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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

They are fold able but certainly more clumsy when I see them on the train. Also a lot more expensive and yet another thing you gotta charge and eventually replace a battery for. Its also a 30lb hunk of metal still, not everyone can comfortably tote that up and down train station steps all day. Most people I see don't even fold their escooter on the train just hold the handle, roll it in and have the tail out and let people deal with stepping over it. Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result.

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> Makes me think transit as we know it wouldn't even work if everyone got one of these things or an ebike and took up so much extra space as a result.

I’ve been wondered something like this too when I see people bring their scooters into a restaurant, the gym or other indoor spaces. I get that you don’t want it stolen but it would untenable if everyone did it.

Take a portion of the space set aside for car parking, perhaps? (God forbid.)

That doesn’t solve the theft problem.

depends on what you replace the space with. Bike lockers exist and are awesome.

My theory is the number of people in a city willing to commit bike theft is finite, and more bikes in public isn't going to draw out very many more thieves out of the woodwork since bikes are already easy to quickly find to steal in public. That means if the world changes and you get everyone biking, rate of bike theft drops down low enough where its something most people don't think of, like how grand theft auto is an extremely rare occurrence despite there being plenty of expensive cars parked on the street.

At that point I suspect there would be dedicated parking - on the light rail near me there is a spot for luggage with ceiling hooks for hanging your bike

Yeah some train cars do have a dedicated spot for bikes and bulky stuff, even with a little bike sticker on the door to label them as such. But It still comes at a big cost. I'd say in the space three people with three ebikes can fit, you can probably fit at least three times as many people standing and hanging on the pole. Plus in the chaos of the few seconds the train waits with the doors open they can be a hassle and are sometimes even a source of door delays moving past people and unloading all this equipment.

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