Because the rental companies were all created by bazingabrains who don't care about externalities and never contacted the communities they just dump these things in. There aren't designated zones in place to park these things and even if there were the market is oversaturated by a bunch of VC subsidized companies. The app has the ability to detect when you leave them in a bad spot but won't actually enforce anything.
There aren't designated zones in place to park these things and even if there were the market is oversaturated by a bunch of VC subsidized companies.
Bollocks to that, you could replace every 10th parking spot with bike / scooter parking and that'd be an entirely solved issue. The thing is if you park them somewhere that people think of as car parking space, so most of everything, they'll just huck these things on the sidewalk.
All your other points apply to cars, too, is the point. Sure, at best these'd be a municipal service instead of 10 carbon copies of the same business running them at the same time, but looking at the above picture and thinking "boy those rental scooter / bikes sure are stupid" is missing the forest for the trees here.
Cars and rental bikes can both be bad. The fact that all arguments applies to cars too isn't an argument for bazingarental. If the arguments are the same, then it shows that these rentals aren't in fact a good solution, since they still have the same issue.
I agree that it would be good if car parking was converted to bicycle parking.
I'm not going to bat for bazingarentals (great term btw), but looking at this picture and singularly being against the rental bike is such a nonsenical position to hold.
Is it because you care about pedestrian space? If so, at least like 5 other problems should jump at you. I'd have no quarrel with this if it was "Look at how much it fucking sucks to be a pedestrian here", cause, true. But then the bike's not the problem any more than the fact that the streetlight is on the pavement, give or take 2,5 sidewalk spaces of car parking or how that sidewalk looks in fairly rough shape compared to the road surface
It's because I live in a city with public bikelanes and every single rental bike "disruptor" company creates reckless, dangerous and uncaring drivers that make the roads unsafe for everyone else with no repercussions.
See I'd blame this on lack of traffic enforcement and not on a bike rental. It seems odd to me to put forth that people magically get worse as they get onto a rental bike in ways they wouldn't be using other transportation options
I guess i agree with you, my issue is the lack of accountability and learning of laws - ie. Lack of trafic enforcement. These private rentals are just those that do the least to facilitate enforcement
The whole thing genuinely seems like the contradictions heightening here. Everybody got really car brained over the latter half of the 20th century, as such, nigh all public land that isn't VERY explicitly not car-land has been claimed and since everybody likes it that way even the fig leaf of regulations that should stop that from happening are basically unenforced. I mean pretty sure you can't park on the sidewalk with your car in the UK, that red line means you can't park on the street there and that Mercedes isn't even taxed currently. Big ol' free-for-all.
Given basically just cars and some weirdos like myself on bicycles it works out fine for most people, but suddenly, at the intersection of "all public land may be used for whatever as long as it's vaguely transportation" and "we can never ever do anything again as a state or constrict businesses" these bike rentals and scooters get dumped all over the place, making people who've long been blind to how much space we sacrificied to cars see that problem for the first time, just not with cars.
There's just no way out of it that the majority of people would like. You'd have to do traffic enforcement. Basically that entire street of cars would have to be towed to assure compliance. That is political suicide, if done at scale. Other than that you actually just remove the bicycle, at which point the business in question will be very happily point out to you as to why the bike is a problem and all of the illegally parked cars aren't, sue you, and win.
Same basically goes for moving traffic enforcement. Fig leaf at best, really, but most people really, really wouldn't like the other option. I know I would.
Because the rental companies were all created by bazingabrains who don't care about externalities and never contacted the communities they just dump these things in. There aren't designated zones in place to park these things and even if there were the market is oversaturated by a bunch of VC subsidized companies. The app has the ability to detect when you leave them in a bad spot but won't actually enforce anything.
Bollocks to that, you could replace every 10th parking spot with bike / scooter parking and that'd be an entirely solved issue. The thing is if you park them somewhere that people think of as car parking space, so most of everything, they'll just huck these things on the sidewalk.
All your other points apply to cars, too, is the point. Sure, at best these'd be a municipal service instead of 10 carbon copies of the same business running them at the same time, but looking at the above picture and thinking "boy those rental scooter / bikes sure are stupid" is missing the forest for the trees here.
Cars and rental bikes can both be bad. The fact that all arguments applies to cars too isn't an argument for bazingarental. If the arguments are the same, then it shows that these rentals aren't in fact a good solution, since they still have the same issue.
I agree that it would be good if car parking was converted to bicycle parking.
I'm not going to bat for bazingarentals (great term btw), but looking at this picture and singularly being against the rental bike is such a nonsenical position to hold.
Is it because you care about pedestrian space? If so, at least like 5 other problems should jump at you. I'd have no quarrel with this if it was "Look at how much it fucking sucks to be a pedestrian here", cause, true. But then the bike's not the problem any more than the fact that the streetlight is on the pavement, give or take 2,5 sidewalk spaces of car parking or how that sidewalk looks in fairly rough shape compared to the road surface
It's because I live in a city with public bikelanes and every single rental bike "disruptor" company creates reckless, dangerous and uncaring drivers that make the roads unsafe for everyone else with no repercussions.
See I'd blame this on lack of traffic enforcement and not on a bike rental. It seems odd to me to put forth that people magically get worse as they get onto a rental bike in ways they wouldn't be using other transportation options
I guess i agree with you, my issue is the lack of accountability and learning of laws - ie. Lack of trafic enforcement. These private rentals are just those that do the least to facilitate enforcement
The whole thing genuinely seems like the contradictions heightening here. Everybody got really car brained over the latter half of the 20th century, as such, nigh all public land that isn't VERY explicitly not car-land has been claimed and since everybody likes it that way even the fig leaf of regulations that should stop that from happening are basically unenforced. I mean pretty sure you can't park on the sidewalk with your car in the UK, that red line means you can't park on the street there and that Mercedes isn't even taxed currently. Big ol' free-for-all.
Given basically just cars and some weirdos like myself on bicycles it works out fine for most people, but suddenly, at the intersection of "all public land may be used for whatever as long as it's vaguely transportation" and "we can never ever do anything again as a state or constrict businesses" these bike rentals and scooters get dumped all over the place, making people who've long been blind to how much space we sacrificied to cars see that problem for the first time, just not with cars.
There's just no way out of it that the majority of people would like. You'd have to do traffic enforcement. Basically that entire street of cars would have to be towed to assure compliance. That is political suicide, if done at scale. Other than that you actually just remove the bicycle, at which point the business in question will be very happily point out to you as to why the bike is a problem and all of the illegally parked cars aren't, sue you, and win.
Same basically goes for moving traffic enforcement. Fig leaf at best, really, but most people really, really wouldn't like the other option. I know I would.