Roody

Well, that probably explains why you don't care for tricycles.

I-Like-To-Bike

This is the LCF list, where no one is kidding about their predictions, daydreams or visions of alternate realities.

cooker

You said tricycles are too wide for the trails - or I thought that is what you meant. ATVs go on trail and they are wide.

Walter S

Thankfully, ATVs are not allowed on bike paths and lanes where I frequent. If they were that would probably prompt me to move.

cooker

Fair enough: ATVs and eTrikes don't belong on single tracks. However I was really predicting e-trikes' adoption for commuting, and that may end up with them using bike lanes.

I-Like-To-Bike

ATVs don't belong on the street either. AFIAK, they aren't street legal at least in the U.S.due to their lack of DOT required safety and environmental equipment and controls for street legal motor vehicles.

Walter S

Yeah. I think ATVs are for scooting around on your farm or playing on a ATV trail.

I-Like-To-Bike

Or for scooting around on anybody else's farm or land, public or privately owned, if the ATVer feels entitled to the use of all land for whatever purpose because that is what freedom is all about in his version of reality.

cooker

https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...l#post18600040
https://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...l#post18600104

Mobile 155 and I making some predictions on car use and urban developments.

cooker

I-Like-To-Bike expressing skepticism about the likelihood of uptake of some of my ideas by other than variously disdained interest groups.

cooker

Turns out I was behind the curve. New York had already changed their zoning laws when I wrote the quoted post, and the first microapartments came on the market soon after: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/re...ents.html?_r=0

tandempower

And the conformists/cynics completely change their assessment of an idea the moment it actually gets adopted to the mainstream in some way. They just hate everything until it is established, and then they shut up about it and look for some other idea that isn't yet established to hate. It must make them feel really superior to always take the side of the status-quo (winners) against people who think outside the box. Too bad they can't ever come up with an outside-the-box idea for themselves that might make them a real winner instead of just followers of the established status quo.

I-Like-To-Bike

"Though the units are nearly half the size of typical studio apartments, monthly rents are not analogously micro with current asking prices ranging from $2,570 to $2,920 per month. That’s an average of $110 per square foot, significantly more than $83 per square foot median studio price in Murray Hill and $60 per square foot in Gramercy."
https://www.6sqft.com/micro-apartmen...o-months-free/

Anyone know how well the apartments that are not being subsidized by the city are being leased at market rates?

More on the "affordable housing" and the zoning change at this isolated micro apartment located in NYC.
https://www.6sqft.com/why-micro-apar...-so-expensive/

More info about issues with micro apartments besides high market prices:
https://www.6sqft.com/living-in-a-mi...o-your-health/

cooker

None of that is relevant to the validity of my prediction, which I think remains an open question with four years still to go. I was thinking more along the lines of cities and developers creating a stock of pied a terre one room apartments purchased or rented by workers who live with their families out of town on weekends and only need a minimalist space to sleep in the city during the work week. These exclusive New York apartments don't really fill that niche - but they do show that the zoning impediments can be addressed. So we've started to get over one hurdle.

I-Like-To-Bike

True, those pesky zoning impediments to slum like SRO's hell holes can be "addressed" to and by a Real Estate Developer friendly administration, by misrepresenting the assembly of prefabricated pricey micro-apartments as "affordable" in order to acquire/provide free land from the local government to build the project.

jfowler85

Umm, a trike is not a bike at all. It's, uhhh, a trike.

cooker

I'm not sure who you are arguing with or about what. Let's stick to 5 year predictions.

tandempower

Sounds like a challenge to make a prediction regarding the topic of the post. I will predict another housing bubble burst, only this time it will be the rent bubble that bursts, and real estate prices generally will not be affected, except that mortgages will be promoted more as interest rates finally start rising to incentivize lending.

Walter S

What's going to make rental prices take a plunge?

I-Like-To-Bike

Wishful thinking from people tired of sleeping in the park because they cannot afford market rate?

tandempower

Oversupply and competition with mortgage lending that will grow as interest rates rise. Mortgages are long-term bonds that guarantee investors/savers a certain interest return on their savings for the duration of the mortgage. That creates an incentive to sell mortgages and resell them as investment products (futures). Lenders will offer attractive mortgage packages, such as balloon loans, where people can pay lower payments initially and owe more later, which makes for higher resale value of the mortgage. Those low introductory payments put downward pricing pressure on rents, which also motivates landlords to sell off rental properties to mortgage-backed buyers. Interest rate increases stimulate mortgage lending by prompting investors to move money from stocks to bonds/savings.

Of course there are always ways that price-competition in housing gets undermined. Neighborhoods get differentiated into more and less desirable places to live, causing prices in more desirable areas to stay strong while prices drop where less people want to live. Many people also simply don't care about getting a better deal on housing and so they will pay high rent for a desirable place, even though they are wasting money to do so. It all depends on how much fiscal pressure people are under to cut their expenses and re-budget, which is also part of rising interest rates because borrowing money gets more expensive, causing people to cut costs to pay down loans instead of drowning in snowballing debt.

Roody

It's a shame that y'all are messing up cooker's fine thread with all this silly bickering. It is possible to go back and delete your own posts. (hint hint)

tandempower

eTrikes and combustion trikes are much more efficient than cars and trucks both in terms of energy/fuel and lane-space, since they can split lanes. They would also be less of a safety threat to cyclists and pedestrians because of their lighter weight, though getting clipped by 200lbs-worth of etrike, moped, etc. at 40mph wouldn't exactly be pleasant, either.

The reason they're kept off the roads, however, has to do with the claim that their low height makes them harder to see from higher vehicles. I think this is more of an excuse to prevent a new market from opening up, however, thought it's not as if other small vehicles have gained any ground. For some reason, motorized two-wheelers like motorcycles and scooters maintain an avid following, but that may have to do with them having an established culture, mopeds more so in Europe but that seems to translate into some US popularity as well. Either way, cultural traditionalism seems to be a strong factor in popular vehicle choice.

Tides change, however, and cultural traditionalism gives way to innovation and radicalism from time to time. That happened a few years ago, but if you ask what derailed it, the obvious suspect seems to be media reporting that associates radicalism with conflict and violence (terrorism) and innovation gets yoked to the burden of pulling the economic weight of the rest of the economy by things like taxes, fees, regulations, and a general media approach that attacks any growing innovator as only being successful by avoiding the regulations and costs of traditional competitors. So the message is, "sure, you can innovate; but when you do so successfully, you have to buy into all these traditional costs that fund the rest of the economy you're trying to change with your innovation . . . and good luck! and thank you for playing our game by our rules using our monetary system."

cooker

Were you heading to a 5 year prediction out of all that observation and speculation?

FXjohn

did YOU delete your own silly posts?