i have a motorbike, no car. if it rains i either get wet or take an uber. i read that story in the paper as well. they need more housing downtown. a high rise with views of the river and bridge would be fresh. when i go get wasted and chat up the hot bartenders at happys late at night, many of the other blokes getting wasted are from out of town on business, so i am always curious if they like baton rouge, suprisingly, they do. not sure what they like about it, but they seem pleased to be here. just now i was riding home and i saw all the new bikes they have for bike share. they are "electric assist". i dunno exactly how tjhat works but i am keen to try em out. i could ride one to LSU and dock it there, each lunch at chipotle, and get another and ride it back downtown and dock it again. i dunno what electric assist is, does it do all the pushing if you just turn gently? who knows
You get a key fob and rent them for a half hr. Membership thing. Or get a temporary card. Then park them in their docking thingies. They're all over downtown. Bright green bikes the ones ive seen. Called gotcha. They do scooters too bc I almost ran over this fat bastard recently.
oh sweet i didnt know they have scooters. i love scooters. when i went to nashville to watch LSU get beat the SEC tournament, they were overrun with gay ass scooters. looked really fun. all manner of folks were riding them around, sluts, grandpas, business folk, errbody they had them when i lived in new york, but they were constructed so robust they weighed 45 pounds. my bike weighs 19 pounds. so they were slow and unwieldy. maybe the baton rouge ones will be better with battery assist. i read that at local community centers in poor neighborhoods they have a card you can use to get free bike ridin for a year. this town really goes out its way to help folk out. like at carver library where i pick up books they have free lunches for kids out of school.
no i dont think a fob or card is involved, i think they unlock after you scan the bike QR code with the app
That would make more sense but that's what it said in a local article a few months back. It said you could get an annual membership. No clue on the cost.
i finally borrowed one of those bikes downtown. i have never ridden a bike with electric assist. its pretty cool. it makes biking into a non-effort event. the bike weighs a zillion pounds, so when you first start to pedal its the worst bike ever by far. but then you hear the power come on and whirrr! its up to speed and your pedaling is providing almost none of the effort. its as if the act of pedaling is really just the equivalent of pressing the accelerator. so you have to pedal with essentially no effort and the bike whirrs along. then if you coast, the bike slows down fast. its geared so that it wont go very fast but its a good speed for just going places with no real effort. in fact its geared such that over a certain speed you cant really pedal fast enough such that the motor keeps on. the motor wont run unless you are pedaling a certain speed relative to the bikes speed. so if you want to go super fast you will have to pedal furious fast. and the engine wont help. that makes it damn near impossble to go dangerously fast. you cant just shift gears until you are pedaling slow but hard and hurtling along at nightmare speed. i give it an almost thumbs up.
