8 ms·

The Major Urban Revolution of Minor Transportation Means

104 points by burlesona 8y ago

oftenwrong 8y ago
>We are only on the first steps of the urban revolution. It seems as if nothing has changed with the increased usage of said bikes but an uptick in associated accidents. But that was also the case when the car was introduced to the city. People demanded that every car be led by a man walking in front of it with a warning flag in hand. The car frightened both horses and pedestrians and claimed road rights. The public was furious, safety advocates wrote impassioned articles and demanded that cars be prevented from entering the city… sound familiar? Good insight. Many people in my city decry bicycles and scooters (motorised or not) as a danger to pedestrians, but deaths and serious injury are almost always the result of a pedestrian being hit by a car. People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk, but I have never experienced being blocked by one. On the other hand, I frequently have to navigate around cars parked on the sidewalk, blocking it completely. There is a cultural blindness to the problems caused by cars.
- chapium 8y ago
  One of my biggest fears while cycling in the city is uber. Drivers frequently pull to the curb aggressively without signal, often blocking bike lanes. Unlike a taxi there are few markings to alert cyclists that the car will show this behavior. At best you might spot an airport rideshare pass in the back window, but these are often placed in the corner of the drivers side, making them hard to see from the edge of the road.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    One of the selling points of Uber in their marketing, at least in chicago, was that Uber drivers would drive like “regular” people and not like cabbies; because cabbies in Chicago drive like crazy people. In a very short period of time Uber drivers all drive exactly like cabbies, which is obnoxious since there’s more of them.
    - ridewinter 8y ago
      I live in Chi too and frequently lyft. They need to make it easier to report bad driving. That would solve the problem. I submit tickets when the driver drives like a madman but it’s not clear what to do about it inside the app.
      - jpatokal 8y ago
        Given that Uber/Lyft track every inch of the car's journey, it seems entirely feasible for them to automatically catch some types of bad driving (exceeding speed limits, illegal U-turns, frequent hard braking, etc). But currently they're not incentivized to.
        abakker 8y ago
        I would rather prices went up and they did this. The point was that the data should make the experience better.
      - techsupporter 8y ago
        > I live in Chi too and frequently lyft. They need to make it easier to report bad driving. That would solve the problem. It needs to be possible for non-customers to report bad driving. Uber and Lyft passengers are not incentivized to report bad behavior by their drivers because that behavior often benefits them (stop wherever the passenger likes, shave a few minutes off by veering through traffic, block or drive in bus lanes because it's more convenient or faster). That's my biggest complaint about these taxi (they're not "sharing" shit) services: there's no enforcement structure against them and no way for people who aren't customers to push back on terrible actors. Uber and Lyft have disclaimed all responsibility because "drivers are not our employees" and they use the myth of "sharing" to get around laws around many things, but especially around receiving complaints.
    - IIAOPSW 8y ago
      Well then obviously for some reason "crazy" driving is selected for. The exhaustive options are: 1) profits are optimized by driving slightly faster and slightly more recklessly. 2) with hours and hours of experience you can drive better than an average person. Our simple non-professional minds simply don't comprehend their driving style and interpret their decisions as crazy.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Literally every day on my bike ride to 4th and king Caltrain, as I pull up to the intersection, a Lyft or Uber waiting at the stoplight will pop a right side door on me as a completely unaware passenger tries to hop out. I feel bad for the driver cause it's not like they can make the passenger wait for the red light so they can pull up to the actual drop off point, so I usually skid to a stop right next to the door shouting my head off in a "panic" to give everyone a good morning wake up call.
  - L_Rahman 8y ago
    NY's regulations help a lot in this regard. While Uber's don't have vehicle specific markings, they do have specially marked license plates that I can use to predict their behavior.
- igouy 8y ago
  Make separated lanes for traffic that flows at different speeds. "No helmets, no problem: how the Dutch created a casual biking culture" https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/28/17789510/bike-cycling-netherlands-dutch-infrastructure https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/28/17789510/bi...
  - igouy 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803
  - pmontra 8y ago
    There are at least two kinds of cyclists and they move at different speeds. One is the urban cyclist that uses the bicycle to go buying stuff at shops or take kids at school. It's short range and slow. They're usually scared by the idea of sharing the road with cars. They use cycle lanes and I often see them on sidewalks. Then there are cyclists who pedal longer distances for fun and when they use bicycles in cities they are easily twice as fast as the others. Cycle lanes are often too slow (up and down sidewalks, tight turns, bumps.) I belong to the second variety and I definitely prefer to pedal in a car's road than in a bike lane designed for slow bicycles. Urban designers should try to come up with different designs that suit both kinds of users.
    - noobermin 8y ago
      I notice this about cyclists. Basically, I change between the types depending on how tired I am. I still feel like the majority of people will always be in the first category but unfortunately, the second category are more of the "enthusiasts" who actually engage with cycling organizations whilst the first category don't really seem to.
      - pmontra 8y ago
        For the first category the bicycle is a convenient mean of transportation but it's nothing special. It's like computers are nothing special to most people except to professionals and enthusiasts. However cycling organizations can leverage all those people to campaign for more bike lanes and the like. They vote...
- curtis 8y ago
  > People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk, but I have never experienced being blocked by one. I've certainly seen Lime bikes mostly blocking the sidewalk here in Seattle, and I rarely if ever see cars parked on the sidewalk.
  - Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
    > I rarely if ever see cars parked on the sidewalk. Here in New York the police often park on the sidewalk--fully or partially--to the point the police have painted ranks on them in some precincts. Here are a few Google Maps examples of our police parking on the sidewalk: https://goo.gl/maps/4CkLXhajuiG2 https://goo.gl/maps/4CkLXhajuiG2 https://goo.gl/maps/1i5NMhjJS1v https://goo.gl/maps/1i5NMhjJS1v https://goo.gl/maps/2zT2vHyMkk22 https://goo.gl/maps/2zT2vHyMkk22 https://goo.gl/maps/nikFJgyb9tj https://goo.gl/maps/nikFJgyb9tj https://goo.gl/maps/7ciEWeJd1Wq https://goo.gl/maps/7ciEWeJd1Wq https://goo.gl/maps/CFtp7oVvomB2 https://goo.gl/maps/CFtp7oVvomB2 https://goo.gl/maps/Tc3vfhMp5mN2 https://goo.gl/maps/Tc3vfhMp5mN2 Look up most police precincts and you'll see this sort of behavior. It's not limited to police, of course; the city government engages in widespread abuse of sidewalks as storage space for vehicles. And it's not limited to the government, either; I know a number of restaurants that have valet parking where the valets will at best double or triple park cars--including in the bike lane--and at worst park on the sidewalk. All this a few blocks from the police precinct. Sadly, Google's street view cameras came by at the wrong time of day. This understates the impact of cars on sidewalks, however, as historically many New York streets and avenues had wider sidewalks before we introduced street parking.
    - llampx 8y ago
      In Germany, almost every time a road in the city is rebuilt, more space is allocated to bike lanes and sidewalk, and space is taken away from parking and road for that. This is an example of forward-looking planning. However, it isn't such a nice sight if you are a car owner.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk... Seen it quite a few times, on my bike I just kick them out of the way. The last one I was walking over to the corner store for some morning coffee and it was parked right in the middle of the sidewalk but left unlocked so I "moved" it over to the store with it telling me it was calling the police the whole way. I actually haven't been seeing very many of them lately around the valley, I guess they figured out nobody wants to ride around on a bike during hot Arizona summers and moved them to more lucrative markets. Well, plus all the "adopted" ones I still see running around town.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - komali2 8y ago
    If you kick it over, doesn't it then block more horizontal space, while being less visible because it's at ground level?
- baxtr 8y ago
  I think that’s just because there are more car drivers around. It’s super funny: whenever I’m in the car myself I get annoyed by bikers. When I’m on a bike I don’t understand how dumb some car drivers are. I think it’s just the vehicle you’re in/on which shapes your perspective. Quite telling for other situations too btw
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    I've thought along the same lines when I go to a busy parking lot. When you're driving, the pedestrians walking everywhere, right in front of you, etc, are very annoying. As soon as you get out of your car and become the pedestrian, you expect the cars to remember that you have right-of-way. Ha!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
adrianN 8y ago
I sure hope that it won't take seventy years for cities to ditch the private car as the primary means of transport. The future belongs to a mixture of public transport, bicycles, electric scooters, and, once the technology matures, shared autonomous cars. Imho the lever that needs to be pulled first is internalizing the costs of parking space. Free parking in cities must go. A parking spot should cost about as much as a small apartment. That's because it consumes about as much space as a small apartment if you put a couple of stories of housing above it. Abundant parking aggravates sprawl and makes all forms of transportation more expensive. Tokyo is already ahead in this. There are basically no surface parking spots available in the inner city.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Tokyo also has no space, hence their continued reliance on mini cars. It will be much harder to convince LA to de-emphasize vehicle parking.
  - jpatokal 8y ago
    It's not just space: Mini (kei) cars are subsidized via much lighter taxation, which is why they're so popular in Japan.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      Which they do because of limited space in their urban areas. For what it’s worth, Japan was far from the only country to introduce miniature cars after the war to reduce resource usage. Italy, England, France and arguably Germany all introduced subcompact vehicles designed to use less precious steel. America is one of the few nations that kept making full sized sedans, largely a consequence of fighting the entire war abroad rather than at home. What’s interesting is that Japan still uses theirs, while the other countries on that list abandoned their trend of super micros decades ago. I personally would argue that this is a consequence of Japan’s limited space, which drove government policy to effective tax vehicles in proportion to how much precious space they use.
village-idiot 8y ago
The electric bike and scooter have been around for a while, but it seems that the price has finally dropped below a tipping point in the last year or so. They’ve gone from novelty device (e.g. Segway, home built e bikes) to something that I see dozens of times a day. Heck, a sizable percentage of the homeless people in my area have e bikes, that’s how prevalent they are.
techbio 8y ago
It was interesting for me to discover how the motorized scooter rental companies maintain a charge on the device's batteries: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business/560747/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charg...
burlesona 8y ago
I see these more and more every day in SF, even after the city banned the scooter shares. I think the moment of the scooter companies dumping thousands of them on the street made a lot of people curious who otherwise wouldn’t have been, and got a LOT of people to try them out. And once you try it... wow. The mini scooter is pretty revolutionary IMO because it offers the convenience of the bike, but it’s much easier to balance and feels safer than a bike, and of course the motor. I think these things are greatly expanding the number of people who feel they have something to gain from the streets being shared more equitably, and in the end how we use our space is all about voting blocs. I’m excited to see how this plays out over the next 10-20 years.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  >"The mini scooter is pretty revolutionary IMO because it offers the convenience of the bike, but it’s much easier to balance and feels safer than a bike, and of course the motor." How do you reckon this? In my experience, razor-style mini scooters are harder to control at speed, and their tiny wheels are prone to catching ruts and not very good at riding over uneven surfaces. Compare this to bikes, which basically balance themselves once moving, and have large wheels that easily ride over bumps and ruts, and provide some additional cushioning inherent to spoked wheels.
  - milesskorpen 8y ago
    I think it matters the pretty much anyone can use the scooter no matter what they're wearing (whereas bikes can be tough with heels, or tighter suits)
    - grogenaut 8y ago
      Dresses, robes, etc. Also bikes give rooster tails really bad, which is no-bueno for really any non-biking clothes.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Ladies' bikes and underbone frames give plenty of room for long coats or dresses. They're very common for commuter bikes. Similarly, fenders are standard equipment, you almost have to go out of your way to find a bike without them.
gumby 8y ago
A policy of wheels in roadways only and pedestrian primacy will keep cities alive. Force cars, bikes, skateboards and scooters to contend for space (dedicated non-motorized lanes helps) but preserve the pavement for foot traffic.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  Agree with keeping the “walk” in sidewalk, excepting wheelchairs & similar mobility solutions for differently-abled folks, but with everything with wheels that can travel faster than a walking pace (say, 5 mph) having the opportunity to use a space that is normally devoid of pedestrians: the roadway.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - freehunter 8y ago
    The roadway is devoid of pedestrians, sure, but it's full of far more deadly predators. A bike going 10mph is going to be able to stop faster, maneuver quicker, and do a lot less damage to a pedestrian if they hit them than a car going 55mph would to a biker going 10mph.
- dmethvin 8y ago
  It's important to express the underlying reasoning for the policy: things with similar size and speed can be together, dissimilar things should be separated. Cars and bikes/scooters are not the same, and streets need to separate them via dedicated lanes. If not, those users are going to choose sidewalks as the lesser of two dangers.
- freehunter 8y ago
  I never understand why people get so upset at bikers, people who just don't want to be killed by a vehicle going 3x as fast as they are weighing 200x as much. Or skateboarders, who hardly travel faster than an average pedestrian anyway. Do you really just want to see more bikers and skaters killed? Because that's the primary outcome of "wheels belong on the road". What you're arguing for is unprotected human beings getting ground into the pavement by a machine that may not even feel the impact. The fact that most of the US forces bikes to behave like cars is one of the worst urban policies we've ever come up with, and is responsible for untold numbers of deaths and serious injuries. A bicycle is not a car and should not share road space with cars unless pedestrians would also be forced to share road space with a car. Compared to 3000lb machines capable of maintaining speeds over 100mph, there is absolutely no difference between a bicycle and a pedestrian. They all bounce off the windshield exactly the same. "Get these bikes and scooters off my sidewalk" translates directly to "I don't care if these bikers or scooter riders get killed as long as it doesn't inconvenience me".
fpoling 8y ago
A nice thing about electrical kick scooter is that one can easily take them on a train. I started to see in Oslo how more and more people living in far away suburbs use them to get to/from train or underground stations.
viburnum 8y ago
There's an actual existing place where most people ride bikes and you can see tons of really lovely videos of it here: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/
noobermin 8y ago
While we can have hope in the tri state area or San Francisco, I don't see much traction any where else. In my city, the city government went hard on the scooters, and now they are exclusively being ridden on the sidewalk instead of the road, endangering pedestrians and the like. Unfortunately, the rest of the US is still stuck in 1990.
harimau777 8y ago
If bikes are going to be treated like real vehicles, then I think that safety regulations need to catch up. Something like: Require breaks and a free wheel on roads so that bikes can coast and stop suddenly without loosing control. Ban clip on pedals from roads so that bikers can put their feet down at intersections instead of lurching forward and back unpredictably. Require bikes to keep up with the speed of traffic (when not in bike lanes) just like cars are expected to. I personally would also like to see electric assist/motors be mandatory so that bikers are less tempted to blow through intersections in order to avoid losing momentum, but I can see how the cost would be prohibitive.
- grogenaut 8y ago
  people do the back and forth thing with clip ins to show off or because they are bored. I have clip ins and easily take my feet out at intersections. No issues.
  - harimau777 8y ago
    Ah, I didn't realize that, thanks for the correction.
    - marblar 8y ago
      There's a name for this technique, if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand
acover 8y ago
Where can I find Chinese electric bikes in the US? I don't even know what brands to search for.

104 points by burlesona 8y ago

>We are only on the first steps of the urban revolution. It seems as if nothing has changed with the increased usage of said bikes but an uptick in associated accidents. But that was also the case when the car was introduced to the city. People demanded that every car be led by a man walking in front of it with a warning flag in hand. The car frightened both horses and pedestrians and claimed road rights. The public was furious, safety advocates wrote impassioned articles and demanded that cars be prevented from entering the city… sound familiar? Good insight. Many people in my city decry bicycles and scooters (motorised or not) as a danger to pedestrians, but deaths and serious injury are almost always the result of a pedestrian being hit by a car. People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk, but I have never experienced being blocked by one. On the other hand, I frequently have to navigate around cars parked on the sidewalk, blocking it completely. There is a cultural blindness to the problems caused by cars.

chapium 8y ago
One of my biggest fears while cycling in the city is uber. Drivers frequently pull to the curb aggressively without signal, often blocking bike lanes. Unlike a taxi there are few markings to alert cyclists that the car will show this behavior. At best you might spot an airport rideshare pass in the back window, but these are often placed in the corner of the drivers side, making them hard to see from the edge of the road.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  One of the selling points of Uber in their marketing, at least in chicago, was that Uber drivers would drive like “regular” people and not like cabbies; because cabbies in Chicago drive like crazy people. In a very short period of time Uber drivers all drive exactly like cabbies, which is obnoxious since there’s more of them.
  - ridewinter 8y ago
    I live in Chi too and frequently lyft. They need to make it easier to report bad driving. That would solve the problem. I submit tickets when the driver drives like a madman but it’s not clear what to do about it inside the app.
    - jpatokal 8y ago
      Given that Uber/Lyft track every inch of the car's journey, it seems entirely feasible for them to automatically catch some types of bad driving (exceeding speed limits, illegal U-turns, frequent hard braking, etc). But currently they're not incentivized to.
      - abakker 8y ago
        I would rather prices went up and they did this. The point was that the data should make the experience better.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      > I live in Chi too and frequently lyft. They need to make it easier to report bad driving. That would solve the problem. It needs to be possible for non-customers to report bad driving. Uber and Lyft passengers are not incentivized to report bad behavior by their drivers because that behavior often benefits them (stop wherever the passenger likes, shave a few minutes off by veering through traffic, block or drive in bus lanes because it's more convenient or faster). That's my biggest complaint about these taxi (they're not "sharing" shit) services: there's no enforcement structure against them and no way for people who aren't customers to push back on terrible actors. Uber and Lyft have disclaimed all responsibility because "drivers are not our employees" and they use the myth of "sharing" to get around laws around many things, but especially around receiving complaints.
  - IIAOPSW 8y ago
    Well then obviously for some reason "crazy" driving is selected for. The exhaustive options are: 1) profits are optimized by driving slightly faster and slightly more recklessly. 2) with hours and hours of experience you can drive better than an average person. Our simple non-professional minds simply don't comprehend their driving style and interpret their decisions as crazy.
- komali2 8y ago
  Literally every day on my bike ride to 4th and king Caltrain, as I pull up to the intersection, a Lyft or Uber waiting at the stoplight will pop a right side door on me as a completely unaware passenger tries to hop out. I feel bad for the driver cause it's not like they can make the passenger wait for the red light so they can pull up to the actual drop off point, so I usually skid to a stop right next to the door shouting my head off in a "panic" to give everyone a good morning wake up call.
- L_Rahman 8y ago
  NY's regulations help a lot in this regard. While Uber's don't have vehicle specific markings, they do have specially marked license plates that I can use to predict their behavior.
igouy 8y ago
Make separated lanes for traffic that flows at different speeds. "No helmets, no problem: how the Dutch created a casual biking culture" https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/28/17789510/bike-cycling-netherlands-dutch-infrastructure https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/28/17789510/bi...
- igouy 8y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803
- pmontra 8y ago
  There are at least two kinds of cyclists and they move at different speeds. One is the urban cyclist that uses the bicycle to go buying stuff at shops or take kids at school. It's short range and slow. They're usually scared by the idea of sharing the road with cars. They use cycle lanes and I often see them on sidewalks. Then there are cyclists who pedal longer distances for fun and when they use bicycles in cities they are easily twice as fast as the others. Cycle lanes are often too slow (up and down sidewalks, tight turns, bumps.) I belong to the second variety and I definitely prefer to pedal in a car's road than in a bike lane designed for slow bicycles. Urban designers should try to come up with different designs that suit both kinds of users.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    I notice this about cyclists. Basically, I change between the types depending on how tired I am. I still feel like the majority of people will always be in the first category but unfortunately, the second category are more of the "enthusiasts" who actually engage with cycling organizations whilst the first category don't really seem to.
    - pmontra 8y ago
      For the first category the bicycle is a convenient mean of transportation but it's nothing special. It's like computers are nothing special to most people except to professionals and enthusiasts. However cycling organizations can leverage all those people to campaign for more bike lanes and the like. They vote...
curtis 8y ago
> People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk, but I have never experienced being blocked by one. I've certainly seen Lime bikes mostly blocking the sidewalk here in Seattle, and I rarely if ever see cars parked on the sidewalk.
- Zach_the_Lizard 8y ago
  > I rarely if ever see cars parked on the sidewalk. Here in New York the police often park on the sidewalk--fully or partially--to the point the police have painted ranks on them in some precincts. Here are a few Google Maps examples of our police parking on the sidewalk: https://goo.gl/maps/4CkLXhajuiG2 https://goo.gl/maps/4CkLXhajuiG2 https://goo.gl/maps/1i5NMhjJS1v https://goo.gl/maps/1i5NMhjJS1v https://goo.gl/maps/2zT2vHyMkk22 https://goo.gl/maps/2zT2vHyMkk22 https://goo.gl/maps/nikFJgyb9tj https://goo.gl/maps/nikFJgyb9tj https://goo.gl/maps/7ciEWeJd1Wq https://goo.gl/maps/7ciEWeJd1Wq https://goo.gl/maps/CFtp7oVvomB2 https://goo.gl/maps/CFtp7oVvomB2 https://goo.gl/maps/Tc3vfhMp5mN2 https://goo.gl/maps/Tc3vfhMp5mN2 Look up most police precincts and you'll see this sort of behavior. It's not limited to police, of course; the city government engages in widespread abuse of sidewalks as storage space for vehicles. And it's not limited to the government, either; I know a number of restaurants that have valet parking where the valets will at best double or triple park cars--including in the bike lane--and at worst park on the sidewalk. All this a few blocks from the police precinct. Sadly, Google's street view cameras came by at the wrong time of day. This understates the impact of cars on sidewalks, however, as historically many New York streets and avenues had wider sidewalks before we introduced street parking.
  - llampx 8y ago
    In Germany, almost every time a road in the city is rebuilt, more space is allocated to bike lanes and sidewalk, and space is taken away from parking and road for that. This is an example of forward-looking planning. However, it isn't such a nice sight if you are a car owner.
UncleEntity 8y ago
> People complain that dockless rental scooters and bicycles block the sidewalk... Seen it quite a few times, on my bike I just kick them out of the way. The last one I was walking over to the corner store for some morning coffee and it was parked right in the middle of the sidewalk but left unlocked so I "moved" it over to the store with it telling me it was calling the police the whole way. I actually haven't been seeing very many of them lately around the valley, I guess they figured out nobody wants to ride around on a bike during hot Arizona summers and moved them to more lucrative markets. Well, plus all the "adopted" ones I still see running around town.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- komali2 8y ago
  If you kick it over, doesn't it then block more horizontal space, while being less visible because it's at ground level?
baxtr 8y ago
I think that’s just because there are more car drivers around. It’s super funny: whenever I’m in the car myself I get annoyed by bikers. When I’m on a bike I don’t understand how dumb some car drivers are. I think it’s just the vehicle you’re in/on which shapes your perspective. Quite telling for other situations too btw
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I've thought along the same lines when I go to a busy parking lot. When you're driving, the pedestrians walking everywhere, right in front of you, etc, are very annoying. As soon as you get out of your car and become the pedestrian, you expect the cars to remember that you have right-of-way. Ha!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

adrianN 8y ago

I sure hope that it won't take seventy years for cities to ditch the private car as the primary means of transport. The future belongs to a mixture of public transport, bicycles, electric scooters, and, once the technology matures, shared autonomous cars. Imho the lever that needs to be pulled first is internalizing the costs of parking space. Free parking in cities must go. A parking spot should cost about as much as a small apartment. That's because it consumes about as much space as a small apartment if you put a couple of stories of housing above it. Abundant parking aggravates sprawl and makes all forms of transportation more expensive. Tokyo is already ahead in this. There are basically no surface parking spots available in the inner city.

village-idiot 8y ago
Tokyo also has no space, hence their continued reliance on mini cars. It will be much harder to convince LA to de-emphasize vehicle parking.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  It's not just space: Mini (kei) cars are subsidized via much lighter taxation, which is why they're so popular in Japan.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Which they do because of limited space in their urban areas. For what it’s worth, Japan was far from the only country to introduce miniature cars after the war to reduce resource usage. Italy, England, France and arguably Germany all introduced subcompact vehicles designed to use less precious steel. America is one of the few nations that kept making full sized sedans, largely a consequence of fighting the entire war abroad rather than at home. What’s interesting is that Japan still uses theirs, while the other countries on that list abandoned their trend of super micros decades ago. I personally would argue that this is a consequence of Japan’s limited space, which drove government policy to effective tax vehicles in proportion to how much precious space they use.

village-idiot 8y ago

The electric bike and scooter have been around for a while, but it seems that the price has finally dropped below a tipping point in the last year or so. They’ve gone from novelty device (e.g. Segway, home built e bikes) to something that I see dozens of times a day. Heck, a sizable percentage of the homeless people in my area have e bikes, that’s how prevalent they are.

techbio 8y ago

It was interesting for me to discover how the motorized scooter rental companies maintain a charge on the device's batteries: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business/560747/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charg...

burlesona 8y ago

I see these more and more every day in SF, even after the city banned the scooter shares. I think the moment of the scooter companies dumping thousands of them on the street made a lot of people curious who otherwise wouldn’t have been, and got a LOT of people to try them out. And once you try it... wow. The mini scooter is pretty revolutionary IMO because it offers the convenience of the bike, but it’s much easier to balance and feels safer than a bike, and of course the motor. I think these things are greatly expanding the number of people who feel they have something to gain from the streets being shared more equitably, and in the end how we use our space is all about voting blocs. I’m excited to see how this plays out over the next 10-20 years.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
>"The mini scooter is pretty revolutionary IMO because it offers the convenience of the bike, but it’s much easier to balance and feels safer than a bike, and of course the motor." How do you reckon this? In my experience, razor-style mini scooters are harder to control at speed, and their tiny wheels are prone to catching ruts and not very good at riding over uneven surfaces. Compare this to bikes, which basically balance themselves once moving, and have large wheels that easily ride over bumps and ruts, and provide some additional cushioning inherent to spoked wheels.
- milesskorpen 8y ago
  I think it matters the pretty much anyone can use the scooter no matter what they're wearing (whereas bikes can be tough with heels, or tighter suits)
  - grogenaut 8y ago
    Dresses, robes, etc. Also bikes give rooster tails really bad, which is no-bueno for really any non-biking clothes.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      Ladies' bikes and underbone frames give plenty of room for long coats or dresses. They're very common for commuter bikes. Similarly, fenders are standard equipment, you almost have to go out of your way to find a bike without them.

gumby 8y ago

A policy of wheels in roadways only and pedestrian primacy will keep cities alive. Force cars, bikes, skateboards and scooters to contend for space (dedicated non-motorized lanes helps) but preserve the pavement for foot traffic.

dmckeon 8y ago
Agree with keeping the “walk” in sidewalk, excepting wheelchairs & similar mobility solutions for differently-abled folks, but with everything with wheels that can travel faster than a walking pace (say, 5 mph) having the opportunity to use a space that is normally devoid of pedestrians: the roadway.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- freehunter 8y ago
  The roadway is devoid of pedestrians, sure, but it's full of far more deadly predators. A bike going 10mph is going to be able to stop faster, maneuver quicker, and do a lot less damage to a pedestrian if they hit them than a car going 55mph would to a biker going 10mph.
dmethvin 8y ago
It's important to express the underlying reasoning for the policy: things with similar size and speed can be together, dissimilar things should be separated. Cars and bikes/scooters are not the same, and streets need to separate them via dedicated lanes. If not, those users are going to choose sidewalks as the lesser of two dangers.
freehunter 8y ago
I never understand why people get so upset at bikers, people who just don't want to be killed by a vehicle going 3x as fast as they are weighing 200x as much. Or skateboarders, who hardly travel faster than an average pedestrian anyway. Do you really just want to see more bikers and skaters killed? Because that's the primary outcome of "wheels belong on the road". What you're arguing for is unprotected human beings getting ground into the pavement by a machine that may not even feel the impact. The fact that most of the US forces bikes to behave like cars is one of the worst urban policies we've ever come up with, and is responsible for untold numbers of deaths and serious injuries. A bicycle is not a car and should not share road space with cars unless pedestrians would also be forced to share road space with a car. Compared to 3000lb machines capable of maintaining speeds over 100mph, there is absolutely no difference between a bicycle and a pedestrian. They all bounce off the windshield exactly the same. "Get these bikes and scooters off my sidewalk" translates directly to "I don't care if these bikers or scooter riders get killed as long as it doesn't inconvenience me".

fpoling 8y ago

A nice thing about electrical kick scooter is that one can easily take them on a train. I started to see in Oslo how more and more people living in far away suburbs use them to get to/from train or underground stations.

viburnum 8y ago

There's an actual existing place where most people ride bikes and you can see tons of really lovely videos of it here: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/

noobermin 8y ago

While we can have hope in the tri state area or San Francisco, I don't see much traction any where else. In my city, the city government went hard on the scooters, and now they are exclusively being ridden on the sidewalk instead of the road, endangering pedestrians and the like. Unfortunately, the rest of the US is still stuck in 1990.

harimau777 8y ago

If bikes are going to be treated like real vehicles, then I think that safety regulations need to catch up. Something like: Require breaks and a free wheel on roads so that bikes can coast and stop suddenly without loosing control. Ban clip on pedals from roads so that bikers can put their feet down at intersections instead of lurching forward and back unpredictably. Require bikes to keep up with the speed of traffic (when not in bike lanes) just like cars are expected to. I personally would also like to see electric assist/motors be mandatory so that bikers are less tempted to blow through intersections in order to avoid losing momentum, but I can see how the cost would be prohibitive.

grogenaut 8y ago
people do the back and forth thing with clip ins to show off or because they are bored. I have clip ins and easily take my feet out at intersections. No issues.
- harimau777 8y ago
  Ah, I didn't realize that, thanks for the correction.
  - marblar 8y ago
    There's a name for this technique, if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand

acover 8y ago

Where can I find Chinese electric bikes in the US? I don't even know what brands to search for.