this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Bikes are good for short distances of say 5-20km. Try to bike 500km in 5 hours? Or haul a couch on a bike? Yeah, much freedom.
That's like 95% of all trips.
Take a train. Even if trains are not available, those trips are rare enough, for average people, that renting a car for them is cheaper than buying.
Unless you're a professional furniture mover, you're going to do this so rarely that it would be cheaper to just hire a professional furniture mover, than to buy a truck.
It helps if you have an old car that doesn't cost a lot of money. In terms of cost vs renting. And a trailer hitch so you can just rent a trailer for furniture and stuff. I've used mine a lot. Doesn't need to be a truck for that, even a small car can do a normal sized trailer.
I don't live anywhere near an airport so no rental cars available to me either, it'd take at least 2-3 hours to get to one via public transit
I live in a major German city, have a car, bicycle and a public transport subscription. I use public transit daily, ride bycicle 2-3 times a week and drive car 2-3 times a month. I do transport heavy loads when driving car. I use bike in my area to get to shops. I go with public transit to and from work.
Inter-city trains are fast, but fuck schedules and interruptions. I'd rather wake up, pack my backpack and hit the Autobahn for 4-5 hours and be there rather than go though a hellhole of trying to reach central station on time in the middle of the night just to save me 20-40 euros one way cause later time tickets are more expensive.
I don't want to rely on a tram in the night that not supposed to be there, but schedule says it will, and then it still doesn't arrive just to run quick to a nearby parking lot and try to pickup a Carshare and drive to central station under time pressure and spend shit ton of time trying to find a parking spot in the night.
I don't want to get a ticket with a connection train just to have my or connection train to be late for the connection schedule and then wait god knows how much for the next train and pray that won't happen during cold weather.
One time I took Flixtrain to save some money and that shit was extremely noisy even my noise cancelling headphones didn't help much.
One time I took bus that would go 15h one way. I will never take a bus in my entire life again for this much time. I value my painless back much more over money.
I still would fight for much more better public transportation in any city of the world. But that is bullshit to think that bike of all things gives much more freedom than a car.
Yeah, Deutsche Bahn is legendary. You are excused.
Can... Can you haul a couch in your car? Isnt that whar moving vans are for? Or trains?
Skill issue.
Looks like a moped to me. I'd also be weary of what this will do to that fridge's compressor.
Motorbike.
Should refrigerators be transported like this? (This isn't even in the top 5 most loaded bikes I've seen, washing machine+dryer in the paniers, then a refrigerator on top isn't that uncommon)
One sudden stop and theyre crushed
Ride bike to station, take bike onto train, ride from station to your final destination.
Am I too Dutch to understand this problem
How often are you hauling couches, most cars can't take one either. Mine came with free delivery.
Have 3 friends help you out with a sofa, or, listen to me for a sec, have a vehicle that can do that by design.
Fuck cars, and all. Ofc they are not good for environment and are a cause of millions of deaths but you cant be saying bicycle is superior to a car while having a straight face. Apples to oranges ffs.
Not sure what car you drive but 99.9% of cars normal people drive (at least here in Europe) don’t fit a sofa, so it’s a complete non-argument. Even if you did have one that does, are you saying you can load a sofa into your car by yourself?
If you buy a new sofa, you have it delivered. The delivery guys will deliver it to your living room. No hassle at all. They don’t use a car either, they use a truck (not one of those surrogate penisses americans call trucks but an actual truck).
Most people in the US, if they don't have a truck, they have an SUV or crossover with a hatchback and seats that build down. I drive a Subaru Crosstrek, their smallest US crossover, and I have loaded/moved/unloaded a couch by myself with it.
Yeah it hangs out the back a little but you click a mini carabiner into the door mechanism at the upper part of the hatch and tie some rope to that and down to the metal bar it normally closes onto. That keeps the couch from falling out, and keeps the hatch down at the couch level so the hatch door isn't sticking up extra tall.
Here, most places will deliver said sofa to you cheap or even free, and even bring it up to the umpteenth floor your apartment is on.
Buying a car in cities here would be an insane money drain for literally no benefit. Even if you want or need to drive, you can rent an almost-new German car for single trips for super cheap.
I've lived a couple of years in Germany and the Netherlands and I know the options you have, it's very nice. I'm on the outskirts of a good size city. There are bikeable places when you get more urban closer to downtown, but there are no options other than car in the area I live in. Even most homeless people have a car here, or they have someone they rely on with a car who is willing to help them out.
I guess it was the same in Budapest, Hungary. It didn't make sense for me to get a car there either.
I've only spent a few hours in Budapest, but I remember it having public transportation there. We don't have that option either. There is a bus service for low income seniors, but even they have to schedule rides weeks in advance. Walking isn't an option either. You travel in a car or you don't leave your home here.
I loved taking trains and biking when I lived in Duesseldorf. I didn't use buses as much. I still hate buses from the years I lived a little north of San Francisco. You couldn't rely on them to run, sometimes they were hours late or never came at all. I gave up on trying to get to work on a bus there.
I guess what I'm saying is that you don't need to be a rich country to have decent transit, you can be shit broke and it's still possible.
You're right though, if people decide they don't need it, you can't set up your own bus line.
This is why it's nice to split a car and hitch with friends and neighbours (and other lending library stuffs while you're at it). Just like the lawn mower you might share, no one (well no one with access to quarter-decent infra) needs a car every day, but it's handy to have access for hauling big stuff.