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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

#101

Post by vkou »

jessaustin wrote: post #74
vkou wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have biked on both places (In more suburban areas). The roads tend to be terrifying (Because try as I might, I can't keep up with 30 mph traffic.) The sidewalks tend to be empty. I also didn't blow through intersections, which minimized the risk of getting hit in one.

Cars aren't the only thing with doors, but they are the only thing that will door you into traffic. Doors flush with buildings are also quite rare, and are quite rarely opened. (Except store doors - but you don't want to bike near them anyways, unless you want to run into a sign, or a table, or an outdoor display.)

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#102

Post by vkou »

DrScump wrote: post #83
kasey_junk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are presumably already using the sidewalks. The vast majority of pedestrians killed in auto collisions are in intersections or completely on roadways.

And if those pedestrians had to walk in narrow, unseparated lanes, between parked cars, and busy streets, instead of on the relative safety of the sidewalk, I would imagine that fatality rates would be much higher.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#103

Post by closeparen »

chillwaves wrote: post #89
pdonis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> According to new numbers just released from the U.S. Census Bureau, 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... I assume that number has only gone up since 2010.

The Census Bureau’s “urban” is “not rural.” Most people live in metro areas, but in suburban and exurban parts of those metro areas without the density to make public transit good enough to rely on.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#104

Post by s0rce »

bunderbunder wrote: post #94
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…

Fedex deliveries blocking the road for a short time are generally considered preferable to removing a whack of on-street parking from every block in order to have an excess of loading zones, or not being able to have deliveries at all. sidewalk signs for bars are regulated, at least in my city. They have to leave (IIRC) 6' of clearance on the sidewalk so they don't obstruct pedestrian traffic. Whether those rules are…

"Fedex deliveries blocking the road"

Preferable to cars, maybe, since it frees up parking, however, around here they simply park in the bike lane. I go by a UPS store daily and there are often 1-2 trucks both parked in the bike lane.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#105

Post by s0rce »

s17n wrote: post #79
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 p…

Roads are way smoother than sidewalks. Not to be condescending but do you bike around the Bay Area? There are certainly bad roads (potholes, patches, etc) but overall the roads are fairly smooth and sidewalks are bumpy from the joints between the slabs and uneven.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#106

Post by s0rce »

sankyo wrote: post #46

I am all for scooters that are not on the sidewalk. I am all for making it more difficult to own and maintain a car to help eliminate all the problems that they cause. We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking, or even pedestrian deaths, traffic, and other car issues. So why are we asking LimeBike, Bird, or Spin to figure out bike/scooter storage? Lime Bird and Spin own the scooters that are blocking the…

There are car rental services like gig car that don't have dedicated spots and work perfectly. Maybe we can just let people leave the scooters in car parking spots. I'm sure that would go over great.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#107

Post by pdonis »

chillwaves wrote: post #89
pdonis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> According to new numbers just released from the U.S. Census Bureau, 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... I assume that number has only gone up since 2010.

> 80.7 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas as of the 2010 Census

"Urban areas" includes where I live, which is not dense enough for public transportation to work well. Reading the article you cited, it looks like about half of the population labeled "urban" by the Census Bureau lives in areas that are like mine (or even less dense).

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#108

Post by Johnny555 »

lovich wrote: post #100
Johnny555 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's people's personal vehicles and not companies private fleets that they are charging use for. Isn't that worse? If they were car share cars, then at least local residents would be able to use them, but instead, all of those cars parked on city streets are usable by only a single person each. For example, the city street I used to live on had around 250 housing units and about 40 street parking spaces. It would hav…

No I don't believe that at all. Part of the money you pay for share cars would be going into someone's pockets. It's literally a negative externality that they are pushing onto society. Sometimes those negative externalities are worth the benefits that a business brings around but that's not a garunteed or even common occurrence and it shouldn't just be assumed to be a positive

Part of the money that I pay for my own car goes in someone's pockets, so I don't understand why that matters.

But when I lived in that city, I'd have paid far less overall if I used car-share instead of owning my own car. When I park my own car on the public street, that space is dedicated 100% to me. When a car-share car is parked there, then several people benefit from that space.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#109

Post by [deleted] »

bunderbunder wrote: post #94
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…

Fedex deliveries blocking the road for a short time are generally considered preferable to removing a whack of on-street parking from every block in order to have an excess of loading zones, or not being able to have deliveries at all. sidewalk signs for bars are regulated, at least in my city. They have to leave (IIRC) 6' of clearance on the sidewalk so they don't obstruct pedestrian traffic. Whether those rules are…

[deleted]

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#110

Post by CalRobert »

Lionsion wrote: post #55
subpixel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit. Contrast this to a Chinese city of the same size, which due to the fact that literally everyone lives in small apartments, is much more compact and easier to serve via public transport.

"US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit."

Also could be US cities have no transit, requiring space-intensive auto infrastructure, so they're more spread out.

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