No 4 wheel drive in my Brunswick or Glebe back yard

In Sweden you get a bike made by a French car manufacturer with every new French car you buy. And as a bike owner you don't pay on the road fees like registration, dealers fees, third party insurance, and associated running costs like petrol, service and spare parts.

The latest nail in the coffin for the sales of home brand or imported cars is the approval of electric bikes with a power output of 250 Watts. These electric bikes are now allowed on the roads and bike paths of Melbourne on the provision that that you crank your pedals and the engine cuts out at speeds of above 25 km per hour.

If the ebikes fulfill these criteria they are still classified as bicycles and need no registration and other associated costs. You only need to buy a helmet and a pedelec, as these electirc bicycles are known, and then you are off.

And the running costs for pedelecs make them a very attractive proposition. To charge the battery cost less than a dollar and can be done using you regular power point in the garage overnight.

What is missing for this emobility solution to really take off is more investments in infrastructure in the form of safer bike paths and bike parking at the end points of the commute to the City.

It is interesting to note that the new approach to Melbourne airport that was recently suggested by the Bailleu Government now for the first time mentions bicycle paths in the same sentence as roads for cars. Both are proposed to be built at the same time instead of the antiquated ways of retrofitting bike infrastructure after the road has been built.

So State Goverments are slowly getting the idea that the bicycle could be a viable means of mass transport in and out of our cities.

With the ever increasing building of medium density apartment blocks for young professionals within a 5 – 10 km easy commuting distance from our cities CBDs the new norm will be no 4 wheel drive in my Brunswick or Glebe back yard – N4WIMBY.