The Major Urban Revolution of Minor Transportation Means | Hacker News Reader

The Major Urban Revolution of Minor Transportation Means

strongtowns.org

104 pointsburlesona74 comments

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would rather prices went up and they did this. The point was that the data should make the experience better.

> 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.

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.

The former seems plausible. Cab style driving seems incredibly risky.

They drive like cabbies, because most of them probably are cabbies, if it’s anything like SF.

They weren't originally. Now? I don't know.

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.

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.

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/bi...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803

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.

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.

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...

Indeed, I've read similar comments about cycling in Amsterdam. Folks who live there say that they have one bike for the city, and another bike (with helmet) for weekend recreational rides in the countryside.

In German you would be described as a Kampfradler, literally a warrior cyclist. Please slow down, for the safety of others and yourself. Just like a car driving 2x the speed of everyone else is dangerous, so is a bicycle.

The slow cyclists ride at 10/12 km/h. The fast ones at 20/25. It's still much slower than cars. Obviously it would be too fast for bike lanes, that's why I stay in the road.

> 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.

> 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/1i5NMhjJS1v https://goo.gl/maps/2zT2vHyMkk22 https://goo.gl/maps/nikFJgyb9tj https://goo.gl/maps/7ciEWeJd1Wq https://goo.gl/maps/CFtp7oVvomB2 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.

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.

> 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.

If you kick it over, doesn't it then block more horizontal space, while being less visible because it's at ground level?

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

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!

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.

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.

It's not just space: Mini (kei) cars are subsidized via much lighter taxation, which is why they're so popular in Japan.

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.

It's a shame. I have zero use for a full-size car, and I would much prefer a two-seater with plenty of legroom plus economy and maneuverability, but you can't get them here for any reasonable price.

Also, a thought. I would argue that Kei cars aren't subsidized, it's just that Japan refuses to subsidize big cars like America does. Large cars take up more space in car parks, take up more space on the road, and do more damage to roads. It's actually quite reasonable to tax them less.

Unfortunately mandatory parking minimums are written into the zoning codes of most American cities, leading to the surfeit of parking in lots of places. Undoing this will take no small amount of work.

Another argument to rework the whole zoning thing....

Another software developer refusing to work in or understand an existing working system and instead asking for "the big rewrite", which assuredly will get finished on time, with all of the features of the existing system and none of the problems.

Heavy zoning has caused housing in many areas to be far more expensive than it needs to be.

The push for change is being driven by economists and activists, not software developers.

SB-827 in CA failed but it'll be interesting to see what comes next.

https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/s...

"The big rewrite" could be adopting the system of a different country that has more desirable outcomes. I only know a little about zoning, but from what I've heard Japanese zoning is rather simple and doesn't seem to produce endless sprawl.

It's pretty cool to watch this happen in Mexico City of all places. The public transportation is insanely subsidized. The metro system is 0.25¢ USD a ride.

There are metro buses, which are double buses on a dedicated bus only road, with dedicated stations. ~0.20¢ There are now even double-decker buses like in the UK.

Plus there is a city-wide bike share program. That now has electric bikes! Now there are tons of other bike share companies popping up. There is also electric scooters you can rent.

Plus there is a massive fleet of taxis and uber is very cheap as well. Good mix of transportation options.

Yup, the notion we have 2000 pound private vehicles that seat 4 but are occupied on average by 1.5, which sit idle for 22 hours of the day and take up prime real estate nearby humans due to their very function design, running on toxic fumes, is insane.

These should be automated as soon as possible, running on electricity which produces less Co2 and moves any toxic fumes outside of population centres, should near 100% occupancy, should near 0% idleness, and should see few reasons to be private, and should not take up valuable space.

This should be in reach in a few decades, I hope it won't take 7 either!

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.

>"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.

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)

Dresses, robes, etc.

Also bikes give rooster tails really bad, which is no-bueno for really any non-biking clothes.

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.

> Similarly, fenders are standard equipment, you almost have to go out of your way to find a bike without them.

Oh, man, I wish that were true. My last bike I couldn't even get an aftermarket mudguard, because the frame didn't have the right mounting points.

Maybe they're not on your local market, but I've seen fenders that attach to the seat post and directly to the front forks.

Lots of people have similar frames and want fenders, that options have popped up :-)

There's a really big difference between the US and Europe that I've seen in terms of bikes. It seems that in the US, only enthusiasts buy bikes. In most countries in Western Europe however, it is much more egalitarian. City bikes for example have to be sold with lights and two brakes, front and back. You almost have to go out of your way to buy a bike without the necessary accoutrements for city riding, be it lights, brakes, fenders or even a luggage carrier.

I base this on the experience of my wife and young kids trying them out. I love biking and do it all the time, but they don’t. To me biking feels glued to the road. To them it feels like sitting on a wobbly rail. When they tried the scooters the first time it was like a revelation, “wow this is so easy!”

So, anecdotal, but I’ve heard this from others as well.

Sure, it's easier to just jump on and go, but there are huge limitations compared to bicycles. In addition to what I mentioned, you just can't go very fast nor very far. When the battery runs out, it's a really crap form of locomotion. At least when an e-bike runs out, you've still got a (somewhat heavy) bike :-)

sure but when the e-scooter runs out, you just leave it on the sidewalk and you still have your LEGS. With a bike you still have the bike.

And the GP is right, many people have real issues with bikes, they're harder to do right. Scooters are easier because of their limitations for many. I feel the safety (frequent crashes) is because people underestimate their safety and ease of use at speed. They're great when you're going at running speed or less for obvious reasons. People super mis-estimate how fast they can run tho, and if you get off one at the wrong speed you're taking a header. Bikes are easier to control in a run-away, but only if you know how to do it.

You won't just leave your own scooter behind on the sidewalk. Conversely, you could just as well leave a dockless rental bike behind.

Or you continue riding the bike, without e-assist.

The folding scooters(which do come in e-form) strike a good balance between transportation and transportable: You can take them on transit, and carry them inside. Folding and unfolding - on well designed examples, with a bit of practice - can be accomplished in seconds. Walking a bike really doesn't compare. I see non-folding e-scooters as a category restricted to "stunt users" (who need the extra structural integrity) and "rental companies" - who, as we know, are going to encourage leaving them on the sidewalk.

Electric skateboards and roller skates can boast being even lighter, but most folks will gravitate away from them as a commute device since maintaining control is much more difficult.

I'm not opposed to scooters, they're quite fun. However, from a practicality point of view of everyday transport, shopping etc., a bike is simply superior.

You don't go as fast as a bike, but you go faster than walking.

And you don't have to use your own legs like a sucker.

Id have to try one but I cant see how these electric "kids" scooters with tiny wheels and a high centre of gravity (ie not a Vespa / Honda) would feel more stable than a bicycle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

I'm a pedestrian, a cyclist and a car driver. I walk on sidewalks, pedal on bike lanes or roads (usually roads because they are faster) and obviously drive on roads.

I strongly hate cyclists on sidewalks. If they dread pedalling on a road and there are no bike lanes, they (we) have the option of walking, using public transport or drive a car. And campaigning for more bike lanes: this is how they did it in the Netherlands https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

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/charg...

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

Ah, I didn't realize that, thanks for the correction.

There's a name for this technique, if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand

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

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