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What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

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Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#131

Post by bdamm »

matttproud wrote: post #130

This article's author has a chip on the shoulders regarding automobiles: > pick up their cars and drop them off _anywhere_ in the city (emphasis mine) Really? One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter. Individuals inconsiderately stranding means of transportation across the city is patently uns…

It is solvable, typically by city government. No doubt if there are sufficient people annoyed by discarded scooters overcrowding the sidewalks then the city will be compelled to act. The city may designate specific zones for such discarded conveyance, or they may designate zones that are to remain free of such. They may choose to redirect police efforts towards ticketing those "littering" the streets with these devices, or they may choose to ask the police to create a blitz of enforcement, among the various enforcement options. They may choose to revoke the business license for entities providing such conveyances, or they may choose to enact new taxes to pay for the management.

There are many options, and city governments are entirely appropriate to make the choices. I encourage you to take your grievance there.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#132

Post by woolvalley »

s17n wrote: post #116
woolvalley wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ride on the side of the road, like with bikes. Nobody really does dockless bikes with their personal bikes because of theft.

Have you tried that with a scooter? It's not pleasant. For bikes, sure.

I do it with a boosted board, which is even worse.

These e-scooters are not your typical kid scooters, they have pneumatic tires, and those tires are bigger than the 80-90mm skateboard tires that are available on electric skateboards.

Here is one example: http://www.mi.com/us/mi-electric-scooter/

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#133

Post by inferiorhuman »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #71
chroma wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

* rationalize dealing with

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#134

Post by CalRobert »

smallnamespace wrote: post #113
CalRobert wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

History is path-dependent. At some point in our nation's history (namely right after WW2), it was decided that cars, suburbia, and the Interstate highway system was the way forward, and not dense, closely packed cities + public transport + more railways. Note that we might not think about this now, but cities before WW2 were often disease-ridden, filthy places. The antibiotic revolution did not really come into full…

We agree on all those points. All I was saying is that people say "cities are spread out so transit won't work" when often the very _reason_ cities are spread out is that they lacked transit, so huge amounts of land were given over to auto infrastructure. It's worth considering that it's self-reinforcing and the causality isn't one-way.

Look at a big box store, for instance - most of the land is parking, not the store itself. A freeway interchange can take as much land as en entire neighborhood. Meanwhile you can have tens of thousands of people in a city centre all within walking distance of one another. But you can't do that if you pave over most of the land.

Also, it's illegal in most of the US to build infrastructure that isn't suited to an auto-first lifestyle, mostly through parking minimums but also Level-of-service considerations that force large, wide streets.

In California, SB827 just died a sad death. It would have allowed buildings up to 5 stories near high-frequency transit stops. Now those people who would have lived in those buildings will have to live farther from transit, so they'll drive. They'll need parking too, so we'll need to use land that would have gone to homes/businesses/etc for their parking. Also gas stations, more road capacity, etc. The homes they end up living in will be harder to reasonably serve with transit, because of course they're farther apart.

Yet old neighborhoods near cities built _before_ those rules are often very expensive, suggesting that more people would like to live in them than are able to. The first thing that comes to mind is the nicer areas of Berkeley, or South Park, San Diego, for instance. It's funny you note railways though because they were largely the original enablers of sprawl (though I have no problem with railway-served suburbs! the problem is largely that we got rid of the rail service).

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#135

Post by nicky0 »

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 feel like I'm missing something. I can't understand how it's more likely for a car to hit a cyclist on the sidewalk than the road. Cars drive in the road. They do not drive on the sidewalk.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#136

Post by freeone3000 »

s0rce wrote: post #29
justjash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is the lack of space to "park" a bike. You might be lucky to find one or maybe two bike racks per block compared to how many parking spaces? If I ride my bike to the bar to meet a couple friends I might have to lock my bike up a block or two away because that is the only rack around.

If that, I often find I have to lock my bike to a street sign or parking meter frequently.

Parking meters in Montreal have bike rings. It's ingenious, in a sense.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#137

Post by Angostura »

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…

Certainly, where I live in London, Zipcar has arranged with the council to have special bays marked, reserved for them. The council like car-sharing, so are happy - but it is done in a manageable way.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#138

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

sarreph wrote: post #128

> What’s the issue? Some blocked sidewalks. As if that was a new issue in cities. Yes, blocked sidewalks is the issue. And while I'm glad the author suggests a remedy — of creating designated parking zones — this is essentially describing dockable bikes. In my experience, docked bikes do not solve the convenience and availability problem well enough. I've used dockless bikes recently in both Europe and Asia, and in t…

Dockless bikes are working pretty much fine in Oxford, where I live. The city is pretty much the poster child for the idea in the UK, with three firms competing (Ofo, Mobike, Pony). Pavements generally aren't obstructed and the bike companies aren't experiencing a high degree of theft.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#139

Post by Angostura »

woah wrote: post #99
mrharrison wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a biker, having to park my bike at Walgreens and seeing the same Jump bikes parked at the bike stand, from the day before, and nowhere to park my bike is definitely a nuisance. Didn't really encounter this issue before, people normally come and go with their bikes. As a walker, when entitled scooter peeps jump on the sidewalk and start whizzing around you, and at almost hit you, it's a nuisance as well. I like the…

The inconvenience and danger caused by cars is so much more. You have to be on alert to avoid being killed by them. Huge swaths of valuable city real estate are devoted to free or low priced subsidized storage of cars for entitled car owners. It's astounding that this has gone on for so long and it needs to be stopped.

I seldom see cars driving on the pavement.

Re: What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

#140

Post by EnderMB »

sarreph wrote: post #128

> What’s the issue? Some blocked sidewalks. As if that was a new issue in cities. Yes, blocked sidewalks is the issue. And while I'm glad the author suggests a remedy — of creating designated parking zones — this is essentially describing dockable bikes. In my experience, docked bikes do not solve the convenience and availability problem well enough. I've used dockless bikes recently in both Europe and Asia, and in t…

We have dockless bikes in Bristol, and we've had similar issues. The biggest issue I've found is that most services require you give up use once you park, meaning that you could use one to get lunch and then come back to see that the bike you used is gone, with no bike nearby.

There are definitely solutions out there to these problems, but I think the space is still relatively new for companies to have these problems fully addressed. I don't share the sentiment or the entitlement of the article, though. Rather than addressing the problems, they're largely complaining about vehicles that don't really have a choice but to be parked for a long period of time (i.e. lorries running deliveries).

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