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What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

haveago.city

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Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#61

Post by burlesona »

the-pigeon wrote: post #19
burlesona wrote: post #14

From the article: “If cities allow, and mandate that we be able to park cars everywhere, why shouldn’t bikes have the same convenience, especially considering they require 10 times less space than cars and offer the enormous efficiency, environmental, cost, and health benefits listed above?” Alternatively we could drop the entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere and the regulations forcing that choice on the co…

> entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. Not that we shouldn't pursue those sorts of changes but that thinking of it as "entitlement" is shallow and not constructive. The entire syste…

Cities got that way by fiat, not by choice, and the government engineered the system with no small amount of help from the industrial lobbies that would be best served by having a car-dependent population.

I would love for us to re-engineer the system. The first step is removing the entitlement.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#62

Post by terenig »

gkoberger wrote: post #5
hapless wrote: post #2

If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public spac…

You mean... like Getaround and Zipcar already do? The streets are filled with companies using public spaces: Fedex deliveries blocking the road, sidewalk signs for bars, Getaround rentals, food carts, mailboxes, ATMs, parking meters, Scoot scooters, taxi lines, Lyft/Ubers, Redbox DVD rentals, annoying Greenpeace petition people, construction, billboards, etc. I don't think it's a cost-saving measure for scooter/bike…

Yep! And even rental car companies do take advantage of public parking: when cars are actually in use, customers are free to park them in any public parking spot.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#64

Post by terenig »

burlesona wrote: post #14

From the article: “If cities allow, and mandate that we be able to park cars everywhere, why shouldn’t bikes have the same convenience, especially considering they require 10 times less space than cars and offer the enormous efficiency, environmental, cost, and health benefits listed above?” Alternatively we could drop the entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere and the regulations forcing that choice on the co…

Agreed!

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#65

Post by terenig »

Lionsion wrote: post #3

> Dockless bikes and scooters are not actually the problem. > For decades now, cars have gotten the royal treatment. Users were able to pick up their cars and drop them off anywhere in the city. It was simply expected that anywhere one goes in a city, one could be guaranteed a free, giant space to park one’s private 4000 pound box, no questions asked. Sure, in some dense areas, payment is now required. Yet private ve…

The argument here is that wherever you go in a city, automobile parking is all around. From street parking, to business parking lots, to single family homes with driveways and garages, to large parking structures. Thus, the user experience for drivers is essentially go anywhere, park anywhere. That convenient user experience is what dockless is allowing for. So cities should strive to quickly figure out how to make scooter/bike parking as ubiquitous as cars. The fact that they haven't already done so shows their implicit bias.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#66

Post by 0max »

phd514 wrote: post #53
gamblor956 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cracking down on the scooters is relatively easy: there are a handful of major actors, and dealing with them solves the problem. Human waste, needles, garbage on the sidewalk is the result of hundreds of bad actors, which correspondingly takes significantly more resources to deal with. (And on that note, the state of Texas is the worst offender. Their official policy for dealing with their homeless during the Perry e…

That's a highly misleading statement. Homeless busing programs are common across the country and while not without their problems, they don't just send all homeless to a single location such as Texas to SF. Also, SF buses considerably more homeless out of its city every year than it receives via bus.

Maybe cities should organize to bus all their homeless residents to DC Union Station and Dupont Circle so those in the squaky clean Capitol can understand that this is a national issue. MLK tried to do something similar before he was assassinated.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#69

Post by extra88 »

gkoberger wrote: post #5
hapless wrote: post #2

If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public spac…

You mean... like Getaround and Zipcar already do? The streets are filled with companies using public spaces: Fedex deliveries blocking the road, sidewalk signs for bars, Getaround rentals, food carts, mailboxes, ATMs, parking meters, Scoot scooters, taxi lines, Lyft/Ubers, Redbox DVD rentals, annoying Greenpeace petition people, construction, billboards, etc. I don't think it's a cost-saving measure for scooter/bike…

Zipcar pays for the parking spots they use. Obviously, while they’re being rented the drivers may use public spots the same as car owners do.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#70

Post by vkou »

nanomonkey wrote: post #58
vkou wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who is not comfortable/fit enough to bike on an American road should probably bike on a non-crowded sidewalk. There are over 800 cyclist deaths, from being hit by cars, every year in the United States. How many pedestrians have been killed by a cyclist hitting them? Forcing someone biking at 7 mph off the sidewalk and onto the street creates more danger then it protects us from.

There have been several studies showing that you're more likely to get hit by a car biking on the sidewalk then riding on the street. Drivers don't look for bicyclist riding on the sidewalk, you will get right swiped.

I have a lot of doubts about this.

Is this adjusted for location? I imagine people may bike on sidewalks more in dangerous-for-cyclist cities.

According to the CDC, most (72%)[1] of bicycle deaths occur outside of intersections, so this may even be an acceptable risk. Most fatal crashes occur near, but not in intersections[2] - biking on the sidewalk completely avoids them.

Also, when you're biking on the sidewalk, your odds of getting doored into traffic go down substantially.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/bicycle/index.html [2] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicyclefatalities....

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