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The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

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Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#51

Post by jmclnx »

Zambyte wrote: post #41
reactordev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this has been true every hundred years or so as technology changes and those that are building infrastructure know nothing else. 2000s : Damn these cars clogging up the road! 1900s : Damn these buggies clogging up the road! 1800s : Damn these carriages clogging up the road! 1700s : Damn these horses clogging up the road! 1600s : Damn these " " " " " 100BC : Damn these romans clogging up the road!

You really think the idea of anything like bumper to bumper traffic existed more than a hundred years ago? Everything before 2000s (though surely car traffic existed in the 1900s) seems like a dramatization.

100 years ago was 1925 :)

I would think in some places there was bumper to bumper for short distances. I would expect in parts of NYC it existed. I think it was in the 1920s when traffic lights started to appear.

But 110 years ago, I agree with you on this.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#52

Post by agenticfish »

echelon wrote: post #47
hylaride wrote: post #6

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters. The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in c…

Despite city dwellers hating on cars and wanting complete streets, cars are poised to win even bigger when self driving becomes widespread. Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics corridors and optimal public transit systems. Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the "direct to you" model. Self-driving cars will replac…

> Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale.

I would invite you to come and have a look in the Netherlands. It’s very common for octogenarians to cycle. My wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter. Children have more independence because they can cycle to football practice on their own. Bike lanes are great for mobility scooters. It rains here, a lot! And it snows. I picked up our Christmas tree with our cargo bike. When I need to transport anything larger I will book a carshare, which are dotted around our neighbourhood.

And the result? People are happy and healthy.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#53

Post by torgoguys »

Does anyone remember the 1980s PBS show Newtons Apple? A segment on that show was called "Newtons Lemons" and would show an old newsreel from I'm guessing from the 1940s or 1950s. Each one would feature some sort of "futuristic" gadget, and invariably it would be something that never panned out and I had never heard of as a kid. I distinctly remember one of these featuring basically a scooter with a small gas motor and the narrator talking about great it would be for commuting to work when we can all own these. By my recollection, it looked very much like escooters of today, just gas.

When escooters became a thing, I looked for this newsreel for a while and never found it. Anyone else remember this?

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#54

Post by echelon »

agenticfish wrote: post #52
echelon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite city dwellers hating on cars and wanting complete streets, cars are poised to win even bigger when self driving becomes widespread. Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics corridors and optimal public transit systems. Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the "direct to you" model. Self-driving cars will replac…

> Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale. I would invite you to come and have a look in the Netherlands. It’s very common for octogenarians to cycle. My wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter. Children have more independence because they can cy…

European weather is still mild relative to the US. It will be so long as the Gulf Stream doesn't shut down.

Americans are fatter and less healthy.

Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard, play hard.")

Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer economy.)

We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our infrastructure. We might be able to put in a bike land here or there in a majorly dense city or two, but we're not changing all of this.

And more than anything else, America is fucking huge.

I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply to us. The proponents in the US trying to make it happen misunderstand the fundamental differences.

Just five years ago I would have said you were selling a monorail fantasy or sight to the blind to us. And an unfortunate few in the US were lapping it up as something we could actually do.

Now that self driving is finally arriving, what I'm saying is that our future is even brighter than most countries. We have the road infra to really make this magic.

I can wake up one day, make my coffee, hop into my car with my wife, and through no effort of my own, wind up at a mountain resort. No security checkpoints. No hassle packing. No screaming babies. We can listen to music, read, cuddle. It's our own space taking us wherever we want at complete and total leisure, affordably, comfortably, privately. We can even detour for food or whatever.

It's going to be pure magic. As big a revolution as the internet was.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#55

Post by dpark »

jetrink wrote: post #45
sheepscreek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network. I think Bacerlona hits a good compromise. The city has the concept of a superblock, which is a few city blocks grouped into one calm zon…

> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network. A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for a…

This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area?

And what else could we do with that investment?

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#56

Post by jghn »

alistairSH wrote: post #15
ajb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London is edging in that direction with the introduction of "low traffic neighbourhoods". Basically this involves preventing vehicles using them as a through route, by limiting some connections to only emergency vehicles. The problem is that it's also annoying for residents as it means the allowed entry/exit routes aren't necessarily in the direction you need to go. Does Barcelona have a smarter method?

Isn’t the presumption that residents walk/bike/transit far more often than drive?

My city has been making efforts to stymie traffic flow to encourage less driving. I almost never drive but it's still annoying as crap when what used to be a 20 min drive is now 40+ because of how slow the first/last mile is now.

When I'm not driving I do enjoy it, so I understand that it's a tradeoff and I can't have it both ways. That doesn't make me not irritated when behind the wheel though.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#57

Post by randunel »

dpark wrote: post #55
jetrink wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network. A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for a…

This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the problem of “I don’t like seeing service trucks”. How many such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the buildings in a typical city’s downtown area? And what else could we do with that investment?

I wonder how many people such an automated freight system would kill per year, compared to cars in the same cities. Once we have some numbers, you would probably reconsider the use of "insane" there.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#58

Post by dpark »

ajb wrote: post #25
alistairSH wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the presumption that residents walk/bike/transit far more often than drive?

That's unevenly distributed. Lots of people in London do walk or use public transport, but you still need many delivery drivers, tradespeople, etc and it doesn't make sense for them all to live outside the city. And people who don't usually drive occasionally need to use a vehicle, and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are. It's too simplistic to just mak…

> and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are

“I rarely drive and so I am stressed when I do” is not an issue that needs to be solved.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#59

Post by dpark »

bluescrn wrote: post #19
ajb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London is edging in that direction with the introduction of "low traffic neighbourhoods". Basically this involves preventing vehicles using them as a through route, by limiting some connections to only emergency vehicles. The problem is that it's also annoying for residents as it means the allowed entry/exit routes aren't necessarily in the direction you need to go. Does Barcelona have a smarter method?

LTNs and pedestrianised areas are great for criminals on illegal high-powered e-bikes. Purpose-built getaway routes.

lol. People will try to paint anything they don’t like as bad because criminals can also use it.

Re: The e-scooter isn't new – London was zooming around on Autopeds a century ago

#60

Post by Sam6late »

hylaride wrote: post #6

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters. The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in c…

The same case was in Italy, and calendars of Vespa were awesome back in the 70s ''Piaggio (maker of Vespa) had had its Pontedera (Italy) factory (where they used to make bomber planes) bombed during the conflict. Italy had it’s aircraft industry restricted to a great extent as part of the ceasefire agreement with the allies. Enrico Piaggio, son of the founder of the company Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the aeronautical field behind and address the people’s need for an economic mode of transport. The idea was to make a scooter utilitarian and appealing enough to the masses. Till that time, scooters were mainly used by the military for quick on-ground transportation (you might have seen this in some Call of Duty games). So, two Piaggio engineers, Renzo Spolti and Vittorio Casini, took to their whiteboard and designed the first-ever Vespa, or maybe not quite. Mr. Piaggio was disappointed with the initial scooter. The scooter was named Paperino, and looking at the photo, you can understand Mr. Piaggios disappointment.' https://www.vespalicious.com/gallery/
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