5 ms·
The comment about lockers is interesting. I have often found myself wishing that lockers were available when "traveling light", i.e. using various forms of publ
by jessaustin 7y ago
The comment about lockers is interesting. I have often found myself wishing that lockers were available when "traveling light", i.e. using various forms of public transport and walking/biking rather than driving an automobile. I have the sense that public lockers used to be common especially at e.g. bus stations and airports, but they are not common now. Were these eliminated in order to inconvenience the homeless?
- kindatrue 7y agoMost in America were eliminated after the 9/11 attacks. The idea was to reduce the number of hiding/storing places for bombs and weapons.
- jessaustin 7y agoHow old are you? Most of these lockers were eliminated long before that.
- ghaff 7y agoI'm not sure public lockers in the US were ever really part of the culture. They were probably more common in airports and the like at one point. And, yeah, maybe 9/11 eliminated some vestigial examples but having places to leave your stuff other than doing so surreptitiously at a hotel or whatever hasn't been routine for as long as I can remember.
- wrboyce 7y agoI’m not from the US and know very little of the culture, but I would hazard a guess that they must’ve been at some point due to how many times I have seen them used in Hollywood (more often than not for illicit exchanges). Was the whole idea of public lockers at transport terminals just poetic license?
- ghaff 7y agoI am... not young. I don't recall them ever being ubiquitous/expected like they are in, say, Japan. A few decades ago they were almost certainly more common. I can recall storing a bag to go into Manhattan for a few hours. They may very well have been common at one point in train stations when people traveled that way more. I also suspect though that, to the degree lockers were useful as a plot detail, they were possibly created when they weren't actually that common.
- ncmncm 7y agoThere used to be lockers at all bus stations, and most airports in the US. Maybe you didn't notice because you weren't interested. Those at airports usually had to be found by asking at the info desk.
- refurb 7y agoYeah, they were common, but started to disappear long before 9/11. I know the Stockholm airport still has locker rentals.
- 0xCMP 7y agoIn Japan they were pretty common and I really liked the system they had in Osaka. Made it much easier to put our bags down and go eat/etc. They had lockers both inside and outside the station (which kind of also doubled as a mall in this case)
- kibwen 7y agoWhich is amusing given all the surrounding comments that suggest anti-terrorism as a motive for removing lockers, since it was the notorious terrorist attacks of the 90s that caused Tokyo to famously remove its trash cans.
- 0xCMP 7y agoI might be remembering from europe this past year, but I think in Japan they used a metal pole with a ring at the top which a bag was simply hung from. It had no “sides” which would become shrapnel.
- fxj 7y agoNo because of bomb attacks during the 1970s. At least in Germany. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Sprengstoffanschl%C3%A4gen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Sprengstoffanschl%C3...
- kelnos 7y agoI never really understood this. Certainly it's easier to bomb a crowded place by putting something in a locker, and leaving it there until it's convenient to detonate it (even if that's done via a timer that's set a day or two in the future)... but it's not much harder to just toss a bag with a bomb in it in a public trash can, or even just leave it somewhere vaguely-hidden. Sure, the likelihood of discovery is higher, but it still seems to me that it would work most of the time.
- alwayseasy 7y agoThere was a wave of trashcan bombers in Paris in the 90's that's also why you have transparent or simple plastic trashcans now.
- NoodleIncident 7y agoMany of these places also have transparent bag-only trash cans, and people are sent to investigate suspicious abandoned packages.
- discodave 7y agoFunnily enough, the risk of terrorism is why bins (trash cans) were removed from places like the London underground due to the IRA. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_the_London_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_the_London_Undergro... [2] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/throwing-it-all-away-nyc-subway-trashes-more-trash-cans/3151/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/throwing-it-a...
- daurnimator 7y agoIt was.... and then they removed all the rubbish bins. They eventually reinstated the bins after a lot of littering, but they're transparent: https://i.imgur.com/zLrhZwH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/zLrhZwH.jpg
- baby 7y agoI was in Busan, south korea, a few years back and they have lockers all over the beach. So practical!