Electric Scooters in New York City? They Just Might Work
So living in NYC for almost 8 years now I&#x27;ve become pretty anti-cyclist. Here&#x27;s a short list of beefs that spring to mind:<p>- Cyclists riding on sidewalks. Apart from delivery people, a cyclist should never ride on the sidewalk in Manhattan. Ever. If you find yourself riding on the sidewalk, just don&#x27;t take the bike out. Bikes are for roads. The article even mentions how sidewalks are narrow.<p>- Bike lanes (IMHO) have made traffic significantly worse because they&#x27;re thoroughly underutilized and basically kill a lane of traffic (on the avenues at least).<p>- The article also mentions how pedestrians spill over to the streets and bike lanes. Yep, that&#x27;ll happen. Particularly if the city fills the sidewalk with more newsstands and allows businesses to spill out onto the sidewalk. There should be a rule that there can be no obstruction on an avenue of major street (think 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 59th, etc) that reduces the clear space to anything less than ten feet. On other streets? 6-8 feet.<p>- I generally find the delivery cyclists are fine. It&#x27;s the commuters and tourists who need to be removed from the road. Why? Well tourists are just oblivious and will ride down a bike lane 3 abreast at 6 miles an hour. But the commuters are just plain assholes, as a whole group.<p>Go see this for yourself on the Brooklyn Bridge. This is a place that at any reasonable time is going to be packed with tourists. And just count (it won&#x27;t take long) how often you see a cyclist knock a pedestrian who has &quot;dared&quot; to spill over into the bike lane. Honestly, bikes should just be banned completely from the Brooklyn Bridge.<p>- Cyclists will ride down bike lanes and streets the wrong way (yes bike lanes have directions) and run red lights and give you attitude if you&#x27;re in the way as a pedestrian even though you have right of way.<p>So am I excited about the prospect of scooters? Hell, no. I&#x27;ve been to SF and seen these littered all over the place. The sidewalks in Manhattan (in particular) are congested enough that we don&#x27;t need scooters littered on them.<p>At least Citibikes have to go into bays.<p>But above all of this the biggest problems in NYC are the continued subsidization of car ownership. If it were up to me I would:<p>- Eliminate all street parking<p>- Loading zones only<p>- Tax private car ownership for anyone living below 125th street.<p>- Have congestion pricing (the article mentions this too).<p>- Get rid of the stupid turn lanes (where pedestrians have to take turns with cars turning crossing the street so as a pedestrian you only get to cross 1&#x2F;4 of the time instead of 1&#x2F;2).<p>But please just say no to scooters.