Louis and Chris meet up with Kelsey Huse, a transit advocate, self-described "freeway fighter," and disciple in the "cult of the e-Bike." Listen to our conversation about why Kelsey chose an e-bike over the bus, how she became involved in transit advocacy, and more. (Note: We are not sponsored by HEB…yet)
Louis and Chris meet up with Kelsey Huse, a transit advocate, self-described "freeway fighter," and disciple in the "cult of the e-Bike." Listen to our conversation about why Kelsey chose an e-bike over the bus, how she became involved in transit advocacy, and more. (Note: We are not sponsored by HEB…yet)
On this episode of transit tangents we talk e bikes and transit activism with Kelsey Hughes. Why did Kelsey basically stop riding the bus after she got her ebike? And how has she gotten so involved in transit activism coming up on transit tangents? Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of trends of tangents we are obviously on the go right now, out in the field out in the field where we're getting ready to go meet our friend Kelsey. Chris just got to ride and ebike for real for like, kind of first time right now
Kelsey:being converted to the cult of the ebike. Yeah.
Chris:Which I mean, it's easy. It's an easy thing to get people to do. So if you haven't tried it yet. By the end of this episode, you're going to want an eBay for my
Kelsey:understanding. Kelsey is a strong disciple of the cult of ebikes
Louis:100% is yeah, we're gonna actually meet her in just a second right now. Look at that she's actually here. And we're actually recording this was not not not scripted. That was very good. So we clearly found Kelsey, thanks again for doing this. That was totally not scripted that she started writing up as we were recording the intro there. Perfect. Timing. Yes, yeah. We're gonna go for a bike ride basically right now. And Kelsey, you want to let people know what you're on your way to go do and we'll actually come hang out with you for a little bit if that's okay, definitely. Yeah, what do you have going on?
Kelsey:So I'm one of the main organizers for rethink 35 And today, we're setting up at Edward Rendon Park, which is along the hike and bike trail. And we're talking to people about the park closures, the trail detours that TxDOT wants to do as part of the I 35 expansion if they get away with it because we're suing them.
Louis:Now that we had found Kelsey, we all got on our bikes and started pedaling towards the event. Along the way. We made a nice pitstop out of spot along the hike and bike trail to first have a conversation with Kelsey about how she got so involved in urbanism and transit activism here in Austin. Yes, cheers. Yeah. Cheers, some nice selfies from HEB. Our first sponsor,
Kelsey:we're gonna get sued one day, because you're claiming everyone's our sponsor. Yes. Yeah. My name is Kelsey Huse. I've lived in Austin for five years before this. I lived in Philly for three years. And that's where I got introduced to biking in a city environment, taking public transit and my world just opened up. And I had so much fun. And in Philly is when I got on Twitter. I got on Twitter at first to document my journey into tech and I was doing a coding bootcamp. But then eventually, I just started talking about public transit. And earlier this year, I started documenting my experiences here in Austin on tick tock. So what you probably saw was the Barton Skyway cycling, yes. Which is off of South Lamar, which is very close to where I live. And it opened up a new route for me to get to Barton Springs, the incredible pool that we have here. And I heard that it was at risk of being taken out because the neighbors started a petition to remove it. And someone who only took the bus and biked everywhere. I was so fed up, I made a call really quickly, to oppose it. And then we ended up having six times the amount of signatures as them in the end, I think, and we saved the bike clean. And ever since that I've just been documenting random things around Austin that caused me pain. And yeah, I love to hear that you launched a campaign to save a bike lane. You don't hear that a lot in Austin. Usually it's quite the opposite. Like we need this bike lane now. So actually really surprised me to hear that there was a movement to remove it.
Louis:Well. To be fair, you definitely spend less time on urbanist Twitter. There are a lot of people in Austin who are very against bike lanes very again, like they post ridiculous things being like look at all the empty buses everywhere that nobody's writing go to the they've never been on a bus before and come to find out that like when you do ride the bus, they're actually really busy. There's actually some major, major forces at play who are against these sorts of things. But yeah, the origin story
Kelsey:of me making the anti petition actually is because when the slaughter Lane bike lane was put in, the media covered all of these people who drove their cars near it, who were hating it and hated that they would accidentally hit it because they weren't used to it, etc. And they didn't interview a single cyclist who used it. And in my opinion, I thought this is lazy reporting and they can't ignore us and they're not going to ignore us again. And so I did get on I think to news channel From the Barton Skyway.
Chris:I love that. That's awesome. So your experience and also now you don't have a car you use? Or you have a car, I
Kelsey:do have a car. I think I've driven it maybe 15 miles?
Chris:Yes, sir, if you need it, but your relationship with the city has really been focused on public transit. And so when did you get an E bike?
Kelsey:I got an E bike. I think it was in September. So shortly after I moved to North central Austin, I heard about the REI e bike discount, plus the city of Austin Energy rebate. So I think I paid a little under $1,000 for the ebike. And since I got the ebike, I've actually barely taken the bus anymore. Because I don't need to. It's just faster to ride everywhere,
Louis:right? And we had coffee a couple of weeks ago at one point, and I like asked you about this. I used to see you all the time posting like all, you know, taking cat metro to go here and go there and all this stuff. And correct me if I'm wrong. You had a regular bike, not an E bike. And you would kind of do like some bike and bus. And then I like asked you I was like, I don't see you ever talking about cat Metro anymore? Like what what has changed? So you like, yeah, I guess Can you talk me through how that transition has been and why since you've gotten the ebike, you're basically using that, instead of transit. In a lot of cases.
Kelsey:Two things have changed for me. So when I moved from South Austin to North Austin, and North Austin is more of a grid system, it's way easier to bike up there. So I would take the bus in South Austin to get out of the strode areas like South Kumar, so I can get to a bikable area, and now I'm in a bikable area. And then the ebike is just a lot faster. So I can go up hills. No problem, I'm not exhausted. So one example is I have violin lessons once a week, up in Georgia and acres, which for me is about four miles. And when I started going there, I would use my regular bike and I would be covered in sweat. I actually almost passed out one time when I arrived, she would be worried about me. And then I tried the bus, and it would take at least twice as long. Then I got my ebike I can get there in 20 minutes. I'm not out of breath. I have fun. It's amazing. Yeah,
Louis:nice. No, it's a that's kind of like for me too. I mean, I now so initially, it was just me I had the ebike my partner did not. So we were primarily is that I work from home mostly. So it's not necessarily a good commute thing for me. But I would use it, use the bus to like go out downtown or like if I'm going downtown in general didn't want to want to deal with parking or like want to have a couple drinks and not want to worry about driving home. But since he's gotten the ebike we now even use the E bikes for that. And like we lat last night is a perfect example. He got home from work, but we went over to firstlight which is a cute little bookshop slash coffee shop that also sells beer and wine. And we went over and like got a half carafe of wine and browse the books a little bit but we rode our bikes there. And afterwards we're like, like feeling kind of lazy about making dinner. And we rode over towards like pint house pizza over there, when did some pizzas came home and it was just like, just like riding our bike around, didn't have to get in the car. And it was so nice. And I mean, he uses it to go to work every single day. Our car is basically at this point, we do use it for grocery shopping. It's easier I if I need to get like one or two things, sometimes I'll ride my bike up. But you know, we use it for grocery shopping. And then like, for if it's you know, terrible weather or we're driving like pretty far for something we'll use for that. But like yours, you know, we definitely more than 15 miles on our Friday this year, but it mostly sits in the parking lot of Yeah.
Kelsey:Yeah. And I'm sorry, I'm so envious of that because you have such a different relationship with your city when you're on a bike. Yeah, I was thinking of that today when we were cycling through West campus on the Rio Grande bike trail. And I guess I've driven through that road. I've cycled it before on a regular bike. But you're just so much more engaged with the cityscape and with the environment. When you're you're good
Louis:if you couldn't see that there's a cute little dog I just peed right now.
Kelsey:But you're so much more engaged. And I would love to have that engagement with the city more. Unfortunately, I work across town like I live in sort of Northwest Austin, I work by the airport. Oh my God, my commute. It's not really feasible now. So I had to use a car for biking but I also work from home some parts of the week. So if there's a chance to like go grab lunch or go to the grocery store or whatever. That's when I think a bike would be really nice. Yeah, probably a neighborhood as we talked about a couple times in the podcast is like the hills are just like this. Yeah, like you have to really really have strong legs or you have to have any bike. So this this episode is kind of a convinced Chris to join the EBA ebike calm Yeah,
Louis:I that's been like our joke earlier on, it was like an ebike has changed my life basically. Yeah. And I think you probably would agree that like, it is such a game changer for so many reasons because it fills the gap of like, like there's a couple gaps and fills in the summertime when it's really hot. And you need to like go somewhere and not be like discussing when you arrive, you can rely a little bit heavier on the pedal assist or the throttle if yours has that. If you're somebody who is a little bit older and like wants to still ride their bike somewhere, but doesn't have the energy to be able to do that. Like I think, you know, if my parents lived in a better area for it, my parents when they came here, we rented some of the bikes, the the bike shares, they loved it, loved it, we rode all around on the hike and bike trail, all this stuff. So for for older folks, I think it can make a huge difference. And then if you do want to get some exercise, keep your pedal assist low are off. And even if you're not pedaling as much as you would, on a regular bike, you are still getting some exercise while you're out there doing it and it's it's healthier. There's there's all sorts of I could go on a whole bunch of different tangents about how many positive elements there are to it, but it it makes things a lot easier. And the last point I want to make is that like, it makes cities like Austin that aren't super dense everywhere. A lot more achievable to bike, you know, things are not like right next to each other here. Unfortunately, everywhere. There are parts of town that are getting way more dense, for sure. But the ebike helps in a city like Austin, where, unfortunately things aren't right next to each other everywhere. And you can kind of like surmount that difference.
Kelsey:Yeah. It makes the city a lot smaller when you have the ebike. Yeah, yes. How has your experience been Cycling in Austin? Like how do you rate Austin, for that experience? Well, living in South Boston, it was very poor. So I would rate cycling in South Austin, like a two out of 10. There's a few good bike lanes. But in general, it's very hilly, they haven't prioritized putting in crossings over the railroad and over the Creek Stone there. So there's generally only one way to get east to west within a mile of area. So it's very limiting. Biking in north central Austin, I think has been wonderful. Yeah, in downtown and East all of the trails, all of the protected bike lanes. It's still not perfect, because there's cars. So I would say seven out of 10. Right? Yeah, you ever feel sort of in danger on Austin roads with other vehicles with vehicles around you. Because I hear that complaint a lot. Like there's a little intersection with the bike lanes sort of end or you're on, you're on a shared road where it's like the bike lane is this why and then there's two lanes, four lanes of traffic next to you without any type of Flexi posts are protected. I definitely feel unsafe in those situations. And I generally move to the sidewalk. So I figured out where I feel safe. And I stick to that. I'm definitely a weary of trying new routes because I get anxious easily. So if I'm going to try a new route near somewhere that looks scary, I'll get a friend to show me first. That's how I got confident taking the Hancock Center I 35 Crossing Gotcha. Had a couple of friends show me it but I didn't want to do it by myself to start
Louis:and I think that's like a good tip too. For like if you're someone who has a bike or an E bike or wants to get into it is like, you don't want to go from point A to point B the same way you wouldn't a car right? Like yeah, nine times out of 10 it is not going to be the best way to bike there.
Kelsey:You're not going to enjoy it. No,
Louis:it's definitely worth like looking. You know, it's not perfect. But like Austin, for example. The city has a website with like, all of the bike maps have bike lanes and whatnot on it and like by level of comfort, comfort, and it's not 100% accurate. I'll say cases Yeah, but it's a place to start. You can also you know, like, Okay, you want to try riding to your friend's house or something like look on Google Maps, look at the Street View, like see what your options might be because just getting on your bike and going the same way you know how to get there in a car is probably going to be number one like maybe not even your fastest way but also is very likely going to be dangerous because you're going to be on like a wide, scary road with cars moving really fast. When in reality there might be like a nice neighborhood street, right alongside one gap over Yeah, I guess what
Kelsey:we experienced today we were sort of around major roads but we found a way to avoid those dates, roads go to some beautiful neighborhoods, streets that felt very safe. A little bumpy at times. streets that felt you know safe and comfortable to ride on. So you said you have to find that route that you're comfortable with. That's a huge, huge tip. Totally the route we took today I had no idea about but Travis stone is the one who introduced me to gotta
Louis:you got a shout out in our episode for Yeah. Yeah, I would like to meet up with Travis at some point we have kind of They're on Twitter now. So we'll, we'll have to do a crowd wanted to cross I 35 with him somewhere together. I
Kelsey:think that would be glad to do that.
Louis:Yeah, I want to be respectful of your time, because we probably should get going in a second here. One final question, I guess. Like, if there is another tip or something you could say to someone who might be like on the fence about getting into biking or E biking, ie biking? What What kind of what what would you tell someone who's kind of on the fence who's like, I want to be doing this sort of thing, but like maybe is nervous to do it in their city? Or is like, you know, waiting to pull the trigger? Is there something you might tell someone like that? I
Kelsey:would say try to get someone to help you to guide you. So whether that's someone you follow on social media who's really into biking like me, I would love it if someone reached out and said, Hey, can you show me around this neighborhood? Or how to get groceries in my neighborhood or whatever. Or you can join a bike group. So there's a lot of bike rides that happened in the city, social rides, critical mass, etc. Just try it out. I'm sure you can rent an E bike. Yeah, probably
Louis:even even the bike share systems have you bikes too, like they're not like, as nice necessarily as the ones that we have, although something we didn't hit on. And we'll maybe I'll talk about it afterwards. Here's like affordability. Like, if you're comparing it to the cost of a car, these are insane. And honestly, all three of these bikes that we have here, were all basically $1,000 or less with the whether it be through the rebate, or just the price of the bike in general. If you are replacing a good chunk of your car trips with them, or like in my case, we got rid of one car and like we're saving tons of money as a result. So even on the affordability, and it's a big thing. So your
Kelsey:city, your city or your county may offer some type of discount, like at Austin, we have the Austin electric rebate that you can get for bikes and there's participating dealers, right, there's a couple of qualifications you have to hit, you know, getting it from a registered dealer, making sure that it's definitely an ebike. So your receipt, but very easy. Things to meet totally when you get down to your bike shop and they are you're gonna get always, always happy to help you out. Yeah, definitely.
Louis:Well, awesome. Kelsey, thank you so much for taking the time I will finish our ride over to the to the rethink 35 signature gathering and kind of are you gathering signatures? Yeah. And we'll make sure that information on everything 35 is linked in this I'm not exactly sure when this will be posted. So it'll make sure there's some relevant rethink 35 information description. So successful everything I guess now it's successful trip. Yeah. So we made it back from where we're at. We're almost back to my apartment out a little coffee shop and a nice bikable part of town again. Yeah, I guess what, what did you think of, you know, half day on the ebike? What are your your thoughts? For your first experience?
Kelsey:I can't say that I'm a convert until I buy one. So I am I am ebike. Curious. Okay. Yeah,
Louis:that's fair. You buy curious. FYI. He did buy one two weeks after this episode. We were that we are was that we had a transit. Transit
Kelsey:curious. I have now ebike curious. Yeah. But the biggest thing for me is are the hills and that's why I keep saying and I think Austin has decent bikable streets to get around, especially North Austin, we saw that today we talk to people who believe that as well. It needs a lot of improvement. Don't get me wrong. Really. Yeah. But for somebody like me when I'm trying to get out of the hills, and I just want to go and meet somebody on the weekend or something like it would make total sense to have an AI. So that was thinking about though on our trip is like definitely not for not it's not for everybody, I guess it is kind of for everybody. But it's not feasible for everybody because eBooks are still pretty expensive. For the
Louis:most part, I mentioned it a little bit in our conversation with Kelsey. And it kind of depends on where you're at with it, right. Like if you're in a two car household, and you can use it to replace the car. It's actually like so affordable. When you think about how much money you're gonna save. Again, if you've got a $600 a month, car payment, car insurance, gas, registration, all this sort of stuff, you can spend $1,000 or less after a rebate, if your city has a rebate, like Austin's does. And I mean, you've made your money back in in three months. Basically, it appears if
Kelsey:you are somebody who is transit dependent without a car, it could be a stretch totally, which is why I wanted to go back and sort of re emphasize what you just actually mentioned was that rebate program, and you should look at your cities. And if you are interested, if you're interested in an E bike, you should look at your cities and see what kind of rebate programs there are. Because that type make it affordable for you
Louis:right and more and more of them are doing it. And in here, just for example, if you buy an E bike that's $1 over$1,000 You get a $400 rebate. So that was the case for Kelsey and Gary who both have the same ebike as well as like 250 other people in Austin who took advantage of a sale at the exact right time. That ebike basically that you've been running all day cost someone $600
Kelsey:and change their life and change their life.
Louis:sarcastically but also really Yeah, like Jerry commutes on nothing to work every single day, Kelsey doesn't take the bus basically at all anymore and use your bike to go everywhere and has driven her car 15 miles in the first month of the year. Like that's, that's a huge, huge benefit when your city is trying to get people out of cars and into other modes to try to relieve traffic in different parts of town to like solve mobility problems. So great. So
Kelsey:that was a big success today. I am I'm leaning on the side of potentially buying any bike we'll see. Yeah, there might be a follow up episode of me at the bike shop. trying them out. Yeah, testing them out. Yeah. But thank you to Jerry for letting me use his bike today. Thank you, for to you for setting everything up today and setting up the interview with Kelsey. Totally. And
Louis:I think there's a lot to talk about in future episodes, too. We could get into so many different little pieces of nitty gritty as far as like bike infrastructure goes, but that would make this Episode Episode far too long. You know, so stay tuned for future ones. If you have things that you think we should talk about regarding bikes in a future episode, whether it be the different types of bike infrastructure, whether it be enforcement of parking and bike lanes or people just being in bike lanes like we saw today. All of that sort of stuff. Definitely let us know in the comments because we read all of them. One that we are addressing in this video, it might be a little bit out of order. So apologies if this has been a while but at Riot can cub, Rick and cub. Apologies for the the misspelling there. He left this comment or they left this comment on the our episode too. He said I enjoyed the discussion and video but it's a little too drawn out and choppy. And I kept looking away. Could you shorten this video to maybe 20 minutes? I would rather hear the discussions in the video itself rather than cutting away to your home. Thanks for all the work you did.
Kelsey:We actually want to see my my home.
Louis:No, that's actually like good feedback. And I can tell that you enjoy the episodes of Thank you for watching and subscribing. So you did that. And we're totally taking that feedback. In this video, you'll notice that we've just been out and on on the trip the entire time. I might eat words there if we had to, like insert something in the middle at one point. But yeah, I we're totally taking that feedback and trying it out. Especially on this episode. Yeah,
Kelsey:yeah. Yeah. So thank you for that comment. We've also heard from people in person throughout the last couple of weeks that have been listening. And we really appreciate their feedback as well. One that I wanted to call out is a friend of ours Ray who lives in Austin had a lot of very positive things to say, and learn something new. And I hope that you're also learning something new in the podcast, for instance, right? It know that 35 went all the way to Canada. Wow. So you may not have known that either. But we talked about it in our wider won't work video. Yeah, definitely. Please keep the comments coming. Let us know how we're doing. If you want to see anything, if you have a particular topic you want to talk about. We will be traveling in the future. So we'll put out some travel dates at some point. Yeah. And if you see that we're coming to your city and you want us to take a little bike ride with you or go for a ride on the train. That'd be fun.
Louis:Yeah. All that I think, I think we're in a good spot to wrap it up. Please. If you're not subscribed here on YouTube, or if you're listening, if you haven't rated our podcast, please go ahead and do so ratings are a huge help. Yep. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next Tuesday. I'm saving that go on the transitory reset. Watch me go