Hacker News Reader

Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice for "subway cost control" to be part of that plan: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/new-york-infrastructu.... Subways are among the greenest possible transport modes and yet NYC hasn't built substantial new lines since 1940.

This is also the same city that provides copious free and heavily subsidized parking while banning or severely limited 30-pound, highly efficient electric vehicles: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/electric-scooters....

I wonder how we should interpret the city's stated desires versus its actual policies.

View on HN

>banning or severely limiting...

Watching this happen has been one of the most unbelievably frustrating things I’ve ever seen.

I’m in Santa Monica right now, and figures I could park my car away from the beach, in a high density “car” area, then ride a scooter from there down to Venice Beach where my friend lives to say hi to him.

It’s a minefield of seemingly random geofences which shut the scooter off and make you push it a few blocks into the allowed areas, or ordinances that allow skateboarding and bicycling, but not scooters, on what appear to be purpose built bike paths!

The dumbest part is that you can ride a bike, or a scooter, or a skateboard, but none of these things if it has the amazing technology to make it useful beyond recreation (for non-enthusiasts): a motor. Honestly it just seems like neo-puritanical hatred of the idea that the motor makes it too easy.

It makes me just want to say burn the whole then down (metaphorically) and I’ll just drive the biggest comfiest car I can find wherever I need to go.

Have you considered buying your own scooter [1]? You can fold it and keep it in the trunk of your car. I bought a Xiaomi clone for $250 on Los Angeles craigslist and take it from Venice to the climbing gym in Culver City every week. It takes about 45 minutes which is faster than traffic on Venice Blvd or the metro.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Xiaomi-Mi-Electric-Scooter-18-6-M...

Walmart sells knock-offs? That looks like an original Xiomi and not a clone to me.

The knockoff came from Craigslist.

The linked one is original Xiaomi. I bought a clone off of Craigslist. The welding is not as nice and it uses MiniRobot app instead of Mi Home, but the battery and motor are holding up well. Here's a good video describing Xiamoi original vs. clone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiXiKr47T8g

>Honestly it just seems like neo-puritanical hatred of the idea that the motor makes it too easy.

More likely people are tired of clutter and blocked sidewalks. And riders who act like idiots.

Also, scooters (and even e-bikes) have different acceleration curves than road bikes.

If you are doing less than 20-25mph when cruising at speed, you’re impeding bike traffic. Scooters are currently capped at 15mph, so they don’t belong in bike lanes.

(Not saying there shouldn’t be scooter lanes, just that they don’t mix with bikes)

Bikes do not cruise at 20-25 unless you are hauling ass, more like 12mph for most people (and iirc that's the speed google maps bases it's bike estimates on). Most scooters I see pass bikes.

Here in SF, I use my electric skateboard almost everyday to commute.

The infrastructure has not caught up to them yet though. Many roads are in a terrible state. It is ok for cars or bikes, but skates have small wheels so you have to stay vigilant at all times. Even on the same street from one day to the next, some extremely large pothole might have appeared.

If bikes and skates had reserved lanes with :

- a barrier ! So cars can't park there and crazy drivers can't try to kill you (sadly it happens)

- good smooth pavement.

it would be way safer and could encourage many more people not to use a car.

Especially since SF does not have a good public transport system (that would be another thing to improve drastically)

Barriers for bike lanes are often counterproductive. There’s no way for street sweepers to clean them, so leaves and garbage accumulate, making them dangerous for bikes (and presumably impassible for skateboards).

oh I did not think about that !

hmm, I would rather have street sweepers adapt to bike lanes than removing them

You really don't want to share a road with cars. I did not have someone swerve at me to hurt me yet, but I see that regularly on social networks (just a local bay area user group too .. not something national).

I already had cars accelerate until they are caught up with me, and then do something dumb like klaxon loudly or yell to hope to make me trip.

And of course multiple occurences of cars that think it is ok to cut up right in front of you and brake, or that want to overtake you when there is no space and there are literally less than 10 cms between you and the car.

So I would definitely rather have a secure lane .. even if it means that we must adapt cleaning equipment.

> I would rather have street sweepers adapt to bike lanes

That's what's done in the Netherlands, and I can confirm: it's far safer and comfortable to cycle in separate bicycle lanes, and it greatly encourages people to cycle.

If car drivers don't respect you I don't think the solution is to let them have all the road for themselves and put you away from their view. Fighting for the rights of cyclits by segregating them is like trying to fight sexism by having women wear a burka so that they do not provoke men!

Dedicated bike lanes exist in Europe, so I assume this is a solved problem and US cities could just buy whatever European municipalities use to clean bike lanes.

Street sweepers about the same width as a ride on lawn mower exist, they can easily get down separated lanes: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mini+street+sweepers&iax=images&ia...

My city deploys sidewalk sweepers that they use in the bike lanes.

I ate it on a JUMP bike going down Rose. It was out of zone and the only explanation that I can come up with is that it locked up the back tire. I ride bikes a lot and have no clue why I went down on that thing. I lost a ton of skin on my knee. I'm never touching one of those again. Geofencing transportation devices is crazy business. I need to trust the thing I'm riding.

There's nothing on a jump bike that can lock the rear wheel while in motion. The motor is in the front, and the brakes are operated by hand.

I have ate it on one while crossing train tracks while at max power, as that combination of circumstances can cause the front wheel to break traction, since there isn't traction control (yet).

I'm surprised to hear someone say that New York City has "copious free and heavily subsidized parking"; how does that manifest itself, exactly? Living in Manhattan, that's not really my experience.

It’s just a talking point. The hot thing is to be against street parking these days.

There is free street parking in Manhattan, but nobody would describe it as copious.

Of course it's copious.

Let's say the number of spaces in an average street is X. Most cars in those spaces are just sitting there all day, so the demand for those spaces is 10x. Okay, not copious.

But the demand for moving down that street is 1000x. Now those spaces are egregious.

practically every street in manhattan is lined with free parking spaces, no meters and no required permits.

That’s not free parking! Those are bike lanes pending barrier construction! :)

Having been to community meetings where those bike lanes are proposed, I can assure you it's nowhere near as easy as you make it sound.

https://twitter.com/HillgateRes/status/1139224319161241603

Let’s start with employee plans can allocate several hundred dollars pre-tax to parking but very limited amounts to subway and train.

You can also argue that huge amounts of free street parking are subsidies, but limited areas to chain bikes.

There is more, but those are the obvious ones to me.

Pre-tax transport benefit plans at the federal level have had equivalent transit/parking amounts since 2016; not that the city has much control over that.

NYC's own pre-tax program explicitly doesn't include parking. It's also probably worth mentioning that the city has a tax on off-street parking at 18.375% in Manhattan.

Driving is also heavily subsidized by the fact that much of the cost of driving is externalized. When someone drives the fumes coming out of their car damage the health of everyone around them, that cost is paid for by everyone and not just the person driving so there is very little incentive to stop doing it.

If you want to talk externalities then stress, frustration and mental health need to be taken into account on the public transit side of the equation.

I'd put up with a hell of a lot of air pollution if it made the trains timely and not crowded and I'm not the only one who'd make that tradeoff.

Stress, frustration and mental health are costs I have only ever experienced in a car.

Riding my bike to work was one of the best things I ever did for my mental and physical health.

Does your car parking cost as much as renting a flat/sqm? I bet it does not.

Where I live, parking space costs you about 15€/sqm/month on a single floor/no floor since it's 'public space'. A flat is avg. 22€/sqm/month and buildings in general come with 6 floors: we're closer to 6*22€/sqm/month for living space...

I pay $512.84 per month for parking; it's valet parking because they stack multiple cars on elevators in the building basement.

I don't know exactly how you want to characterize the floor space of that, but my gut feel is it's basically a similar cost to rent for an apartment per unit area.

I think it probably comes pretty close - my friends with parking spaces in Manhattan pay $500+/mo

I don’t want to argue for cars, but a square of something you can park on should definitely be cheaper per unit area than something you live in. I don’t think I’ve ever parked anywhere I’d happily live.

He must be thinking of Hong Kong: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hong-kong-parking-spa...

You've imagined what it would be like to live in a parking space if it were to remain one of a block or a row of parking spaces. I don't think that's the point being made.

If there are fewer parking spots relative to demand compared to living spaces relative to demand, then parking may very well be more expensive. I don’t see why parking “should” inherently be cheaper, it’s always supply and demand determining price.

In expensive real estate areas land costs should dwarf construction costs.

This isn’t the issue though, the actual comparison is car park versus living space, and which can be built cheaper.

Does a slab of asphalt have the same taxes assessed and upkeep costs as an apartment?

Every car parked on a street in Manhattan is taking advantage of free or subsidized parking.

Well, there is some metered parking; admittedly not a whole lot. But street parking is not "copious" which implies an abundance relative to demand.

If there were "copious free parking" in Manhattan, there wouldn't be hundreds of parking garages charging up to $70 a day during the week, would there?

Copious can mean abundant in either supply or quantity.

This is more true in the outer boroughs. Lots of circling the block in Flushing, for example.

It has been 80 years since we built new lines?

We could definitely use more. Extending the 7 to NJ would also be great. We jam all those buses through the Lincoln Tunnel every weekday.

Found this on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_expansion_of_the_Ne...

Extending lines clearly isn't in the scope of the commenter; the 7 already got an extension to Hudson Yards a few years back and the first phase of the 2nd Ave extension came into operation recently as well.

Speaking from my own selfish perspective, I think fixing the lines we do have is more of a priority than building new ones.

Only part of the 7 extension was completed. They didn’t complete one of the stations because of cost.

You’re doing that thing where you think we can only do one or the other.

It takes a long time to fix existing subways. You can’t simply close them down. Look at the L train.

There’s no reason we can’t also expand the subway. Depending on where you build, it could go a lot faster.

That could be a great idea, luckily the path train exists, although I've never commuted on it so I can't speak to its reliability.

That's a misoptimization. New York City's subway and roads may be terribly inefficient relative to what they could be. They're still vastly more so than the rural transportation in the rest of the state.

Pick the low hanging fruit before trying to squeeze out the last few percent.

And in any case the existence of bad transportation policy isn't a reason not to celebrate a climate bill, so I don't get your point.

Oh, so they lead off with REFRIGERANT MANAGEMENT did they?

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/materials/refrigerant-man...

Not sure if sarcasm. In fact the whole point of Drawdown is to enumerate all the possible fruit, both high and low hanging, and come up with numbers justifying their picking in parallel. So yeah, refrigerant management is part of the solution, and you can check their numbers for how much it would save and how much it would cost, and that is done deliberately to avoid nonsense like "why are you bothering with air conditioners?!".

In contrast, the upthread comment seemed to be arguing that a blanket bill trying to establish a regulation framework for climate change is insincere because of minutiae about NYC's mismanaged transportation infrastructure.

Going back to your snark: it's the equivalent of "Throw the whole Drawdown plan in the trash because China has too many air conditioners." See the problem with that logic?

>This is also the same city that provides copious free and heavily subsidized parking while banning or severely limited 30-pound, highly efficient electric vehicles: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/electric-scooters....

When you say "scooter" images of traffic in Mumbai pop into the minds of the upscale folks who write the rules so of course they ban anything that has two wheels and doesn't cost too much for the blue collar crowd.

2nd Ave line?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com