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I'm also willing to bet that the people in those areas, even if it isn't true, believed that the extra parking spaces and extra traffic lanes benefitted them mo

I'm also willing to bet that the people in those areas, even if it isn't true, believed that the extra parking spaces and extra traffic lanes benefitted them more than the bikes. If they didn't, they wouldn't be destroying them. Hah, classic engineering mistake: assuming people are rational. People hate change. People really hate change they didn't choose (irrespective of whether that change is good or bad), because people want to feel in control. On top of that, given the sheer, mindless hostility that cyclists receive from non-cyclists (some deserved, most not at all), when you mix that with rage over gentrification, these bike share programs should've been seen as a target before they ever got rolled out. So I agree with you that I'll bet the roll out of this program was botched. But I very much disagree that the subsequent reaction was rational or thought out based on a cost-benefit analysis.

scurvy 9y ago
I bet that Mission residents would complain if they didn't get any bicycle stations. "Why are these only in rich neighborhoods? Why are the poor excluded? Poor people need these!" It's a classic Bay Area story. Any kind of change is met with backlash from somewhere. No place does self-righteous entitlement quite like the Bay Area.
- mrgordon 9y ago
  My part of the Mission didn't get a bike station because of NIMBYs who complained it would gentrify the neighborhood and remove parking. In other words, they specifically blocked it from being an option for the poor people while the rich neighborhoods were like sure put some bikes in.
KirinDave 9y ago
It's depressing that you point to the animosity of communities that have been traditionally on the sour end of many transit projects and claim their reaction is irrational. Given that total knowledge is costly and time-consuming to acquire and often the window for action is shorter than the time it would take to acquire a total understanding of the situation, it's only natural people take cognitive shortcuts.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  It's depressing that you point to the animosity of communities that have been traditionally on the sour end of many transit projects and claim their reaction is irrational. All you've done is eloquently explained why their irrationality might be understandable. Humans are, by and large, inherently irrational. That fact isn't depressing. It's simply true.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > Humans are, by and large, inherently irrational. That fact isn't depressing. It's simply true. That's not the subject. You've suggested that this specific reaction is irrational. As I've pointed out, it's ENTIRELY rational to use available data to make a decision if the stakes are high and the duration of opportunity to counter it may be short. It may be sub-optimal and even self-harming in the total balance of accounting, but that is a distinct condition from rationality. You seem to be confusing these different concepts.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      > It may be sub-optimal and even self-harming in the total balance of accounting, but that is a distinct condition from rationality. You seem to be confusing these different concepts. I agree. The initial reaction to getting a pipe jammed into your chest is to remove the pipe, even though I'm pretty sure every medical professional would tell you to leave it there, you don't in the heat of the moment understand why: you have a foreign entity in your body, and your instincts are telling you to remove it. It is an irrational and detrimental reaction but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people would do it, or at least attempt to do it until someone who was not in fight or flight mode stopped them. Just because emotions are messy and not easily solved with logic and code does not make them irrelevant. We are not the fucking Borg and we likely won't be for an extremely long time, so discarding the emotional end of any argument just because you don't want to deal with the messy irrational reactions of human beings is stupid.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      As I've pointed out, it' ENTIRELY rational to use available data to make a decision if the stakes are high and the duration of opportunity to counter it may be short. Sure. And you're assuming that's what happened here. Based on how I've seen people behave, I'm assuming it's not. We can both have our opinions. Hell, we're probably both right to some degree. I will say, though, that when it comes to collective human behaviour, politics has taught me to be incredibly cynical... I've consistently been amazed by how willing people are to work against their own best interests in order to reinforce their personal and group identities. But the vandals in particular? I seriously doubt they put any real thought into the benefits of this bike network. They saw change, introduced from outside, that they see as a symbol of white gentrification (and even worse, it's those damned cyclists that everyone hates... Probably with man buns and bottles of IPA in their backpacks), and reacted.
FussyZeus 9y ago
> People hate change. Fact. > People really hate change they didn't choose (irrespective of whether that change is good or bad), because people want to feel in control. Which is why doing what was done here, i.e. rolling in overnight and changing shit, especially when the direct benefits of that have not even been attempted to be explained to, let alone explained well to the affected community, was probably a shitty idea. And the backlash was utterly predictable. Considering that these people are paying taxes (even if they get it all back at the end of the year, optically, they are "paying taxes" because they lose a good chunk of their paycheck that they could probably really use) I don't think having a say as to what and how public services are created and executed in their community is such a terrible thing. I'd say that is a fairly rational desire. > But I very much disagree that the subsequent reaction was rational or thought out based on a cost-benefit analysis. I have a hard time recollecting any situation where vandalism is a rational, thought out reaction to anything. Nor did I say it was.
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Nobody "rolled in overnight" The locations for these stations and the second wave of them that will be installed have been known for a long time and numerous community meetings were conducted. People are probably still just mad they're losing two parking spots near their business.
acchow 9y ago
> People hate change. Do you have data to back this up? Given how quickly the internet took over the world, Facebook, iPhone and smartphones, mass move from IE to Chrome, Uber... I really don't think there's much truth in this banal platitude.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zzalpha 9y ago
  Given how quickly many people reacted negatively to women's suffrage, the Voting Rights Act and removal of Jim Crow laws, the legalization of gay marriage, the removal of confederate statues and symbols... I'd say history is at least partially on my side. Wouldn't you? As an aside: You might disagree with this "banal platitude", but you can be civil about it.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Normally the way traffic works is small yields to big. Pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to light powered equipment (e.g. Forklift) who yield to cars/motorcycles/trucks who yield to heavier equipment who yield to trains who yield to ships. This system where lighter classes of traffic yield to heavier classes of traffic is mostly compatible with typical road rules. There are specific exceptions such as crosswalks and implied exceptions like (like university campuses). Bike suck from a consistancy standpoint because they need to be treated like part of the cars/motorcycles/trucks class of traffic at some times and treated like pedestrians at other times. How they should be treated depends on a bunch of different details of the situation and the interpretation of those details depends on the driver/cyclist. Drivers are hostile toward cyclists for the same reason drivers are hostile toward tourists who are traveling too slow, in the wrong lane for their turn, slam on the brakes to make the turn, etc. Both groups do not act in ways that are easily predictable to those around them and make those around them spend more effort keeping tabs on them making using the road more stressful. Segregating different classes of traffic is how the problem is solved in any other case (Pedestrians get sidewalks or the shoulder, cars get the road, trains get rails, ships get water, forklifts and heavy haul trucks are restricted to areas where their interaction with the other classes of traffic is more controllable (when was the last time you saw someone driving a scissor lift down the road?). Bike lanes solve the problem somewhat but what we really need are rules that better define who does what in what situation so that road users can better predict each other's behavior and not be nuisances to each other.
- enoch_r 9y ago
  > Normally the way traffic works is small yields to big. Pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to light powered equipment (e.g. Forklift) who yield to cars/motorcycles/trucks who yield to heavier equipment who yield to trains who yield to ships. Huh! This is exactly the opposite of my perception: In general the way traffic works is "big has a responsibility to not hit small." If you want to drive an 18-wheeler, you better get a special class of driver's license and special training, and you will certainly lose that special license if you expect "smaller" entities on the road to yield to you because you are larger. When you drive a car, you again will need to get licensed and registered, though it's less difficult than if you want to drive a truck. You must drive safely around pedestrians--and should drive like you expect them to behave in unexpected ways, in a way where you won't kill them if they do. You yield to pedestrians when turning, or in a crosswalk, or parking lots. You must give bicyclists enough room when passing them and in general treat them like another vehicle, even though they are physically smaller. When you're on a bike, you should absolutely yield to pedestrians, not the other way around. In fact, I can't think of a single case in these most common classes of vehicles (trucks, cars, bikes, and pedestrians) where the law gives right-of-way to the larger entity, in a way it wouldn't if the entity were smaller. Can you?
WalterSear 9y ago
This has nothing to do with hating cyclists. This has to do with prejudice against anything even tenuously associated with an outgroup.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

scurvy 9y ago

I bet that Mission residents would complain if they didn't get any bicycle stations. "Why are these only in rich neighborhoods? Why are the poor excluded? Poor people need these!" It's a classic Bay Area story. Any kind of change is met with backlash from somewhere. No place does self-righteous entitlement quite like the Bay Area.

mrgordon 9y ago
My part of the Mission didn't get a bike station because of NIMBYs who complained it would gentrify the neighborhood and remove parking. In other words, they specifically blocked it from being an option for the poor people while the rich neighborhoods were like sure put some bikes in.

KirinDave 9y ago

It's depressing that you point to the animosity of communities that have been traditionally on the sour end of many transit projects and claim their reaction is irrational. Given that total knowledge is costly and time-consuming to acquire and often the window for action is shorter than the time it would take to acquire a total understanding of the situation, it's only natural people take cognitive shortcuts.

zzalpha 9y ago
It's depressing that you point to the animosity of communities that have been traditionally on the sour end of many transit projects and claim their reaction is irrational. All you've done is eloquently explained why their irrationality might be understandable. Humans are, by and large, inherently irrational. That fact isn't depressing. It's simply true.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > Humans are, by and large, inherently irrational. That fact isn't depressing. It's simply true. That's not the subject. You've suggested that this specific reaction is irrational. As I've pointed out, it's ENTIRELY rational to use available data to make a decision if the stakes are high and the duration of opportunity to counter it may be short. It may be sub-optimal and even self-harming in the total balance of accounting, but that is a distinct condition from rationality. You seem to be confusing these different concepts.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    > It may be sub-optimal and even self-harming in the total balance of accounting, but that is a distinct condition from rationality. You seem to be confusing these different concepts. I agree. The initial reaction to getting a pipe jammed into your chest is to remove the pipe, even though I'm pretty sure every medical professional would tell you to leave it there, you don't in the heat of the moment understand why: you have a foreign entity in your body, and your instincts are telling you to remove it. It is an irrational and detrimental reaction but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people would do it, or at least attempt to do it until someone who was not in fight or flight mode stopped them. Just because emotions are messy and not easily solved with logic and code does not make them irrelevant. We are not the fucking Borg and we likely won't be for an extremely long time, so discarding the emotional end of any argument just because you don't want to deal with the messy irrational reactions of human beings is stupid.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    As I've pointed out, it' ENTIRELY rational to use available data to make a decision if the stakes are high and the duration of opportunity to counter it may be short. Sure. And you're assuming that's what happened here. Based on how I've seen people behave, I'm assuming it's not. We can both have our opinions. Hell, we're probably both right to some degree. I will say, though, that when it comes to collective human behaviour, politics has taught me to be incredibly cynical... I've consistently been amazed by how willing people are to work against their own best interests in order to reinforce their personal and group identities. But the vandals in particular? I seriously doubt they put any real thought into the benefits of this bike network. They saw change, introduced from outside, that they see as a symbol of white gentrification (and even worse, it's those damned cyclists that everyone hates... Probably with man buns and bottles of IPA in their backpacks), and reacted.

FussyZeus 9y ago

> People hate change. Fact. > People really hate change they didn't choose (irrespective of whether that change is good or bad), because people want to feel in control. Which is why doing what was done here, i.e. rolling in overnight and changing shit, especially when the direct benefits of that have not even been attempted to be explained to, let alone explained well to the affected community, was probably a shitty idea. And the backlash was utterly predictable. Considering that these people are paying taxes (even if they get it all back at the end of the year, optically, they are "paying taxes" because they lose a good chunk of their paycheck that they could probably really use) I don't think having a say as to what and how public services are created and executed in their community is such a terrible thing. I'd say that is a fairly rational desire. > But I very much disagree that the subsequent reaction was rational or thought out based on a cost-benefit analysis. I have a hard time recollecting any situation where vandalism is a rational, thought out reaction to anything. Nor did I say it was.

mrgordon 9y ago
Nobody "rolled in overnight" The locations for these stations and the second wave of them that will be installed have been known for a long time and numerous community meetings were conducted. People are probably still just mad they're losing two parking spots near their business.

acchow 9y ago

> People hate change. Do you have data to back this up? Given how quickly the internet took over the world, Facebook, iPhone and smartphones, mass move from IE to Chrome, Uber... I really don't think there's much truth in this banal platitude.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zzalpha 9y ago
Given how quickly many people reacted negatively to women's suffrage, the Voting Rights Act and removal of Jim Crow laws, the legalization of gay marriage, the removal of confederate statues and symbols... I'd say history is at least partially on my side. Wouldn't you? As an aside: You might disagree with this "banal platitude", but you can be civil about it.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Normally the way traffic works is small yields to big. Pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to light powered equipment (e.g. Forklift) who yield to cars/motorcycles/trucks who yield to heavier equipment who yield to trains who yield to ships. This system where lighter classes of traffic yield to heavier classes of traffic is mostly compatible with typical road rules. There are specific exceptions such as crosswalks and implied exceptions like (like university campuses). Bike suck from a consistancy standpoint because they need to be treated like part of the cars/motorcycles/trucks class of traffic at some times and treated like pedestrians at other times. How they should be treated depends on a bunch of different details of the situation and the interpretation of those details depends on the driver/cyclist. Drivers are hostile toward cyclists for the same reason drivers are hostile toward tourists who are traveling too slow, in the wrong lane for their turn, slam on the brakes to make the turn, etc. Both groups do not act in ways that are easily predictable to those around them and make those around them spend more effort keeping tabs on them making using the road more stressful. Segregating different classes of traffic is how the problem is solved in any other case (Pedestrians get sidewalks or the shoulder, cars get the road, trains get rails, ships get water, forklifts and heavy haul trucks are restricted to areas where their interaction with the other classes of traffic is more controllable (when was the last time you saw someone driving a scissor lift down the road?). Bike lanes solve the problem somewhat but what we really need are rules that better define who does what in what situation so that road users can better predict each other's behavior and not be nuisances to each other.

enoch_r 9y ago
> Normally the way traffic works is small yields to big. Pedestrians yield to bikes who yield to light powered equipment (e.g. Forklift) who yield to cars/motorcycles/trucks who yield to heavier equipment who yield to trains who yield to ships. Huh! This is exactly the opposite of my perception: In general the way traffic works is "big has a responsibility to not hit small." If you want to drive an 18-wheeler, you better get a special class of driver's license and special training, and you will certainly lose that special license if you expect "smaller" entities on the road to yield to you because you are larger. When you drive a car, you again will need to get licensed and registered, though it's less difficult than if you want to drive a truck. You must drive safely around pedestrians--and should drive like you expect them to behave in unexpected ways, in a way where you won't kill them if they do. You yield to pedestrians when turning, or in a crosswalk, or parking lots. You must give bicyclists enough room when passing them and in general treat them like another vehicle, even though they are physically smaller. When you're on a bike, you should absolutely yield to pedestrians, not the other way around. In fact, I can't think of a single case in these most common classes of vehicles (trucks, cars, bikes, and pedestrians) where the law gives right-of-way to the larger entity, in a way it wouldn't if the entity were smaller. Can you?

WalterSear 9y ago

This has nothing to do with hating cyclists. This has to do with prejudice against anything even tenuously associated with an outgroup.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]