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What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

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Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#71

Post by inferiorhuman »

chroma wrote: post #47
rootedbox wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not an absurd priority if you are disabled. These scooters in the middle of side walks can literally mean injury to the blind, and a big pain for those in wheel chairs. Think of that the next time you simply 'step over' a poorly-parked scooter.

If the thing you care about is clear sidewalks, scooters are such a tiny problem that they're barely worth mentioning. I've had to step over parked scooters a handful of times. Every time, they were in an alley that no wheelchair or blind person could have navigated. The sidewalk was also populated with garbage cans, bicycle parts, and some random trash. If a scooter is poorly parked in a high traffic area, people te…

> If the thing you care about is clear sidewalks, scooters are such a tiny problem that they're barely worth mentioning.

So let's nip it in the bud before it becomes a bigger problem and then use scooters as an example to rationalize the bigger problems with sidewalks.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#72

Post by kasey_junk »

vkou wrote: post #40
BigFatGuy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m all for it if they stay off the sidewalk.

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.

Pedestrians killed by cars is an order of magnitude higher than that.

They are presumably already using the sidewalks.

It doesn’t matter where you are relative to them, cars are dangerous.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#73

Post by gkoberger »

extra88 wrote: post #69
gkoberger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Bird is paying (or offering to, at least) $1/scooter/day to SF. That's $365/scooter/year.

I've heard Zipcar pays SF $1000-ish/year, so inch-for-inch it's certainly a good deal.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#74

Post by jessaustin »

vkou wrote: post #70
nanomonkey wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, y…

If you had biked in both places, you wouldn't doubt it. Sure not every autocager sees (or drives as if they see) a cyclist in the road, but the cyclist can see and hear everything around in way that's just not possible on the sidewalk. (I say this as someone who is missing one eye.) Also, cars aren't the only things with doors.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#75

Post by extra88 »

gkoberger wrote: post #73
extra88 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Bird is paying (or offering to, at least) $1/scooter/day to SF. That's $365/scooter/year. I've heard Zipcar pays SF $1000-ish/year, so inch-for-inch it's certainly a good deal.

In the greater Boston area, I think I've only seen Zipcar spots on private property (though I'm not sure what the ownership is of the MBTA parking spaces) and I would expect the rate to be somewhat negotiable, based on supply & demand for the neighborhood.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#76

Post by pdonis »

subpixel wrote: post #27
the-pigeon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. Let me rephrase that for you: In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized (as a thing only poor 'others' would use). That is changing, slowly, as places that basically gave up on public transport are discovering that less and less people in their cities want to own a car.

> In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized

You misspelled "in most places in the US public transport cannot meet people's needs". Yes, it can in inner cities, but most of the US is not inner cities.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#77

Post by checker »

0max wrote: post #66
phd514 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you actually been to DC? Union Station always had homeless outside when I worked nearby. DC may be unique in a few ways but in most ways it's similar to any other large city for the people that live there.

I agree that there's a problem to be solved but DC is far from squeaky clean...

Real numbers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-has-the-highest-home...

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#78

Post by s17n »

The problem isn't parking, the problem is that to work well they need dedicated lanes. I agree that this should happen but it's not as easy as taking a parking space per block - you'd have to eliminate half of all the parking or reduce the number of car lanes or something.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#79

Post by s17n »

terenig wrote: post #63

Hi all! My name is Terenig, I'm the author of this post and founder of Have A Go. My friend messaged me giving me the heads up that this article was on Hacker News. I was really surprised! I'll do my best to reply to some of the thoughtful comments.

The problem isn't parking, it's where are these things going to drive? Bikes work OK on the street but scooters really don't (even where there are protected lanes, they really need a smoother road surface) so they end up riding on the sidewalk, hence the backlash from pedestrians.

The solution is obvious (make dedicated lanes, pave them like a sidewalk) but it would mean taking a lot of space away from cars, not as painless as 1 spot per block.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#80

Post by jwilliams »

I'm pro scooters and dockerless bikes in general -- but I also don't really buy into the logic of this article.

In the key markets for these things - there is no presumption of parking. I imagine avoiding parking is the #1/#2 reason for most users would use this service (I'd include ride sharing here too). I specifically don't have a car in San Francisco because I have nowhere to park it.

When dockerless bikes were launched in other markets (e.g. Sydney, Melbourne) it really was a mess. Bikes thrown in rivers. Stacked up as hazards. In trees. On the top of stuff in general. And Melbourne is a much more bike-friendly city than many North American ones. But it was still a huge bomb. It's probably sensible for the SFMTA to at least consider the consequences and stage a rollout.

The SFMTA was actually being pretty co-operative. And for a government agency, they were moving pretty fast - i.e. getting stuff going in weeks/months. Instead, one of the companies launched early on St Patrick's Day. When the others felt they were losing first mover advantage, they did too.

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