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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty sure it went something like “so where are we allowed to pickup and drop off riders” and the city couldn’t answer. The problem isn’t really enforcement, the problem is that there are simply no alternatives, and the city shies away from enforcement because they know that. If they started enforcing the rules strictly, people would again ask questions that they aren’t prepared to answer.

If you compare that to a country like the Netherlands, which is not only strict, but provides “solutions” so breaking the law isn’t necessary in the first place (they use explicit drop off and pickup locations instead of American chaos).

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Yes, in sane countries the rules are attempted to be defined in a fair way, and you can follow them. Not perfectly of course, but with that goal.

Like the Netherlands, it is (A) not possible to park in bike paths without going intentionally out of your way, and (B) there are reasonable alternatives, such as specific “loading zones” for passengers on nearly every block, on major roads. On minor neighborhood roads, you can just block the road for a few seconds and it doesn’t matter

The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced. It makes it so everyone always must break the law to exist in society, but will only face repercussions at the discretion of a police officer.

It means that there are effectively no laws, because everyone has slightly different definitions of when something is “right” or not, and the police only enforce the most egregious cases, but they can also target you specifically for some other reason (discrimination, bias, etc) with no repercussions, since you were breaking the law after all.

It's because the bike lanes are great PR but bad for votes, at least in the short term. City leaders love the greenwashing effect, but in the short term the percentage of people actually biking everywhere is very low, so it doesn't make sense for them to spend a ton of time and money to do it right.

In a few years they'll get to put together a committee to discuss "learnings" and maybe they'll fix it if there are enough complaints, or maybe they'll just spend their time elsewhere as usual.

I would bike more if the infrastructure was better and police aggressively dealt with our local bike theft problem (Seattle), as it stands it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it, not like when I was a college student.

America suffers from a severe execution problem in the last couple of decades. We just can’t implement and follow through with real solutions anymore.

Slightly long-term thinking is required. Every year, the city I live in, Dublin, does a survey where people crossing the canals (rough proxy for entering/exiting the city centre) are counted for a day. Twenty years ago, 50% of crossings were by public transport, 37% by car, 2% by bike (most of the remainder was talking). In 2024 (the last year for which figures are available; for whatever reason publishing this data takes _ages_), 58% was by public transport, 25% by car, 6% by bike. Cycling's definitely on the rise, and congestion would be worse without it, but it does take time for people to change their habits.

The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced.

Do you consider this insane? Your assertions that "everyone always must break the law" and "there are effectively no laws" seem a bit extreme. Ultimately, with any messy human affair, there is always going to be discretion involved, and I don't think implicitly codifying that is a bad thing. It does tend to work by and large. I've personally had much worse experiences with officials following the letter of the law than with them using discretion, but I admit I am not in any class that is often discriminated against.

Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones. This is how taxis have always worked.

It's just that other drivers get pissed off if you block a car lane when there's a bike lane next to it. That needs to be trained away by enforcing the rules.

That needs to be trained away by physically separating bike lanes from car lanes. Drivers (at least human ones) cannot safely coexist with cyclists or pedestrians unless there are actual physical obstacles between moving traffic and everyone else.

Wouldn't it be safer for the bikers and people exiting on the bike lane side of the car if the bike lane was blocked?

No. Cars entering the bike lane is dangerous. Bicycles being encouraged to enter the car lane to avoid the car illegally blocking it is dangerous.

The car stopping in car lane, far enough from the bike lane that its doors won't enter it, and letting the passengers out into the road, is by far the safest. Yes, that means now-pedestrians end up crossing the bike lane. That's a lot better than a car. They move slower, and more predictably, while simultaneously not blocking it for long enough that anyone is motivated to deke (my spellchecker doesn't like that? Is that a word outside Canada?) out into traffic.

It's a canadian term from hockey, derived from decoy. I'm mildly-but-darkly amused at the notion of a cyclist needing to fake out a car trying to check them though :)

And then bicyclists will hit the people crossing to the side walk.

Bicycles have bells and brakes, you know. And cycling commuters have eyes to see opening car doors. It's also more difficult to use your phone on a bike and Japan has new laws regarding that.

I’m definitely aware they have bells. Evidence for breaks is much thinner on the ground.

That works for taxis but not for deliveries.

Delivery drivers should find parking. They should be fined heavily for parking in traffic, including bike lanes.

That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.

I'd actually agree that they ought to deliver in the middle of the night but indeed that's just not how the world currently works. Far worse than bike lanes I've regularly seen large box trucks driven up onto particularly wide stretches of sidewalk in areas with skyscrapers. Law enforcement doesn't seem to care, presumably because how else are they supposed to get packages to where they need to be?

NYC used to (or still?) enforced strictly parking violations by delivery companies. But they did it so evenly the companies just considered it a cost of doing business, and raised their rates accordingly. Not violating the law and still being in the business wasn’t an option, so no competitor could undercut the other by following the rules and not paying the fine.

Sounds like a scenario where something other than fines should be applied. Revoke plates fleetwide, tow any delivery trucks caught on the street with a mandatory 72 hour minimum impound time, with no access to the contents of the vehicle. And so on.

I don't think NYC wanted to basically ban the delivery companies like that, then the public would complain, so it was convenient fiction to have them fined and pass on the costs. Again, this is more of a "you can't do that but we don't have an actual solution so do it anyways" situation, not a "we aren't enforcing our rules strictly enough" problem.

If Amazon then started marking packages as delayed with a video of the truck being towed I imagine the voters would quickly "fix" the enforcement "problem" in the delivery companies' favor.

In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park.

Larger scale deliveries (e.g. to malls, grocery store, factories) should have a privately owned off-road, built into the structure place for trucks to park and drop things off. Though things like factories often simply don't belong in the dense part of the city.

This is pretty idealistic. What winds up happening around me is the amazon guy parks their car in the middle of the road AND also has a cart to hit multiple houses at the same time in that region. Furniture deliveries or even moving trucks can block our street for 30 minutes at a time. It is almost as bad as garbage day (ya, you aren't getting through our street on Tuesday morning if you time it wrong).

This would all be solved if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else. Really, just that part is just where everything falls apart quickly. This is why traffic seems so much better in Europe (at least where I've lived, like in Switzerland), deliveries work, cars are not parked on the street except at a few very expensive parking spaces.

I was basically describing how most deliveries happen where I live. Not all, and we could do with forcing the remainder to less disruptive means, but the significant majority.

> if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else.

The complaint I keep seeing is one of public subsidy. So you're suggesting we subsidize deliveries but not general parking? (To be clear I think it's all just anti-car absurdity.)

Of course merely repurposing a few spots to "commercial deliveries only" every few blocks would probably work. I've seen that done in a few places. I think it comes down to a planning and administration failure.

I am claiming we should subsidize short term drop off/pick up use of limited street front space (not just deliveries, but ride share/taxi pickup/dropoff also) rather than waste it on someone parking their car for 72 hours because they can't be bothered to pay for a parking space.

But ya, if you want to roll back car use, you can do that fastest by restricting free parking. Your community better be prepared for that with adequate public transit investments. Better to just roll back free parking slowly while ramping up public transit investments, but America always messes it up one way or the other.

Or delivery drivers should ride bikes. And larger deliveries should be scheduled around low traffic times, or else the city should reserve parking for delivery trucks.

Waymo consistently stops in No Stopping zones.

> Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones.

In which municipality? In most cities and states in the US, it is illegal to obstruct a roadway. Taxis may get some carve-outs for loading and unloading disabled people, but usually, even taxis are supposed to pull over before stopping for a passenger.

One question the city probably can't answer is what disabled persons in the taxi are supposed to do. If you strictly enforce bike lanes the result is probably the rider needing to walk a few blocks. If the rider is disabled, that could actually be a huge burden. Since I've got an 80+ year old disabled parent with a walker this is an issue for me that does compete pretty aggressively with my support for bikes.

First of all, the walk would rarely be more than half a block. Bike lanes go down a small number of streets, so one can usually unload on an intersecting street. Not ideal, but ...

... bike lanes are not the only thing that creates this issue. Any road that lacks parking, with or without bike lanes, will have the same problem. Even when there is parking, all of the parking spots may be occupied. In both cases, people may have to walk a few blocks. While they may be grouchy about the lack of (sufficient) parking, you don't see many people blaming motorists for placing a burden on the elderly.

Finally, it is always possible to make accommodations. Having a carve-out for loading and unloading taxis will do far more for safety of everybody than letting people stop anywhere in bike lanes. It is also possible to have exceptions for people with disabilities, as long as non-disabled people don't abuse it.

Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer. How do you dropp off a disabled person in a lane with clogged street side paking? Shouldn't you be against street side parking by the same logic?

Would that be like LA where all the on street parking near UCLA is taken up by Luxury vehicles with handicapped placards?

Drop off/pickup points are the answer, disabled drop off/pickup might be redundant but could make sense in certain high capacity situations.

> Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer.

You have to actually put those drop off points on every street corner, though, and is the lowest priority for city planners, and gets rolled out at a glacial pace over decades--while disabled people have needs today. Having been forced to confront how well designed our infrastructure is for disabled access and put it to the test, I can tell you that a lot of existing ADA infrastructure can best be described as "performative" and a lot of it is entirely missing.

The car can stop in the car lane to drop off. Especially with a disabled person on board. Is that not legal in your city?

In the UK (which the article seems to be about, although it keeps talking about other cities too), it depends on the specific road markings. If it's a solid white line between the bike line and the road, absolutely no vehicles are allowed into the cycle line except bikes. If it's a dashed line, they can enter it as long as it's not being used by cyclists.

In general though, special affordances for parking and dropping off disabled passengers is only given to those with a blue badge. AFAIK in general taxis carrying disabled passengers without a blue badge have no more rights than any other vehicle. Only companies that specifically care for disabled passengers can get their own company blue-badge rather than relying on their passengers having one.

Right, but in general, what is a car driver supposed to do when he needs to stop and unload (anything) in a place where there isn't a special provision for that? Here in Slovakia they can stop in the car lane, blocking it, as long as that's not explicitly forbidden by a sign there.

Because we also have streets with a car lane and a bike lane with a solid line where it's forbidden for any other vehicle to enter or stop there, so of course I had to explain to a few drivers what are the rules they should alrady know and follow.

It depends on the road markings and signage. In general double yellow lines mean no waiting or parking, but there is generally a special exemption for loading/unloading or letting passengers in or out. However, there is frequently additional signage that will restrict hours when loading is permissible, or state no loading.

Double yellow lines (waiting / parking) are different to bike lines however. If a bike line is separated from the road by a solid white lines, motorised vehicles are forbidden from entering at all. If you want to load/unload or drop off passengers, you need to do that somewhere else. If the highways agency considered it safe for vehicles to block the cycle route in that place, they'd use dashed lines instead.

> The problem isn’t really enforcement

The problem is street-side parking.

Street side parking is fine. You can move the parking out a few feet and put the bike lane between the ordering and curb. Works well where I've seen it.

> Street side parking is fine

It’s a massive subsidy that takes up space. If you have the space to move it and still permit e.g. delivery trucks from blocking the road, great. Many cities don’t have that space and yet cede it to parking.

Nothing's stopping you from charging for street parking. If it's a subsidy, that's a political decision, not an inherent flaw in street parking.

Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.

I would guess that there are very few houses and apartments without parking in the US.

You would be very wrong, but I live in Seattle so my experience differs from yours. Definitely here in Ballard I’d say 50% of the residents are parking on the street.

(statistically, you are probably right if you are talking about the entire population of America, but we are really only concerned with a few dense cities and parking minimums have been on the out for a couple of decades now)

I believe Stroup showed a long time ago that the best solution is to price parking so that there is an average of one empty parking spot per block.

If the automobile was brand new today, I suspect that it would be a hard sell to convince people that taxpayers should pay to provide free storage for people's private cars.

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