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Comment by Mizza | Hacker News Reader

Are you being sarcastic? You really think that Shanghai is a good model for this? Did you not see this photo set?: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...

The sidewalk is a public resource. Companies shouldn't be able to use it without paying the public for its usage. A restaurant needs a paid permit just to put chairs and tables in front of their building, why should it be any different for a scooter company?

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More vitally, did you not see this astounding photoset of abandoned dockless vehicles? https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture... . They litter virtually every city street, and yet we're somehow willing to ignore the relentless space they waste.

Aside from the fact that one needs to be licensed for them, obey some generally accepted rules of the road, and "abandon" their vehicles in an orderly fashion.

I understand we're going through the growing-pains period with these dockless vehicles, but Lime, Spin, and Bird have no excuses for not taking any precautions against this. Especially Lime since we've seen issues with dockless bikes in China before they were brought here. The reason why these companies don't care is because their bikes/push-scooters are so cheap to manufacturer. They've basically created disposable vehicles.

So I'm glad lawmakers are doing something about this. And yes, of course there are other issues we need to tackle for SF sidewalks with feces and needles.

> and "abandon" their vehicles in an orderly fashion.

Never mind that we set aside large parts of our public space for people to curbside park. If we were to set aside two parking spots per block for bicycles, you wouldn't have any problems with them being left on sidewalks.

I agree, but the point was about the weak comparison in the snarky Slate post.

Like I said, we're in a transition phase in American cities. More people are willing to ride bikes (and e-scooters) these days. And with these changing needs, cities will replace car parking spots with bicycle/e-scooter/motorcycle parking.

Cars are different since 1) they are owned by individual people (if I started a company that purchased a bunch of cars and left them in street parking for people to rent, I think it would be reasonable that I would need a permit) and 2) since they are more expensive, they are far less likely to be abandoned when they fall into a state of disrepair.

I am not being sarcastic. I lived in Shanghai from June of 2017 --> January of 2018 and the pictures you see in that photoset are truly remarkable and thoroughly unrepresentative of the situation on the ground. There are certainly some subway stations at certain times where there are lots of bikes crowded around the stations, but there are also crews of people constantly redistributing the bikes.

Also my intended message in my comment is that companies should indeed pay for the usage of the sidewalk. Users of the equipment should furthermore be forwarded the penalties they incurred on the company's behalf through bad parking behavior.

oh my god, that looks like the result of a run away bicycle maximizer AI.

"The sidewalk is a public resource. Companies shouldn't be able to use it without paying the public for its usage."

But they ARE paying for it. Indirectly, by getting cars off the road.

If anything, we should be paying THEM for those overall benefit that they are bringing to society.

Perhaps charging companies to put chairs on the sidewalk is not necessary, either.

Well there's an idea...

The public owns the right-of-way, why shouldn’t they be compensated for renting it out for private use?

Only if we do the same thing for cars. And we make sure that the car fine is literally 100 times larger, because cars are much more costly to the public.

We do have many car-specific taxes and fees. Gasoline taxes, registration fees and paid parking all come to mind. That said, I agree with the broader point that we are too car-focused on transportation issues.

Those are photographs of outdoor storage of a bankrupt company's inventory.

If GM went out of business tomorrow, I took can take photographs of lots full of cars, and point out that automobiles are a terrible idea.

> The sidewalk is a public resource.

So is the curb. If we are allowed to park cars on the curb, why can't we park ride-share bicycles there? They take up ~1/10th the space of a car.

In most of SF, curbside parking wastes more space then the sidewalk.

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