just -- doing what she was doing in her home dimension. Gets a crap apartment, joins an illegal fighting ring, and wallows in her misery.

It's like that for a few weeks, months maybe, before Vander finds her passed out in an alleyway. A black-haired girl that resembles his dead daughter so strongly it feels like his heart gets ripped open all over again, and she's hurt and she's not waking up, and he needs to help her. So he takes her inside, dresses her wounds, and cleans her face (the black paint covering her VI tattoo holds strong). Maybe he tells Silco, gets him to help. Maybe Vi wakes up to the monster that hurt her family, like, checking her temperature or something.

So she punches him in the face, obviously, and Vander comes barging in at the commotion, and Vi freaks the fuck out. She's trapped; tiny room, no windows; Vander -- Vander, her dead father -- is blocking the door; Silco is three fucking feet away from her in the same goddamn room and was just doing who-knows-what to her unconscious body; and Vi? Vi is mid-panic attack, searching for escape, not listening to a fucking word coming out of Vander's mouth. She needs to get out. She needs to get the fuck away before she fucks everything up for everyone and she needs these people to stop looking at her.

Vander and Silco, of course, both see that she's terrified. Silco backs up, gives her space, and Vander holds his hands up, palms out, trying to signal that he's not a threat. He tries to explain what's going on, that no one here is going to hurt her, but that's not what she's worried about, and as soon she spots an opening -- as soon as Vander takes that small step towards her, leaving space between him and the door behind him -- Vi books it. Shoves right past him, up the stairs, and out of The Last Drop, ignoring the startled shouts behind her. (Maybe Powder sees her go. Maybe she, too, is torn up inside by the striking resemblance to her older sister.)

She gets back to her place. She gets back to the shitty little life she's built in this world. And she prays that's the end of it.

It's not.

Vander has imprinted on this girl. She's a stray, like Mylo and Claggor were strays before he took them in. And she's hurting, like (his) Vi and Powder were hurting before he dropped his gauntlets and carried them away from the battlefield. He wants to help her, if he can. Not only that, but she was beat to absolute hell, and he needs to know who did it and why, just in case it's the symptom of a larger problem that needs to be addressed.

So Vander asks around. Silco helps. And Vi may be trying to keep a low profile, but she's still Vi. She wins nearly every fight she's thrown into in the pits, and when she sees someone in real trouble, she steps in. She's hardly invisible, and she ends up kind of making a name for herself, unintentionally. It's not incredibly difficult to find her -- not for them, and not for this universe's Powder, Ekko, Mylo, and Claggor, who find out one-by-one about this random runaway emo chick that broke Silco's nose and kicks ass in a very illegal underground fighting ring.

But here's the thing: the fighting ring Vi's a part of is kind of... inhumane. But Vi doesn't fully realize it because she spent a large portion of her formative years in Stillwater, which was significantly worse. She's fine with being mistreated -- low-key feels like she deserves it, even. The issue comes in when she breaks out of her depressive haze enough to notice the younger, decidedly less deserving recruits getting the same treatment she is. I don't know any of the specifics of the situation, but I do know that I want Vi stepping up and putting herself in the line of fire to protect the people around her. She's a protector at heart, and she's found a tiny piece of herself again.

And what ends up happening is Vi gets progressively more frustrated as her undead dad, his not-husband, and a terrifyingly well-adjusted version of her estranged sister keep trying to track her down and succeeding. And then Ekko joins in on the efforts, and then Claggor, and Mylo, and even Benzo, until she's desperately trying to dodge her entire, irritatingly persistent not-family while also keeping the people she's unwittingly grown to care about safe from the Unspecified Bad Guys controlling the Unspecified Bad Situation in the fighting pits.

I don't have any concrete plot for this or dialogue or anything. It's just vibes. The kiddos thinking Vi is cool as fuck and the dads trying to adopt this feral not-really-a-kid-anymore-but-when-you're-that-old-everyone-looks-like-a-baby child and Vi being unwillingly absorbed into this new found family that hurts to look at because this is what her own family could have been if she hadn't fucked it all up.

tl;dr Vi is a skittish, battered stray cat, and AU!Vander and co. are trying to lure her to safety with treats and affection.

[aunnokokyuu]

what if YOU were a poor little animation studio who kept straightifying the very homosexual moments between a tiger and a malnourished victorian child in order to make the anime more appealing to the general public. but THE MANGAKA HIMSELF said NO here’s a scene where said malnourished victorian child sensually bites the tiger’s neck while he’s transformed as a vampire and U HAVE TO ANIMATE IT THIS TIME BCS ITS IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT!!! now bones if you straightify that scene like you did to akutagawa telling atsushi to run you fool then you can trust that i’ll find you more than you trust in god

[lemongrasslesbian]

textless ver. below cut

@orvblr @eyeswaitingfortuesdaynight apologies it took so long, every time i sat down to draw i was still quite shaky (as you can see from the finished pic where every line is wavy 💀) but i hope you enjoy!

[newyorkthegoldenage]

These Brooklynites use a motor scooter for their transportation to work as a strike of subway employees continued into the second day, December 10, 1957. From left: Ronnie Harron, George Nicholson, Peter Garland, and John Avildsen (yes, the future film director). Instead of pushing into whatever subway trains were still running, the quartet squeezed onto the scooter for their above-ground ride.

Photo: Associated Press via News19

[soupdwelling]

so there is still a potential gap in reality at the hilltop center right. especially if this is theoretically the/an universe the Fears were transferred to from the tma universe, plus it’s possible the gap is constant across all infinite universes. And we know it’s possible to pass between universes through hilltop road because of mag 114 and mag 200 obviously. so… what if when they go to the hilltop center, alice (because i’m still convinced she’s fucked) but also sam or even celia fall through and end up either back in the tma universe or in a completely different universe

also this is related but separate and completely unlikely considering that jon and martin appear to be trapped in the computers but could you imagine if alice fell through the gap in reality and ended up in the somewhere else universe with mag 200 jon and martin,,

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

now that I think about it I feel like we joke about the parts of Lestat's story that Daniel won't believe, but I wanna spare a thought to the parts of Marius's story, as retold by Lestat, that Daniel won't believe and won't be able to personally interrogate Marius over. he's going to be so freaking mad that he can't grill Marius on his claims that the fate of the entire vampire species rests on these two freaky statue people.

[spyboy2000]

[unopenablebox]

im actually very sentimental about knitting on trains because the reason i started knitting was that a 7 year old on a four-hour amtrak trip, i sat next to a college student who was knitting some kind of novelty ribbon yarn scarf and spent the entire trip astounded at this sophisticated and interesting hands-on activity that so completely transformed the starting materials!!

and then as soon as i got off the train i was like "I WANT TO LEARN TO KNIT" and my grandmother very sincerely asked if anyone even still published knitting books anymore

anyway as a result of all that i now feel that knitting on the train is, in some obscure sense, a form of participation in the public community sphere

[fujii-draws]

IN WHAT WORLD

[trenchcoat-full-of-snails]

.

[icewindandboringhorror]

It's always interesting to hear about people's weird/unexpected "alternate life paths". Like, something that you could have done with your life, a job you almost took, a school you almost went to, etc - that was still actually realistic enough that it could have happened, but NOW it seems to not suit your current personality.

Like for example, I currently hate advertising (how manipulative it is, brands trying to be 'relatable', social media amplifying it to an obnoxious extreme, etc.) so much that even seeing a little ad before a youtube video is grating to even witness, but there was a point in time where I was genuinely seriously considering going into marketing/making commercials as a career lol. Or like, I have a relative who was very inclined to be a pastor when they were younger, even though today they're a super strong atheist, etc. etc.

[fealtyfaggot]

I am not the kind of person that cries in airports. I am not.