Notices by Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱 (notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com)

Amsterdam has built a few of these, but I don't think any city is doing school streets as comprehensively as Paris.

Every city needs to be doing this:

https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-passe-le-cap-des-300-rues-pietonnes-pres-des-ecoles-pour-etre-plus-accueillante-aux-enfants-28-09-2025-6QFZ7NHQFJDIFAI7RSNZJD4K7I.php

The Intercolonial Railway of Canada really did have the best logo of any railway, ever.

I've been following this "mutual safety standards recognition" stuff out of the US/EU talks. This could be really, really bad.

It would mean that US vehicles, like those giant dangerous SUVs and pickup trucks, could be freely imported into the EU in volume without having to pass EU vehicle safety standards (like pedestrian safety).

I haven't seen any organised resistance to this. Does anybody know any other organisations that are fighting this?

https://etsc.eu/etsc-mutual-recognition-deal-with-u-s-will-cost-lives-on-europes-roads/

It's bad enough that small volumes of these stupid pickup trucks have been (illegally) imported into the EU under the IVA (Individual Vehicle Approval) lately. The mutual safety standards recognition would totally open the floodgates.

Just a reminder that this is the most popular-selling car in Europe next to the most popular-selling car in the US.

We don't want these dangerous trucks in EU cities.

@Techaltar in my first job in the semiconductor industry I worked with wafers pretty often, and one time I accidentally dropped one on the floor.

It made the most incredible sound.

The wafers are nearly perfect crystals, so when it hit the ground it sounded like glass breaking, except at only one frequency. Absolutely bizarre sound. I'll never forget it.

My point is, if you've got a spare, you should try dropping it on a hard floor. But also understand it's a real pain to clean up. 😁

@goetz you missed the point. ⅔ of my audience is at the end of this graphic.

@goetz the problem is that I've made those videos already but the way the YouTube algorithm works, nobody sees those videos. They only see the new ones.

So to on-board new Americans, I would need to dumb-down every single video with a bunch of concept that would be absurd to Europeans.

For example, many American suburbs and towns have no public transit. I don't mean "bad" transit, I mean literally none.

I cannot bridge that gap in every video without turning away the other ⅔ of my audience.

This graphic illustrates a major problem I have making videos:

The last street is still absolute garbage. There isn't even public transit.

The US (⅓ of my audience) is so far behind in city design that this is all they can reasonably hope for.

Meanwhile the rest of my audience is starting from the last street and trying to build something better.

It's like if I had a maths channel and wanted to talk about calculus, but ⅓ of my audience was still debating if multiplication actually works.

I am trying to research the operating policy for intersections for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto.

Google gives a giant "AI Summary" which is completely wrong, as usual.

It confidently claims that there will be speed restrictions of 10 km/h through intersections.

The "source" of that? A *forum post* of somebody saying they *hope* there isn't a 10 km/h speed limit like there is on the Spadina streetcar.

This AI slop makes doing actual research SO much harder. 😩

I'm so glad this shit is not legal in the EU.

Car manufactures should not be able to release unsafe cars to the public and hide behind "it's just a beta, bro" excuses.

https://www.engadget.com/transportation/tesla-blows-past-stopped-school-bus-and-hits-kid-sized-dummies-in-full-self-driving-tests-183756251.html

My dad sent me this article the other day and I literally laughed out loud when I read the title.

Only an American would write a title like that.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/munich-germany-most-walkable-city-in-world-11721214

You should know that these "city rankings" are always a load of nonsense and should never be taken seriously.

They're usually put together in an afternoon by a marketing department, in this case, it's a marketing piece for a home loans website.

The goal is to get clicks, not to be accurate. In fact, the less accurate you are, the more likely you are to get clicks, so getting the intern to put it together in Excel based off of an arbitrary "scoring system" is a benefit.

@LovesTha it was meant for "expats" and targeted entirely at HR departments so that they can evaluate compensation and hardship pay.

Every one of these ranking systems is nonsense. I should probably make a video about it some day, if I can bring myself to care enough about it. 😂

@soviut they are very common in the Netherlands, usually outside of shops when they don't want people to parks their bikes out front.

I'm still kinda mad they refused to allow the addition of a "no cars" emoji though.

They said they don't want to have anymore individual "no" emojis, but they also won't remove the ones they already have.

So we have 🚳 but have to do 🚫🚗 and hope the platforms display it properly some day.

https://www.smarterthancar.com/project/no-cars-emoji

Oh, good. Unicode 16.0 has added a "face with bags under eyes" emoji. I'm going to be using that one a lot.

🫩

I typically don't read comments beyond those left by my Patreon supporters, but after releasing a new video it's impossible not to catch a few stray comments when opening the YouTube Studio app.

I will never get tired of seeing one of the "If you love Europe so much, why don't you move there!" comments. 😂

Also I thoroughly enjoy one comment calling me a MAGA Trump supporter with the one immediately after it calling me a communist.

I knew "big box" stores were bad, but I was still surprised by what we found when researching this video. 😬

#bigbox #urbanism #cities #notjustbikes

https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-these-ugly-big-box-stores-are-literally-bankrupting-cities

I've been saying this for years: ebikes should have USB-C PD ports for charging!

Finally a manufacturer has actually done it. In this case using 140W power delivery, which is way higher power than any ebike charger I've ever used. And USB-C PD now supports up to 240W, which is more than enough for ebikes.

I hope this becomes the norm:

https://www.theverge.com/news/639681/usb-c-charging-e-bike-ampler-nova-specs-price

First of all, why would I be in favour of a car company, never mind an American car company?

Telsa makes expensive luxury cars, primarily for the US market. They're big and overpowered. They're dangerous (to others) and encourage people to speed.

And they're WIDE! Tesla cars are about 15 to 25 cm wider than a typical EU car, which means I can never pass them on a bike on the narrow Amsterdam streets.