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Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

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Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#301

Post by amanaplanacanal »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #281
stonogo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing's stopping you from charging for street parking. If it's a subsidy, that's a political decision, not an inherent flaw in street parking.

Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.

I would guess that there are very few houses and apartments without parking in the US.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#302

Post by culopatin »

spankalee wrote: post #59

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault. Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff: 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic…

At times I dont know if I prefer a car blocking the lane than someone parked next to it and surprising me with a door that opens into the lane. For SF people: the bike lane next to the panhandle going west for example.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#303

Post by gpm »

saelthavron wrote: post #245
spankalee wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones. This is how taxis have always worked. It's just that other drivers get pissed off if you block a car lane when there's a bike lane next to it. That needs to be trained away by enforcing the rules.

Wouldn't it be safer for the bikers and people exiting on the bike lane side of the car if the bike lane was blocked?

No. Cars entering the bike lane is dangerous. Bicycles being encouraged to enter the car lane to avoid the car illegally blocking it is dangerous.

The car stopping in car lane, far enough from the bike lane that its doors won't enter it, and letting the passengers out into the road, is by far the safest. Yes, that means now-pedestrians end up crossing the bike lane. That's a lot better than a car. They move slower, and more predictably, while simultaneously not blocking it for long enough that anyone is motivated to deke (my spellchecker doesn't like that? Is that a word outside Canada?) out into traffic.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#304

Post by gpm »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #278
spankalee wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delivery drivers should find parking. They should be fined heavily for parking in traffic, including bike lanes.

That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.

In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park.

Larger scale deliveries (e.g. to malls, grocery store, factories) should have a privately owned off-road, built into the structure place for trucks to park and drop things off. Though things like factories often simply don't belong in the dense part of the city.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#305

Post by bryanlarsen »

moomin wrote: post #250
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no realit…

People undoubtedly said this was not realistic in many car-clogged European cities before some actually did it. “Realism” here is just a measure of the current number of votes you have for making things better.

Streets are narrower in Europe. It should be easier in the US.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#306

Post by SilverElfin »

saagarjha wrote: post #210
SilverElfin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not dangerous to block a bike lane. The bikers can wait. They are fewer in number and inconveniencing them is less problematic. If they’re worried about being vulnerable, they are free to ride at low speeds on the sidewalk, or just not use a bicycle.

Riding at slow speeds on the sidewalk is illegal, similar to driving at low speeds through the bike lane.

It is not illegal in most cities. Although SF is an exception.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#307

Post by seanmcdirmid »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #301
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.

I would guess that there are very few houses and apartments without parking in the US.

You would be very wrong, but I live in Seattle so my experience differs from yours. Definitely here in Ballard I’d say 50% of the residents are parking on the street.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#308

Post by dangus »

kelnos wrote: post #212
dangus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, again, is a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity.

We live in the real would and have to work with what actually exists. I'd love it if my city had Tokyo's rail system, but it doesn't, and won't.

We actually don’t have to work with what exists. We actively chose and continue to choose what exists. Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change.

Here’s a nice video about how rural towns can be configured to not be car dependent:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg

You’ll notice that this isn’t some ancient European pre-automobile city stuff, you’ll see many single family home tract houses in the suburbs and small towns of the Netherlands that would be at home in any American suburb. The Netherlands did struggle with post-war car-oriented development that it has successfully pushed back against.

If you live in Arlington, Texas, you live in a city of over 200,000 people that doesn’t even have bus service.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#309

Post by dangus »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #209
dangus wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, again, is a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity.

> a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity Maybe. American suburbs are already spread out. It doesn’t make sense to run subways to every corner the way we do in urban centers. Doing last mile with shared transport—versus cars which park idle for most of the day around train stations—makes sense.

Did I say we should run subways to every corner?

Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg

Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system.

And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis.

You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car.

What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other?

For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.

Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.

Re: Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

#310

Post by jmalicki »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #268
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase I know plenty of people in Phoenix for whom it’s their main mode of transport. When I’m there or in San Francisco, it’s certainly mine. (And now, increasingly, in Miami, too.) Waymo is here and it’s real and it’s so much better than Uber or taxis.

Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout. It's certainly not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it. There's perhaps a small handful of companies globally that are currently prototyping the technology in a process that's shaping up to take a decade or longer to play out. Even once things reach that point reworking an existing place would be a mas…

> Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout

By city and ODD, but if you are in the area and your source and destination for the route are both within the ODD they are just as available as an Uber.

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