171–180 of 193 posts
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It's getting better, but a lot of places still don't have bike lanes. I'll ride on the sidewalk if I don't feel safe in the road, but I'm extra careful when I do.
So basically, you make peds feel unsafe so that you can feel safe.
I think bird fucked up in SF by not giving clear-enough guidelines to their users (or not taking it seriously enough). People just need to treat these like a bike, basically. 1) ride in the street, not on the sidewalk. The only thing that should be on sidewalks are people walking and wheelchairs (disabled people walking). 2) park it next to an area where people expect bikes to be parked, like a bike rack or parking m…
Sort of an empty comparison to the automobile. Similar in the fact that it's being thrown out into the world without a plan, and there's no space for them, and there's an outcry. Different because they're a lot less deadly. The proliferation of private automobiles is a net negative for the world, so if these scooters displace (i.e. take away space from) cars, they're good. If they displace, hassle or inconvenience pe…
Electric scooters go the same speed range of 10-25mph. All of these relatively new electric mini-vehicles go as fast or faster than a bicycle. For stability reasons the sweet spot is about 10-15mph, which is the speed of a typical bicycle rider. Bike riders should see them as allies in getting better bike infrastructure, because they are pretty much equivalent.
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> There's absolutely no reason that someone on a sidewalk shouldn't expect that another person, whether walking or on a bike, might also need to use the sidewalk Is cycling on the sidewalk legal in your location? It isn't in most places, as far as I know.
Don't know about the parent but it's so legal in SF and the Peninsula that plenty of sidewalk spaces have sharrows ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_lane_marking ) or signs indicating cyclists are allowed use of the path. These signs aren't necessary for cyclists to use the sidewalk though: we're simply allowed to unless a sign explicitly prohibits it. Besides the point isn't that cyclists in these spaces shou…
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> I bike commute. I stay on the road as much as possible, but there's parts where it's impractical. So, I get on the sidewalk, go slow, and yield to pedestrians. Yeah. I bike on the sidewalk sometimes, but when I do I consider it 100% my responsibility to avoid pedestrians. They're not expecting me and they have no reason to look out for me; it's my job to go slow, watch entrances, and not scare people by blowing pas…
I tried really hard to make it clear that I am looking out for them. Apparently that was insufficient. It is made unnecessarily difficult to look out for someone who is weaving around erratically and completely oblivious to everything around them. I bike on the road. I expect cars to look out for me. Nonetheless, I take measures to make it easy for them to do that. I wear reflective gear and have lights at night. I b…
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> As for the self righteousness of "only peds belong on sidewalks", I get tired of that. Being in traffic is exceedingly dangerous, and apparently as long as someone else's life on the line you're good with it. As someone who uses electric skateboards and scooters fairly regularly, I disagree. Bicycle lanes are the most appropriate place for them. Supposedly Steve Jobs predicted the Segway would cause cities to be "r…
Not the same type of scooter, but here in Amsterdam they put them on the bike path a few decades ago. And it's a major nuisance for cyclists. They are not compatible modes of transport and it's dangerous. So the city passed a new law last year to start transitioning them back to the road.
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> At speed, injuring the pedestrians who get in your way is an inevitability Well, that's the point. You are supposed to be riding or driving at a speed that you can safely stop if you need to. This is the same in every country, right? > Japan is messaging that Japanese people ought to stay far, far away from bicycling unless they have particularly extreme appetite for risk. Bicycling to work or school is very common…
>stop if you need to If you're on a 45mph road and someone puts themselves in your path 10 feet ahead, no, we don't say that you should have actually been going 5mph just in case something like this was going to happen. You're required to yield at crosswalks, but there's an expectation that mutual acknowledgement between you and the pedestrian happens at a reasonable distance before the pedestrian enters the roadway.…
I initially was bah humbugy about these scooters, but after reading an article that points out we have acres of space devoted to private automobiles, and that it really wouldn't be hard to accommodate these electric scooters, I changed my mind. They look fun, they seem more flexible than the hard-wired go-bike stations, and they don't seem super expensive. It's pretty obvious that our cities are broken, and SF needs…
It’s insane how we don’t even notice how much public space is devoted to cars: For a typical residential street, it’s 2/3: two lanes of traffic, two lanes for parking, vs two sidewalks. All are about the same width. That primacy of the car is what needs to change. Autonomous driving could go a long way, by allowing offside parking and increased utilization of shared cars. But even before, just inconveniencing drivers…
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i love them. They could easily take half the cars off the road and transform downtown. They're more convenient and a fraction of the cost of an uber, and they're fun to ride. People should not be riding them on the sidewalks, i'm expecting that to change quickly.
I'm a fan too. I think we'd see fewer people take Uber/Lyft's for short drives (less than 2 miles), but commute traffic will stay the same due to "induced demand." Any reduction in the number of cars on the road will be met by more people willing to do a "super commute" from outside the city. Right now the traffic into cities is dependent on the jobs (and their pay) available downtown, and people's willingness to com…
These Electric Scooters in San Francisco have become a total nuisance. I've seen quite a few riders ride them on the sidewalks and 1 person even ran into a dude on a wheelchair who was trying to get onto the sidewalk after crossing the road on his wheelchair. The last safe place for Pedestrians and disabled persons -- the Sidewalk -- is under attack. The startups that have created this nuisance also park these scoote…
The sidewalk in San Francisco is already not a safe place. Everyone is looking down at their phones. If they aren't, it seems like a large amount of SF residents don't know how to walk on sidewalks appropriately (stick to one side of the road when someone is coming the other way, don't walk 6 abreast, etc.). I have seen so many people bump into each other and get into accidents simply walking. I wouldn't mind scooter…