Comments on:

sunset in snow country — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:10:21 -0800

Sidewalks are a last shred of safe public space. No wonder we're fighting over them.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:25:45 -0800

By: mercredi

mercredi — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:30:44 -0800

We've seen a growth of these scooters in DC, and the obvious answer (to me) is to get rid of about 50% of the on-street parking in the city. Get rid of almost all on-street parking in the true downtown and the major arteries, and then reduce to one-side-of the street in lots of neighborhoods. This will force people to make decisions about car ownership, pay for parking, and park in garages and driveways instead of on the street. In exchange, you could get a center turn lane, and a protected bike lane in each direction that scooters could share. It would be phenomenally unpopular with a lot of people who own cars, but would be a game changer.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:31:12 -0800

By: backseatpilot

backseatpilot — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:34:55 -0800

It's truly amazing how much space we give over to cars. We live in the most densely populated city in New England and our (progressive, bike-loving) transportation chief pointed out that fully one quarter of the city's land area is covered by roads. The city is very pro-alternative transportation. We boast a high percentage of commuters who walk, bike, or take public transit to work. But the city also doesn't shovel sidewalks in winter (it's "too expensive" and property owners are responsible for what's in front of their buildings, which leads to a patchwork of clear pavement and ice) and the plows end up blocking curb cuts and fire hydrants in banks of packed snow. And then companies like Bird come along and try to co-opt the public commons for private gain. Having more transit options is probably a good thing, but they just dropped their scooters on the sidewalks one night without even discussing the matters with the local municipalities. Cambridge started impounding them, and then Bird had employees collect them in the morning from the public works yard and drop them off on the streets again. Refusing to work with the cities at all just seemed like such a bullshit move, I was not sorry to see them finally go after Providence - who actually wanted the scooters around and wanted to work with the company! - asked them to get a license. Working with the people they were going to service was just too onerous, apparently, so they picked up and left.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:36:30 -0800

Add that to people who decide to either suddenly ... go .... slowly ... as ... they ... finish ... this ... text ... or just outright stop in the middle of a sidewalk. And those who decide to form large discussion circles as to where to go next. Once marijuana is legalized and all the old convictions are set aside*, I'm okay with re-filling those prison cells with people who meet on the street and immediately turn 90 degrees to talk to each other. * -- Yes, I know this part won't happen either.

By: entropone

entropone — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:38:20 -0800

Covering the city in roads - or streets, rather - is one thing, but the amount of by and large free space given over to the storage of personal vehicles is simply unconscionable. It makes public transit less feasible and efficient, it crams outdoor neighborhood life onto the sidewalk. Unmanaged curb parking is a travesty, the number of personal vehicles in most American cities is a travesty, and it reduces the success of better travel options (and the safety of conventional ones) for the the people who need them most: younger people, older people, poorer people, and disabled people.

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:48:38 -0800

I got so mad when I saw this article. NYC could choose NOT to have oozing piles of garbage on every sidewalk... but it would have to sacrifice some parking spaces, which Can Obviously Never Occur.

By: soren_lorensen

soren_lorensen — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:53:30 -0800

You have to have a critical mass of politicians who simply give no fucks about their popularity because once you start taking away parking or road space, people will come at you and they will basically never ever stop. This seems to be the #1 topic for single-issue voters at the local level. Our mayor has overseen a large expansion of our city bike lanes and the man cannot tweet a picture of a puppy without his replies being full of people bitching about bike lanes. Like, for years now.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:55:46 -0800

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:57:55 -0800

I bet I could run for mayor of Toronto and win if my platform consisted entirely of plans to replace everything that isn't a road, parking lot or building with a road or parking lot.

By: NoxAeternum

NoxAeternum — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:59:17 -0800

Working with the people they were going to service was just too onerous, apparently, so they picked up and left. Many of these companies believe that they shouldn't be regulated at all.

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:59:20 -0800

I'm glad to see they acknowledge the elephant in the street, even if it is at the end of the article: One of the main reasons everything is crowded into sidewalks is that there is too much space for cars. Counterpoint: the streets are public spaces, too, just that cars are the most predominant, and dangerous, users of that space. Jaywalking was an invention, largely by early "car clubs" and auto sellers to make the roads safer for drivers. (In other words, remove those pesky, fragile pedestrians from the paths of cars.) octothorpe: I wish that construction projects weren't allowed to close the sidewalk for years on end. Somehow they're allowed to just put up a "sidewalk closed, cross here" sign and pedestrians have to go a block out of their way while some overpriced crappy apartment building is being put up. You could probably talk to someone about compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), because temporary access still needs to be accessible by all users.

By: adamg

adamg — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:00:44 -0800

In Boston, where these things started popping up about a month ago (well, technically, not Boston, but Cambridge and Somerville, but they oozed over the line), about the same time we saw an invasion of dockless rental bikes, the most Boston suggestion for what to do about them emerged pretty quickly: Save them for winter space savers.

By: The Underpants Monster

The Underpants Monster — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:09:56 -0800

Yeah, there's one whole section of our downtown where pedestrians have to go into the street to walk and dodge cars, because restaurants have gotten permission to use literally the entire sidewalk for extra seating. And it's not like you can just walk through the seating areas, because the different restaurants have erected barriers between their seating and their neighbors'. I don't know how people using wheelchairs or ECVs navigate that neighborhood; I guess it's just a No Disability Zone.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:16:07 -0800

Working with the people they were going to service was just too onerous, apparently, so they picked up and left. Many of these companies believe that they shouldn't be regulated at all. I think the problem with the current wave of shared vehicle services is that Lyft and Uber already vacuumed up all of the corruptible politicians and used up all their grift points. I mean those guys can only give out so many "let's ignore the existing regulations" favors to business with coincidentally clouted up investors before everyone catches on.

By: EmpressCallipygos

EmpressCallipygos — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:20:42 -0800

Add that to people who decide to either suddenly ... go .... slowly ... as ... they ... finish ... this ... text ... or just outright stop in the middle of a sidewalk. And those who decide to form large discussion circles as to where to go next. If I were ever to become a for-real Empress then these are some of the people whom I shall KILL WITH FIRE you have been warned

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:21:10 -0800

I think the problem with the current wave of shared vehicle services is that Lyft and Uber already vacuumed up all of the corruptible politicians and used up all their grift points. Good news: Lyft and Uber are buying up bike share companies across the country.

By: yarly

yarly — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:22:11 -0800

By: holborne

holborne — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:22:32 -0800

I feel very fortunate that I live in a place that even has sidewalks. I go out to visit my mother in the suburbs, and the only ones are these weird sidewalks to nowhere. They start at a corner and then go on for maybe 500 yards and then just sort of...stop, as though the city planners couldn't conceive of a reason that anyone would want to walk more than 500 yards at a time. As for cars, first I was happy that Zipcar now has cars parked on the street on my block in Queens, because hey, at least they're shared cars. But then I realized they're only shared in the sense that Zipcar, a private company, owns them and allows other people to use them for a fee. So, in reality, yet another instance of neoliberalism at its finest.

By: tobascodagama

tobascodagama — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:24:15 -0800

I'm in favor of making cities more bike & scooter friendly, but NOT at the expense of people who actually need to drive. Taking people who don't need to drive off the roads makes things better for those who have no choice.

By: tavella

tavella — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:25:56 -0800

Oh, the scooters this year have been annoying me. I live on a street that has bike lanes each way, and generous sized ones. It dead ends at the university, so cars seldom speed excessively. None of the excuses for why vehicles should be on sidewalks apply (and I'm sympathetic to those arguments in some cases -- there are certainly roads where biking in the roadway is likely to get you killed.) And the bikes, whether rental or owned, usually use the lanes, I seldom see anyone but pre-adolescents using bikes on the sidewalk. Even skateboarders mostly use them. But the scooters mostly use the sidewalk, and some kind of phase change has happened this year where motorized scooters regularly outpace the cars on the block. I watched two guys blasting down the sidewalk at something like 25 miles an hour, side by side, while their friend laughed and tried to drive between them, none of them paying any fucking attention to what was in front of them. A person steps out onto the walk and they are going to get hit with several hundred pounds of mass moving at 25 miles an hour. Someone is going to get seriously hurt or killed pretty damn soon. Motorized vehicles should never be on sidewalks, unless as mobility aids, and even those should be limited to normal human running speeds at most. You want to drive at the speed of cars, get in the fucking road.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:29:33 -0800

I haven't seen these scooters in Toronto (yet; I'm sure they're coming), but when I read stories about them the thing that surprises me is that they aren't (?) being constantly vandalized.

By: bradbane

bradbane — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:47:28 -0800

[Parking] seems to be the #1 topic for single-issue voters at the local level. My former partner used to have to attend a lot of public planning meetings for her job in SF. No matter what neighborhood improvement was being proposed, no matter what investment was being made, every single meeting became a screaming match over parking. People storing their private property in the public right of way is why we can't have nice things.

By: ghharr

ghharr — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:49:49 -0800

I wish that construction projects weren't allowed to close the sidewalk for years on end. Somehow they're allowed to just put up a "sidewalk closed, cross here" sign and pedestrians have to go a block out of their way while some overpriced crappy apartment building is being put up. Municipalities should charge vastly more for sidewalk and street closure permits. Projects will shut the sidewalk for months and months without really needing to because it's cheap and convenient, but plan their crane rental and concrete pours down to the hour because it costs real money. There' are whole degree programs in construction management, they can figure it out if hit in the wallet.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:50:34 -0800

co-opt the public commons for private gain

This. There's a picture making the rounds among my friends on Facebook of a woman using a wheelchair whose route was blocked in 3 places by dockless scooters. These company crowdsource the recharging of their scooters, and I recently saw someone driving around with a trailer full of them--at least 100. And you know he's plugging those into 20 or so outlet strips at home, overloading his electric circuits. And when his home burns down, damages surrounding homes, obliges the local fire department to show up, and perhaps kills people, that'll be an externality to the company, and the guy just should have known better. It gives me no joy to predict that this is going to happen, but this is going to happen.

Lyft and Uber already vacuumed up all of the corruptible politicians and used up all their grift points

Nah. After Austin placed regulations on Uber and Lyft that those companies found unacceptably onerous (so onerous that they joined forces to spend $8 million fighting a referendum that they lost decisively, but curiously not other companies), they left, licked their wounds, and then bought some friendly state legislators who passed a law outlawing city ordinances that place restrictions on ride-sharing companies. This kind of local-ordinance smackdown is a well-practiced routine at the state level, and I expect the scooter companies will do the same when the time comes.

By: kozad

kozad — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:52:15 -0800

Scooters are the problem du jour in a lot of places. Including Denver, where Lime did their customary surprise scooter dump before the city banned them, then decided: fine, but only on the sidewalks! Bad idea. Those things are fast. Let them ride in the bike lane. That solution is not without its problems, but motorized scooters don't mix with sidewalk-ambling homo sapiens.

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:52:56 -0800

Chicago is such a PITA with this -- they sell off sidewalk "permits" for cash during the summer to restaurants, which proceed to build these hulking monstrosities that take up 90% of the sidewalk, forcing the pedestrians into narrow bands. Even freakin' Dunkin' Donuts gets in on the act. That's not even mentioning the Divvy bike rental stations where bikes take up 50% of the sidewalk, or the idiots who decide to ride those bikes on the sidewalk through pedestrians as opposed to the road (where they're legally supposed to). Add that to people who decide to either suddenly ... go .... slowly ... as ... they ... finish ... this ... text ... or just outright stop in the middle of a sidewalk. And those who decide to form large discussion circles as to where to go next. I used to get upset by this. I'm a fast walker (slower than I used to be though - aging is so cruel) and I like to get where I am going efficiently. I manage the traffic around with those subtle cues that make people do what I want and I maintain an extended awareness so I have kind of a football running back flow. But still people will get in my way. They will walk four abreast or stop and chat at a choke point and so on. I used to get so mad and frustrated at this. I'd fume and walk even faster fueled by my anger. Then one day something just snapped and I re-framed it. I said to myself "This is the city living tax. In order to live in this amazing city with all these people and opportunities I have to pay the city living tax. I have to accept that my way isn't only way so I won't always get my way." No, I know what you're thinking here: "Taxes suck! Who wants to pay taxes?" Well, I do. Because in exchange I get the whole crazy ass city. I get to walk to work. I get to walk to the gym. I get to walk to hundreds of restaurants and bars. I get to walk to the lake. Almost everything I want is within walking distance. The city living tax I pay is so significantly less than the alternative taxes I would pay for other lifestyles like living in the country or the suburbs it is kind of absurd. I am paying pennies on the dollar compared to the people in the cars. Could things be better? Sure, the sidewalks could be nicer, there could be more shade trees, more space, fewer cars, better arranged sidewalk cafes, more hangout spaces and so on. Put me down for all of that. But I am not going to rage at other people or other uses of the sidewalk anymore. Ain't nobody got time for that and I've got so many other things to rage about. The sidewalk is where I celebrate living in real city full of everything even if some of it is in my way and some of it is dog shit.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:53:01 -0800

Too many people are fighting for the same space and blaming everyone else for their problems. Everything has to scale back.

Make city buses free and give them their own lanes where possible. Make buses the smart choice for getting across town.
Discourage people from driving big, fast, powerful cars, especially in cities. A city car should be small, electric, and (eventually) driverless, and you should be able to park two of them where people now park one, especially if you let the car do the maneuvering.
Devote all the best parking to bicycle racks, and the second best parking to small spaces suitable only for small cars (Smart size).
Eliminate free on-street parking. Determine parking permit charges according to a formula based on vehicle size, weight, noise, and tailpipe emissions.
Where there is (paid) on-street parking, put it on just one side of the street. Convert the other side to a slow lane for bikes and stuff.
Electric scooters are good, but they should be on the street (preferably in the slow lane, where the on-street parking used to be).
Sidewalks are for people on their feet or in wheelchairs who are going somewhere.
Sidewalks are also for people who stop to talk, rest, tend to children, tie a shoe, or just stand and gawk. People shouldn't stop in the middle of a choke point, but if there's room to stop and be friendly, don't tell people not to stop and be friendly. Design sidewalks for people being friendly. And gawking. (Especially if your city rakes in millions of dollars from gawking tourists.)

By: rodlymight

rodlymight — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:55:38 -0800

I haven't seen these scooters in Toronto (yet; I'm sure they're coming I see them just about every day, switching between sidewalk and road as they see fit. Maybe I need to move to your neighbourhood?

By: Maaik

Maaik — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:12:57 -0800

the thing that surprises me is that they aren't (?) being constantly vandalized. Yeah about that

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:16:00 -0800

Finally a ray of sunshine on this otherwise cloudy day.

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:23:23 -0800

I haven't seen these scooters in Toronto (yet; I'm sure they're coming), but when I read stories about them the thing that surprises me is that they aren't (?) being constantly vandalized. From what I understand, when systems like this are introduced, they see a bit of vandalism up front, but then people generally get used to their presence and get over it.

By: ZeusHumms

ZeusHumms — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:26:41 -0800

Have there been bike sharing programs here in the US that have collapsed already, leaving hundreds of bicycles to be disposed of?

By: backseatpilot

backseatpilot — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:52:04 -0800

Have there been bike sharing programs here in the US that have collapsed already, leaving hundreds of bicycles to be disposed of? Dallas.

By: tavella

tavella — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:24:29 -0800

Including Denver, where Lime did their customary surprise scooter dump before the city banned them, then decided: fine, but only on the sidewalks! Boggles. The city decided that the motorized vehicles should compete with entirely unprotected walkers, including large segments of children and fragile elderly, so that they could protect *bikes*? Which have a certain amount of protection front and back, normally wear helmets, and are usually ridden by relatively fit people.

By: turbid dahlia

turbid dahlia — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:44:35 -0800

A few years back, on one of the busiest streets in Brisbane, at morning pedestrian rush hour, a middle-aged guy in gym wear was doing push-ups in the middle of the footpath. I think of him a lot. Things like: has some rare disease got him yet? Is he in a lot of pain? Do people keep ignoring his calls? I really hope so.

By: rhizome

rhizome — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:45:54 -0800

Dockless electric scooters are reusable litter, full-stop.

By: Making You Bored For Science

Making You Bored For Science — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:22:00 -0800

I'm with rhizome: as far as I'm concerned, the motorized scooters with the "just drop 'em on the sidewalks" policy are indistinguishable under the law from litter. I'd like to see municipalities fine the companies for this under existing litter laws. I looked up Cambridge's a while back: up to $300/item/offense.

By: sunset in snow country

sunset in snow country — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:34:01 -0800

I mean, just to point out one part of this, San Francisco could MAKE public transit work well (or at least better) for people who live within the city limits, but instead city officials are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses and pushing people who have a choice onto the roads in private cars or ridesharing services. It's never going to be a solution for everybody, but right now they're hardly even going for the low-hanging fruit.

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 16:14:22 -0800

[Several deleted. corb, you have a history of bad-faith participation in transit threads, where you mischaracterize other people's arguments and then refuse to accept that you've done so, and then much later on in the thread you agree that they probably have a point and you misunderstood, and then come back in the next transit thread and do the same thing again, turning all transit threads into referendums on your misunderstanding of some transit policy proposal. So please just skip this thread. Everyone else, I understand that reads like trolling, but please flag it or hit the contact form rather than engaging in name-calling.]

By: save alive nothing that breatheth

save alive nothing that breatheth — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 16:15:08 -0800

Proposal: Allow electric scooters on the sidewalk, but only in repose, not in motion, and require proper, unobtrusive parking. Disallow shitting (dogs as well as humans) and biohazard needles, we live in a society.

By: explosion

explosion — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 17:01:54 -0800

If these fuckers ever make it into my corner of Boston, I'll be the proud owner of several e-Scooters. I'll do my part to collect abandoned property! Stolen? No your honor, the scooter was not docked in a registered spot, nor to the best of my knowledge registered with the RMV. It was not even locked to a pole or bike rack. It appeared to be abandoned property.

By: 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 17:15:21 -0800

It would be phenomenally unpopular with a lot of people who own cars, but would be a game changer. Well um people drive into DC because the Metro is in a state of.....repair.

By: entropone

entropone — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 20:19:56 -0800

Disabled people, poor people who have to live far away from work, elderly people, people with kids, people with night jobs, people with two jobs ... all need to drive and park. I'm in favor of making cities more bike & scooter friendly, but NOT at the expense of people who actually need to drive. Certainly not to just benefit venture-cap funded scooter companies. Completely reasonable - and it's regrettable that these things are (falsely) frames as in opposition to each other. Because making more efficient options for more people (transit, walking, biking) winds up taking cars off the street, which makes driving more efficient and less costly (to the driver, and in terms of externalities). Which is to say that frankly, everyone benefits. It's interesting, too, to note that in many cities (I'm most familiar with NYC data but have seen data from other major American cities) that car ownership skews wealthy; while there are often concerns about, say, congestion pricing (badly needed in NYC) will harm poor people, frankly it makes room for transit options for poor people while essentially taxing wealthier users. A lot of people who are proponents of more equitably distributed street space aren't about it because they have an axe to grind about cycling, or something like that - they're into it because there are widespread benefits that can be reaped by pretty much EVERYONE. Because cars are helpful - but the fact that they're the sole option for so many is a pox on our entire society. Options benefit everyone.

By: AnhydrousLove

AnhydrousLove — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:37:02 -0800

the idiots who decide to ride those bikes on the sidewalk through pedestrians as opposed to the road (where they're legally supposed to). That's the case here too, but I can't call them idiots. Car drivers are just not trained properly or used to dealing with bikes on the road, and that's before you consider the malicious ways in which some drivers will open car doors, close spaces and otherwise attempt murder. If you've got proper bike lanes, that's different, but I'm used to even where there are bike lanes, them by no means being a complete route of their own.

By: a humble nudibranch

a humble nudibranch — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 01:05:47 -0800

My scooter anecdotes this week: Yesterday, I was driving home from work (yeah I'm disabled) and the car in front of mine stopped very suddenly. The driver opened his door, jumped out, ran in front of his car and mightily FLUNG the Bird scooter (may be the emergence of a new sport!) that was lying in the street onto the sidewalk. He got back in his car and went on. I looked at the street carefully to see if there was any sign of an accident but didn't see anything. Today at rush hour, I saw a gang of three scooter riders in the narrow bike line, overtake a cyclist and pass him in a scary disorganized way. It's a wonder nobody fell off. Those scooters are fast and can outpace a hot, panting cyclist on a 104° day.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 02:06:10 -0800

SPQ-Us

In the ruins of Pompei, many guided tours make a stop at the theatrum tectum. It's a remarkable one-stop insight into Roman society. The Romans had an advanced understanding of the physical world, to the point that they used a giant terra cotta vessel under the center of the stage to amplify the words of actors. While that's nothing compared to modern sound systems, it demonstrates an impressive knowledge of how sound works for a society that collapsed 1600 years ago. The theater also illustrates how stratified Roman society was. Attendance was free, but seating location was dictated by class and gender: politicians up front, middle classes in the middle tiers of seats, and women or lower classes at the back of the theater. The free tickets were what I'm most interested in. Roman elites in the late Republic through height of the Empire had an enormous social obligation to provide public goods. Sometimes this meant defense in the form of raising armies or defensive works, but more often it meant raising non-military public works and maintaining them. Aqueducts, theaters, circuses, the Colosseum, or public baths; the basic infrastructure of Roman culture, health via free public baths, and the physical backdrop of urban life were financed by and maintained by elites seeking to maintain power. Romans (both the denizens of Rome and "Romans" in the broader sense across the empire) were not content to be ruled for the benefit of their rulers. They demanded a two-way exchange in return for elevation of the powerful. SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, The Senate and People of Rome) was an enduring and powerful symbol because it bore direct relevance on day-to-day life; the power of Rome as publicus (collective, the people), rather than as an oligarchy. Of course, sometimes what the people wanted in exchange for their acceptance of rule was a bit short-sighted. Panem et circenses (bread and circuses) were the "junk food" of the give from elites to the publicus, but they were nonetheless something give in exchange, to legitimize the ruling gentry. While Roman society looked quite different from our own, it was similar in that it had a glue which held elites to the people. In the United States, that glue hasn't always looked the same. For instance, early in American history that glue might have been as simple as collective defense and democratic recourse. At others, it may have manifested through infrastructure projects (internal improvements of Whig fame), trust-busting (a Republican answer to the unmooring of the elite from the mass of Americans during the Gilded Age), or redistribution of various types (Democrats' New Deal or Great Society). In Pompei, the theatrum tectum (literally, theater with a roof) has over one entrance the following sign: C QVINCTIVS C F VALG M PORCIVS M F DVO VIR DEC DECR THEATRVM TECTVM FAC LOC AR EIDEMQ PROB The sign commemorates the politicians who gave the theater to the people: C. Quinctius¹ Valgus and Marcus Porcius. Valgus and Porcius were effectively buying votes by providing a public good. This is one tangible example of the broader truism that Roman elites gave back. While that didn't prevent a truly shocking degree of inequality in material terms between the patricians and the pulusque, it certainly indicates bonds of mutual obligation and incentives to improve society more broadly. Again, our own incentives to improve look somewhat different; they're sometimes more formalized (for instance, via the state tax system) and sometimes quite similar (for instance, via funding of higher education infrastructure). The causes of the fall of the Roman empire are a subject that will never be truly resolved, but one factor (among, possibly, very many) was a breakdown of the system of SPQR and publicus that destroyed urban life. Ports and aqueducts silted up, theaters and circuses fell into disrepair and disuse, and the critical infrastructure fell apart. Roman elites felt less imperative to invest and maintain cities, and were more content to live in villas or move from Rome to Constantinople following the Empire's cleaving. To borrow some phrases from Abraham Lincoln, the mystic chords of memory that led to a patrician elite providing for society at large did strain, then break, and ultimately led to the collapse of Western European urban life which had been the true hallmark of Roman civilization. It's easy to see the parallels today. Americans frequently look out on an elite which seems to be unhinged from the collective experience of our nation, whether via material standard of living or economic security, cultural attachment, access to basic functions of the state like redress and justice, or the ability to provide for subsequent generations via childcare, education, or home ownership. To be sure, many segments of American society have always been victims of this disconnect, with people of color or undocumented immigrants the easiest examples. But the degree of divide and rupture of the American publicus such as it ever existed seems to be getting more extreme, and spreading more widely. Like Rome, we are a society with deep inequities and inequalities; also like Rome, that didn't prevent a sense of cohesion and collective experience (again, to use the Latin word for its connotation, publicus). Also like Rome, various circumstances and choices we have all made together as well as those undertaken by a precious few are creating a tangible feeling of rupture. As I said above, I don't want to extrapolate the Roman result too broadly, but it's hard to look at the water crisis in Flint (aqueducts), the year it took to restore power to Puerto Rico (public infrastructure), the collapsing ability to access higher education (not a perfect analogy to the free theater performances in the theatrum tectum, but an analogy nonetheless), or the rise of GoFundMe's to cover health expenses (Roman baths were much less effective as a means of health care than those of a modern society, but Romans did view their baths as a form of health care) combined with massive tax cuts for the rich and increasingly siloed experiences for the upper classes and not see anything at all alike. With any luck, the analogy doesn't carry to the same ending...and I wouldn't argue it will! On the other hand, we would be remiss to ignore the rhyming nature of history, and how the breakdown of SPQR is relevant to us.

also btw, re: parking... Parking Has Eaten American Cities - "A new study documents the huge amount of space taken up by parking, and the astronomical costs it represents, in five U.S. cities." For 23 World Cities, a Visual Inventory of Parking Lots - "An urban researcher shows how 'mobility space' favors cars."

By: yarly

yarly — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 06:41:43 -0800

A lot of people who are proponents of more equitably distributed street space aren't about it because they have an axe to grind about cycling, or something like that - they're into it because there are widespread benefits that can be reaped by pretty much EVERYONE. Because cars are helpful - but the fact that they're the sole option for so many is a pox on our entire society. Options benefit everyone. Eh, I'm cynical. I RARELY see consideration for how low income, poor, and disabled people are going to be impacted by removal of parking or other schemes to directly increase the cost of driving. Forgive me if I can't just believe in the "trickle down" theory here, especially when the projects that tend to get the most attention in DC (street car, bike lanes) are expressly for the benefit of people who have the luxury of physical ability, time, and living close to home/work.

By: ZeusHumms

ZeusHumms — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 07:14:31 -0800

And also, disposal of gps-tracked scooters and bicycles is complicated by the need to properly dispose of the electronics, similar to other consumer devices.

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 07:38:28 -0800

"I RARELY see consideration for how low income, poor, and disabled people are going to be impacted by removal of parking or other schemes to directly increase the cost of driving." As my suburban town has added more bike infrastructure and (slightly) reduced parking in some places and worked to make the downtown area more pedestrian-friendly, they've also added transit options that directly target low-income workers (shuttles that go from the train station to major employers), the elderly or disabled (discounted or free vouchers for cabs, according to various criteria but very easy to get), upgraded infrastructure at all parks to make them ADA-compliant (and they're about halfway through making sure every playground has inclusive equipment available), put more money into locally-funded shuttles for the elderly and disabled, and so on. They've done a lot of work targeting street/sidewalk safety, so that parents with a herd of small children can feel safe walking, including crossing guards at popular intersections in the walkable parts of town who are on duty every weekday (even in the summer!) rather than just when school is in session. (And of course wheelchair-accessible is stroller-accessible, so ADA upgrades are also great for parents.) Parking is always a pain in the ass here, but it has eased up a bit in the walkable parts of the downtown. When I do need to drive, I can usually find a space right off, instead of circling for twenty minutes waiting for someone to leave, because just enough people are switching to walking, biking, or other transit. It's also led to better attendance at town festivals (music in the park, etc.) because more people walk which means people from farther away or with mobility issues can drive and find somewhere to park. This is a suburb with a lot of political will to increase walkability and bikeability, and with a lot of cash to make it happen, that is willing to throw money at problems to achieve goals, and not every place has that luxury. But a lot of these are not actually all that expensive -- the taxi vouchers are (surprisingly!) basically a rounding error; crossing guards the town paid for anyway for schoolchildren walking to school so they just took them from 9-month to year-round; shuttles they were able to work with the large employers -- and are very achievable. Basically there has to be a commitment to say "This will provide more transit options for 80% of our citizens, how do we serve the other 20% who will be impacted in negative ways?" I mean, as it turns out, simply the ability to get a freakin' parking spot due to the expansion of walking and bike infrastructure has improved the lives of must-drive folks (frequently including me with my infinite quantity of badly-behaved children). But addressing concerns like "but what if it isn't safe for children/the elderly/the disabled to cross this road?" (crossing guard!) or "how do low-income workers get to work without cars?" (shuttle from the train!) or "what about elderly people who need to run individual errands?" (taxi voucher!) can improve a lot of those problems. Even just saying "We're going to put 80% of the cash for this project into streetscape improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists, and reserve 20% of it to address needs that aren't met by it," helps a lot. As does adequate funding of transit and senior services and paratransit and so on -- a girl can dream. :) But also, absolutely enormous improvements in infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians has resulted in a teeeeeeeeeeeeeny impact on how much road & parking is available for cars. I mean, really really small.

By: yarly

yarly — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 07:46:21 -0800

But also, absolutely enormous improvements in infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians has resulted in a teeeeeeeeeeeeeny impact on how much road & parking is available for cars. I mean, really really small. posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:38 AM on August 22 [+] [!] That sounds amazing! I just get frustrated 'round these parts when so-called "urbanists" fight for things like eliminating parking at suburban hospitals, arguing that "people can just walk from the metro stop to the hospital." Which is 1.5 miles away, and stops running at 11 pm.

By: mephron

mephron — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:44:28 -0800

Hi! I don't drive because of my disability - my right knee being screwed up so I can't operate a car, so to get to work I walk, take the train, take the subway, then walk some more - and if I see these scooters, like I do bicycles, getting in a position where they can hit me, I will prepare to introduce my cane to their thoracic or cranial cavity with absolutely no regrets, because if the question is my life or physical health versus theirs, there is no choice. This has nearly happened before. And for the closing of the sidewalks for construction or 'look at our alfresco dining area', well, that also is a situation where in a sane world, people would recognize that those of us who need to walk deserve the sidewalk more, and if they wanted it, they would pay so much for it that it wouldn't be worth it. I may have strong feelings about this, having gotten stronger since I became disabled. (A month ago in my building, I was part of a spontaneous demonstration because there was an announcement they were closing both escalators and the elevator from ground to lobby for a full week. I was enraged, but the gentleman who worked for a different company in the building made me look meek as a mouse. And the next day someone almost hit me with their bike when I was crossing the street, because the idiot brigade that runs MetroTech Center thinks it's cute to put up shrubbery which hides the bike lanes and you can't see a damn thing coming up Jay Street, and I'm pondering looking up how to formulate paraquat or agent orange.)

By: Emmy Rae

Emmy Rae — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:45:39 -0800

On my old walking route someone was fixing up a house. The construction company put up 2 2x4s at an angle across the sidewalk, blocking sidewalk access in front of the house. I always walked by outside of work hours and there was nothing there that needed blocking. Sidewalk was empty. I know for a fact a man who used a wheelchair often used that route and ended up in dangerous traffic. Anyway some mysterious person kicked the 2x4s back onto the house's lawn regularly, since they were only held in place by a couple of nails.

By: TwoStride

TwoStride — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 09:06:47 -0800

and the second best parking to small spaces suitable only for small cars (Smart size). I cannot adequately describe the particular subset of rage I feel whenever I'm in a parking garage and see someone's ginormous SUV parked in the "compact" spaces, but I totally imagine it would only be amplified by seeing the same thing happen in this proposed parking scenario.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 09:24:30 -0800

Things have gotten better, or at least different, when it comes to parking here in Toronto. Check out this photo from 1975 and feast your eyes on the parking lot in the shadow of the CN Tower.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 09:44:15 -0800

Vandalizing the scooters is pretty bush league, not to mention uncreative and wasteful. Why not just steal them? I don't believe for a second that their security systems are that good. My guess—without having looked into it much—is that they use a GPS receiver and a cellular modem to report their position.* Without doing anything like spoofing GPS signals (which is surprisingly trivial to do), it seems like you could just toss one in a van where the GPS signal would be blocked, drive it into a garage or something, then disassemble it, toss out the tracking device and add in a standard LiPo charging lead. Hit it with a coat of paint and—done. Each one of those things has to be worth a few hundred bucks at least. Plus each one you sell means one less customer for Bird, because now somebody who is a potential scooter-user owns a scooter. It's actually way more damaging to their business than just destroying one, which is probably a rounding error at most, because they're doubtless looking at number of users and growth rates to justify their insane valuation to investors. The only thing Bird Inc. would see on their monitoring was the last known position, before you tossed it in a van. Not much they'd be able to do. I wonder what their "shrink rate" is like. * Looks like they have a uBlox GPS transmitter. Hilariously, it's the top component on the board stack. Once you know where it is, you don't even need to crack open the case. You could just take a drill bit with a stop collar from the outside, kill the big RF IC, and basically give the thing an icepick lobotomy. 30 seconds, tops, and you could do it on the street with a cordless drill. Then you could take it wherever you wanted to refashion it as a regular scooter.

By: jeather

jeather — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:12:03 -0800

There have been interesting fights about the restaurants here that put terrasses on public property (on the sidewalk, next to the building; on the sidewalk, next to the curb; in the parking spots in front of the building). The rules have finally required 1.5m of sidewalk space, wheelchair accessibility onto the terrasse and no smoking, but when it's on the sidewalk but next to the curb it's SO unpleasant to walk through the waiters etc between the restaurant and the sidewalk. When it's on the parking spot, it feels less like you're walking in the middle of the restaurant. I also feel very strongly that if your city does snow clearance of streets, it should also do it for sidewalks, which are part of the whole network.

By: soelo

soelo — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:21:21 -0800

in a van where the GPS signal would be blocked Does a standard van actually block a GPS signal or is this a specialized one? I once submitted a complaint online to the city of Minneapolis about an icy patch on a downtown sidewalk. They said they would get back to me in 3 weeks. It was early March. This patch and most of the worst ones I see are on the sidewalk along a parking lot and it seems like those are the last ones cleaned, so the snow is all trampled down into a sheet of ice. The parking lot owners need to be ticketed. This particular one was right behind a bus stop, which is another big issue here with snow clearance.

By: entropone

entropone — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:26:27 -0800

Eh, I'm cynical. I RARELY see consideration for how low income, poor, and disabled people are going to be impacted by removal of parking or other schemes to directly increase the cost of driving. Forgive me if I can't just believe in the "trickle down" theory here, especially when the projects that tend to get the most attention in DC (street car, bike lanes) are expressly for the benefit of people who have the luxury of physical ability, time, and living close to home/work. I get your skepticism, since a lot of these projects are not always well-communicated, and they're also often bundled with other projects of gentrification, and they come out of a history of only starting to provide public amenities once cities became the playgrounds of the wealthy again after a few decades of being left to rot. A couple things that I see being crucial to this conversation:

The most vulnerable road users (those who are killed at highest rates by inattentive drivers) are the young, the old, the disabled, and those who work on the street
A better public option, which would serve everybody especially low income people (better transit - transit is cheaper and more efficient than auto use) is often blocked by over-reliance/over-prioritization on cars

One of the difficulties around schemes to directly increase the cost of driving is the fact that it needs to happen in absolute lockstep with providing better options - but, like, it's physically impossible to provide better public options (transit - buses, say) with the number of cars clogging the roads in many/most major American cities (please join me in a conniption when I see a single doubleparked car causing a bus filled with dozens of people to wait behind it). It's a very difficult problem to address well, because "well there will be a difficult transition period" isn't really a good enough answer. Anyway, I think your concerns are important but also not incompatible with a lot of the Safer Streets/Complete Streets/Vision Zero/Transit work being done, but it's also important for proponents like me to make sure we're listening to people like you and paying attention to what we're paying attention to, and how we're communicating it.

By: entropone

entropone — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:31:41 -0800

I once submitted a complaint online to the city of Minneapolis about an icy patch on a downtown sidewalk. They said they would get back to me in 3 weeks. It was early March. This patch and most of the worst ones I see are on the sidewalk along a parking lot and it seems like those are the last ones cleaned, so the snow is all trampled down into a sheet of ice. The parking lot owners need to be ticketed. This particular one was right behind a bus stop, which is another big issue here with snow clearance. Oh god, I can commiserate about MPLS bus stop snow clearance. When I lived in MPLS, my bus stop would just turn into a receptacle for plowed snow. It would be just full of giant ice chunks, completely unusable, which is too bad because being sheltered from the wind is a big deal! And when there was the polar vortex, and the news stations were reporting that exposed skin will freeze solid after, i don't know, thirty seconds of exposure to the forecasted -40F temperatures (that's temperature, not wind chill), and my work distributed a memo about how offices were open and how employees were expected to show up for work and to please stay safe by keeping a winter emergency kit in your car, well me and people like me who couldn't afford a car or to park it at work well we were pretty fkn rankled by the whole situation.

By: Emmy Rae

Emmy Rae — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 11:20:31 -0800

Minneapolis people, I got very aggressive about reporting sidewalks last year - I literally would stop 7 or 8 times in a 50 minute walk to text myself an address, every morning for a week or two at intervals throughout the winter - and I saw a lot of progress. I know the form says they have 21 days to take care of it but I was seeing never-shoveled sidewalks handled by the homeowners within 2 days of my reporting. I think the deciding factor is whether or not the person response can be shamed or scared that the city will follow through and make them pay for sidewalk clearance. It's also possible the deciding factor was that whoever monitors that submission form decided I was a woman on a mission and they didn't want me visiting their office.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 11:31:37 -0800

Does a standard van actually block a GPS signal or is this a specialized one? A regular van would if it didn't have any windows and there was a solid divider between the cargo compartment and the windshield. The GPS signals will go through normal un-metallized glass but they won't penetrate sheet metal (much). If you want numbers, somebody on Stackexchange did the math. T;dr: "The fraction of the E-field at [1.5 GHz] that is not reflected from a steel surface is already down at 2×10−6 and the fraction that transmits a cm of steel is smaller than can be accommodated on my calculator. A very thin steel foil would block a GPS signal." Modern receivers are very good, like better than –167 dBm sensitivity for cheap ones, but not that good. If you want good GPS reception inside a vehicle, and aren't right up under the windshield or near a window, you need an external antenna. However, the 3G signal could escape from a van, and could be used to roughly locate a device. Off the top of my head I can envision a bunch of different attacks against Bird scooters:

"Icepick lobotomy" against the GPS receiver, as described above. Simple, inelegant, probably pretty effective. Ruins the GPS board though. :(
Use a cheap SDR to spoof GPS signals so that Bird thinks the scooter isn't moving while you're hauling it away, intact. Very illegal (the FCC frowns on that sort of thing), might be detectable if they're smart enough to compare the 3G tower location against the GPS location. I kinda doubt that they are doing that, but who knows. This would give you the entire scooter intact and undamaged.
Cut open the case and disconnect the 3G antenna or remove power to the tracking board, or pop the SIM out. Seems to be what someone did in the Twitter photo of the internals; both the power and antenna are disconnected.
Cut open the case and reprogram the tracking board. The tracking board, at least on the models that have been opened up, is a Particle Electron with the USB socket removed, but the solder pads are still there. You could 3D print a clip-on connector, like people use for JTAG unbricking of phones and stuff, and get access to the USB. Might need to twiddle a few pins to zap the EPROM, but once you do that and load your own software—I think it's Arduino-like—you can have it report whatever data you want. Probably opens up possibilities to game their backend system and scam them out of charging bounties, too.

The BOM cost on the scooters seems pretty high. I've heard that the same scooters they're using, without the control circuitry, retails for almost $500. Even if you part it out, the batteries and brushless motors are probably worth a fair bit. The Particle Electron board retails in kit form for $70. On the bottom of it is a commodity data SIM; it probably doesn't allow calls, but you could probably pop it into another device and enjoy some amount of free data connectivity for a while. All in all, it's a fairly expensive device to just air-drop on a bunch of major cities. I mean, in a way, Bird is doing some pretty, um, progressive wealth redistribution: straight from their more-money-than-sense investors to whoever grabs their scooters first. The best part about all this is that Bird has basically set themselves up to be ripped off, because they refuse to have actual employees, and are instead relying on ~~sub-minimum wage laborers~~ crowdsourcing to maintain and charge their scooters. So seeing some rando in a hoodie come up and grab a scooter off the sidewalk while holding a phone-like device is a perfectly normal thing; they could just as easily be a Bird non-employee trying to make the $7 or whatever "charging bounty". These guys are going to be this decade's Kozmo.com. But we're going to get a ton of nice electric scooters out of it on the surplus market, so that's something. There's been some hilarious and utterly predictable hijinks when various organizations have tried to strap GPS receivers onto unwilling people. Turns out you can just wrap them in aluminum foil. (There's something about the quote "The charge against one [person] stemmed from alleged misuse of aluminum foil" that I find darkly funny.)

By: asperity

asperity — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:09:36 -0800

Minneapolis people, I got very aggressive about reporting sidewalks last year - I literally would stop 7 or 8 times in a 50 minute walk to text myself an address, every morning for a week or two at intervals throughout the winter - and I saw a lot of progress. Denver sidewalk reporting policy: "The City allows one complaint per year per complainant and will not accept lists of complaints or multiple addresses. " It may be possible to report more than one snow clearance failure, but those are by no means the only problems with Denver sidewalks. (When they exist at all.)

By: soelo

soelo — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:21:43 -0800

One per year?! That is madness. Reporting these things is a service to the community! I guess they have so many workers already monitoring the sidewalks that they don't need any help, right? /hamburger

By: asperity

asperity — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 13:00:06 -0800

Ha, no. Monitoring the sidewalks is a volunteer project. (Same goes for the bike lanes.)

By: tavella

tavella — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 13:43:10 -0800

So I ate my lunch sitting on the steps and keeping up a mental survey of scooters. Interesting but probably not really surprising fact: the motorized scooters on the sidewalk were all white men. The people using the bike lane were non-white. Small sample, but I suspect the San Jose police use being on the sidewalk as another reason to hassle PoC, but leave white dudes alone.

By: asperity

asperity — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 15:15:52 -0800

Do We Need a New Theory and Name for "Bike Lanes"?

All this came up because I was trying to think of the correct new term for "bike lane" as we proliferate more vehicle types that run more or less at the speed and width of bicycles but are clearly not bicycles, such as electric scooters. The two logical terms seem to be narrow lane or midspeed lane. One way or another the two concepts will need to track with each other. I wonder if this kind of language can make our sense of the role of these lanes more flexible, and thus less divisive.

Is It Time to Redefine the Bike Lane?

In my observations in Cleveland, Bird scooters seem to have generated a whole new constituency supporting bike lanes almost overnight. People who aren't interested in bicycling may find something more appealing about a scooter. If their energy increases the momentum to carve out street space for bicycling and other modes that are lighter, safer, and less polluting than cars, it could be a huge boon for cities. Should "bike lane" still be the term to describe this space on the street?

Bird scooters are the best thing I've ever seen happen for bike and pedestrian advocacy.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 01:45:20 -0800

Here in Amsterdam, many old car roads have been turned into fietstraats or 'bicycle roads' Cars -and other motorized vehicles - are still allowed but bikes have priority and can occupy the center/whole road. And the speed limit is 30kph - about 20mph.