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Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
by apothegm 1mo ago
Not to mention luggage. I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that rolling luggage became common shortly after curb cuts and wheelchair ramps did.
- mhb 1mo agoReally? Both strollers and wheels on luggage are pretty nice to have even if you have to somehow negotiate curbs. So, I think it is a coincidence.
- apothegm 1mo agoAnd yet strollers predate rolling luggage by over a century. (Even 2.5 centuries depending on which sources you trust.)
- mhb 1mo agoThe rolling luggage is primarily useful in the vicinity of airports. Inside airports there were no curbs. And I don't think people are going on long journeys through downtown areas with their luggage. I think you have a better argument asserting that rolling bags were facilitated by cheap polyurethane skate wheels.
- apothegm 1mo agoThere were fewer ramps and more stairs in airports and their parking garages prior to the 90s, due to the ACA. And people drag luggage around on city streets all the time. Many tourist destinations are pedestrian cities even outside their most central downtown areas. And luggage also needs to be dragged around hotels — and in suburban areas their absurdly large parking lots. The skate wheels are a plausible argument, though.
- account42 1mo agoThose are even worse because the tiny wheels do not take well to cobblestone or gravel surfaces that strollers handle just fine.