ignoring all the cars parked on the pavement, have you considered picking it up and moving it 1 metre
Or just walking around it lol
I had to walk five extra steps around a bicycle, billions must die.
Reality is like a lazy vidya game made circa 2006, this person cannot go that way; it is completely blocked
Mobility aids are a thing.
And yes, the cars need keying as well.
I move these things, and those god forsaken scooters, all the fucking time… they start beeping at you like you’re stealing them lol
Getting off my bicycle, putting the kickstand down, and taking a picture of it so I can post angrily about it on the internet
Those rental bikes/scooters are stupid though. I see them block wheelchair ramps and sidewalks all the time. And yes I did pick it up and throw it in the bushes.
You’re wrong about the bikes. Inexpensive rental bicycles are a great solution to a myriad of problems. And for every bike parked in a wheelchair ramp there is 10 cars blocking handicap parking.
They’re great when they’re run by the city and there’s designated spots to park/charge them. Our city does have one such program, but that doesn’t stop the bazingabrains from littering the sidewalks with their versions. There’s also the issue that they externalize all the losses by “renting” the bikes to 3rd parties who have to go around at night charging the things and eat the losses when they get broken/stolen.
I disagree, my city has the dedicated drop off zones and guess what, they’re ALL on the sidewalks. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if pedestrians were more than an afterthought (compared to cars). Ideally, the rental bikes should be allowed to park wherever, including (especially?) in car parking spaces.
Not sure why you take issue with a company’s profits being centered around maintaining the bikes. “Externalizing the losses” is not a meaningful expression - both companies are profiting from the relationship.
The third party is usually a gig worker and not another company.
The bikes aren’t stupid; they didn’t block anything, their riders did. They work great in places with good infrastructure and a conscientious community.
and a conscientious community
So the majority of the west is eliminated from consideration
Probably up to localities to legislate that rental bikes must have designated return locations and fine the companies for violations. Hitting the techbro’s bank accounts is the only way to make them think about externalities.
The only socially acceptable way. Giving every tech bro a e-biking funeral where they get cast off to sea on a raft of lithium ion batteries would certainly be satisfying
The bikes are stupid because money spent to ride them is going away to a foreign (i.e. American) tech company. It is another marker of the corporate encroaching itself into public property. Often these vehicles arrive on the streets unconsensually.
Don’t most if not all vehicles?
I’d rather a nonconsensual shared bike on my street that I can use than a nonconsensual private car that I can’t.
Good point let’s destroy all cars
FWIIIIII hee hoo hee hoo
The bikes are stupid because they were designed to be left on the sidewalk instead of having designated charging/parking areas. The city bikes are better and were designed to be left at docking locations, which also solves the charging issues.
Where I was at when they had the city-owned bikes, no one would use them because the locations to drop them off were not where anyone wanted to go, they were nearly unused and stolen often. When lime bike came they were everywhere and hugely popular, we did have the problems with the sidewalks being blocked though and I moved a bike at least a couple times to help an elderly person get past it. If the city could coordinate a program better it could be great, it’s almost like they’ve done it bad on purpose just to help encourage more privatization, which is a common tactic.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
deleted by creator
Why do you figure that is?
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.
Not dunk worthy imo. Telling bazinga Techbro compamies to pick up after themselves is good, if ineffective. One bike blocking a sidewalk is a minor nuisance, sure, but if you don’t complain about it it’ll just keep happening and maybe even get worse since the company will increase distribution.
There’s a instinctive desire to defend bikes, but this is conceptually not much different from Uber leaving a delivery bot parked on a sidewalk or something. Bikes are good and bike sharing schemes can be good, but this is obviously not s good system.
I assume the point of the post is that cars are taking up the sidewalk as well, in addition to at least two additional sidewalks of space
There’s a instinctive desire to defend bikes, but this is conceptually not much different from Uber leaving a delivery bot parked on a sidewalk or something.
It’s also not conceptually different from all those parked cars, including ones that protrude onto the sidewalk, to which the twitter post seems to take no offense.
The systems work great if they have proper infrastructure to support them (see China), but governments aren’t going to build good infrastructure if the systems are sabotaged first by people throwing the bikes in canals or whatever.
I’m posting as hard as I can, but the bike still isn’t moving
This is a private corporation who owns these bikes and they are encroaching on public land for profit
Cars are bad. But rental scooters and bikes being thrown all over the place and blocking pedestrian infrastructure because the bazinga companies owning them are not being held accountable is a public nuisance.
Able-bodied persons can move the damn thing or step over them and only be mildly inconvenienced but doing that is not so easy if you are disabled, elderly or if you’re just walking with a stroller. Also, a scooter or bike littering a bike lane can be dangerous in poor lighting or other poor visibility situations.
A type of system where people ride their own bikes or scooters and can bring them on public transit is much to be preferred as people care about those and park them sensibly.
Quick idea: Give everyone their own bike and charge tourists a mandatory tax that gives them a rental bike for the duration of their stay, that they are responsible for returning.
David should trying crying about it.
The parking situation in the UK is becoming atrocious. People just park their cars all over the fucking pavement and on verges, blocking wheelchair users and low-mobility people. I see driveways with six cars and then more cars parked outside on the pavement like holy fuck how many cars do you need? Roads that could easily accomodate cars driving in opposite directions five years ago are now effectively one-way roads because cars block up an entire half of the road.
And you can’t key them or let the air out of the tyres any more because of the doorbell surveillance network people have opted themselves into, or there are cameras on the cars themselves.
It’s the worst when they are parked in the middle of a bit path, and so I really hate lime, but c’mon dude you’re a pedestrian! Those cars pose a bigger problem
David Harvey’s Anti-Cyclist Chronicles
sees red line painted on the asphalt
I hope there isn’t a fire anywhere near there, those firetrucks might not hesitate to wreck any vehicles that get in the way of putting out a fire.
I hope the fire truck doesn’t suffer too much damage.
Then pick it up and move it you lazy bum
I will never forget watching some youths throw one of these on the DLR tracks in the early days
Mad ableism ITT
Where?
Every single “just move it” comment
