Bike Snob E-Scoots Portland | Outside Online

[Bruce Geffen]

Good afternoon.

Even though this was published three years ago, I found it entertaining, and thought provoking. 

https://www.outsideonline.com/2340806/dockless-scooters-cities-pros-cons-bikesnob?ue=Z2VmZmVuYkBnbWFpbC5jb20%3D&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Destinations-03152021&utm_content=Final&utm_term=destinations

Bruce Geffen

[Ken Clark]

He's got a bunch of good opinion pieces.  I like this one:

Stop Driving Over the Speed Limit

Stop Driving Over the Speed Limit Eben Weiss You're contributing to America's addiction to speeding—and you're much more likely to kill someone

"In urban bike- and pedestrian-advocacy circles, there’s widespread recognition that we’ve got to curb speeding in order for walking, bicycling, and life in general to flourish. As part of its Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths, New York City lowered the citywide speed limit to 25 mph in 2014, thanks in no small part to the efforts of those advocates. In so doing, the New York City Department of Transportation noted that a pedestrian struck by a driver at 25 mph is half as likely to die as a pedestrian struck at 30 mph—which is an astonishing statistic. Short of banning cars altogether, it’s hard to think of a change that would pay more dividends in terms of safety than getting drivers to slow the fuck down. In any sane society, that would be the top priority."

Back on the scooters topic though, I had a thought the other day.  What if we made 'transition lanes' for small motorized vehicles?  Not really the scooters, though they could certainly use them to pass.  We have a lot of situations in town where there's currently a four lane, but there really should only be two or maybe three.  We've done a few road diets, and two through lanes, a continuous left turn lane, and bike lanes make a lot of sense there.  But there are other places where there's no point having a turn lane.  But we really need to take excess capacity out of the road there.  Places where it just encourages speeding.  So, what if we did two motor vehicle lanes, two bike-lane-sized transition lanes, and the bike lanes.  Then the bike lanes would be more buffered from the F250 lanes, and we'd have terrific space for faster-traveling e-bikes, scooters (mopeds), even small motorcycles. 

Because part of what we're missing in Ann Arbor are the scooters.  Pretty much any European city is full of Vespas, Honda scooters, etc.  Here's a fairly random streetscape in Lyon, France:

The turquoise ovals are bikes, bike infrastructure (a contra-flow bike lane), and a cyclist.  The green ovals are scooters.  There are two on the right, and about six on the left.  But fewer cars.  A similar one in Ann Arbor:

The new bike boulevard, with one bike (parked at the oval), and a bunch of cars.  Cheap gas for ya.

I think we need a lot more of pretty much everything smaller than the four-wheelers.  E-scooters aren't that bad, but they shouldn't be used on sidewalks (bikes shouldn't either), and they should have designated parking spots.

Ken