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I love riding e-scooters all around our downtown area. It’s fun, cheap, and way more convenient than driving or taking a cab/uber. But I do worry about the safe

I love riding e-scooters all around our downtown area. It’s fun, cheap, and way more convenient than driving or taking a cab/uber. But I do worry about the safety of it being around pedestrians and larger vehicles. And out in the burbs, forget about it. No way I am taking a scooter or bike out on a busy road. What we need is a serious conversation around zoning and building communities in such a way that walking, scooters, and bikes become viable for 50%+ of peoples daily commuting.

lotsoweiners 3y ago
> What we need is a serious conversation around zoning and building communities in such a way that walking, scooters, and bikes become viable for 50%+ of peoples daily commuting. Isn’t the problem that the “communities” are already built? I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals and can’t help but think that most people aren’t going to start walking, scootering, or biking no matter what. I’d think subsidies for additional WFH would make a far bigger difference (based on the minuscule commuting traffic I observed during early-ish Covid).
- 43920 3y ago
  Things can change a lot in 10+ years; it's not going to happen quickly, but you can start incrementally making zoning changes, and as the buildings in the area turn over it'll slowly start approaching something better, which should hopefully result in people making different transportation choices. Also, a number of places in the US are still growing and sprawling outwards; reversing that trend would have a positive effect even if none of the existing places change. > I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals This is sort of the problem though. Some people prefer to live that far away, and if you do that's great, but a lot of people end up moving away from cities for economic reasons. Building more housing closer to the employment centers would allow more people to live nearby, which reduces the number of people that need to commute that far.

lotsoweiners 3y ago

> What we need is a serious conversation around zoning and building communities in such a way that walking, scooters, and bikes become viable for 50%+ of peoples daily commuting. Isn’t the problem that the “communities” are already built? I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals and can’t help but think that most people aren’t going to start walking, scootering, or biking no matter what. I’d think subsidies for additional WFH would make a far bigger difference (based on the minuscule commuting traffic I observed during early-ish Covid).

43920 3y ago
Things can change a lot in 10+ years; it's not going to happen quickly, but you can start incrementally making zoning changes, and as the buildings in the area turn over it'll slowly start approaching something better, which should hopefully result in people making different transportation choices. Also, a number of places in the US are still growing and sprawling outwards; reversing that trend would have a positive effect even if none of the existing places change. > I live around 20-25 miles from the major employment centers other than medical offices/hospitals This is sort of the problem though. Some people prefer to live that far away, and if you do that's great, but a lot of people end up moving away from cities for economic reasons. Building more housing closer to the employment centers would allow more people to live nearby, which reduces the number of people that need to commute that far.