I severely suck at doing these Notes. I haven’t yet found the best tack to take. I’m capturing too much each day and I need to find a way to hone in on what matters to these posts. There are others who do better dailies and I’ll recommend them later herein.
New York State/City
Another day and still no progress on the Alt-Wheels bills in New York State (click image to see):
The source of that quote.
Meanwhile, in the real world the delusional Mayor is blind to:
Protesters stage die-in at Washington Square Park amid recent increase in cyclist deaths
Hundreds of cyclists hold ‘die-in’ in New York City to protest deaths
A Thousand Cyclists Stage ‘Die-In’ For Safer Streets: ‘The Mayor Is Not Doing Enough’
Cyclists protest spate of rider deaths with ‘die-in’ at Washington Square Park
‘DIE-IN’ SPECIAL REPORT: Without Safety Fixes, Cycling is in a Death Spiral
Meanwhile, the ego-mad politically-posturing Mayor sent out this today:
Translation: To all those who voted for me, FU!
Mayor de Blasio was chauffeured more than 12 miles — from Gracie Mansion to work out in Brooklyn — on Monday morning even though his usual Park Slope gym was temporarily closed for water contamination – and despite the chance to try out another facility closer to his Manhattan home free of charge.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
This Mayor is full of FU.
His Department of Transportation was severely embarrassed. Highlight of a must-read Twitter thread:
Miraculous Safety Toilet Plungers Fix Fifth Avenue Mixing Zones For Just $4.99
Jordan Peterson: Making Things Worse (Short)
Applause to Transformation Dept. for making things better. And here’s a video the NYC Department of Transportation — and the Mayor — need:
Zig Ziglar: YOU Are The Problem
This sums up the state of things:
That’s the reason why both the Governor and Mayor wring their hands over Alt-Wheels. They know they’ve created a traffic hellscape for everyone. And neither are doing anything to dramatically change it. Reality is hard and they prefer to ignore it and hope it goes away.
A reminder to both:
Stop passing the damn buck!
eScooters
That is what Steve Allen would have called Dumbth.
Not Dumbth, in Paris:
That’s not to say Paris has welcomed rental — or even owned — eScooters. It’s a start, although the Mayor herself is a bike rider:
Changing traffic requires leadership who rides in traffic.
Getting back to parking, Oonee:
See that video embed at Twitter.
And more Oonee: Summer Network Development Update
Bird rental eScooters is in trouble:
Paywalled: Hit by Big Loss, Bird Seeks $300M in New Funds
Free, with snark: Bird Scooters Looking For Several Hundred Million More Dollars to Piss Away
Well, what is there to say? All of the eScooter rental services started with what they could get: eScooters that could not handle fleet use. If that wasn’t bad enough, vandals and news reports glorifying those vandals only made things worse (see Peterson video above).
Even bike people are piling on:
Time for me to repeat: Not everyone can pedal. Not everyone wants to pedal. I also need to add: Not everyone wants to sit on those fucking seats that sweat-up the crack of your ass! Tunnelvision is the enemy of cyclists. It also evinces a disgusting snobbery of the kind prevalent in today’s politics. This is not the way to make friends. (OK, so neither was my ass-crack line. Sometimes I get mad, OK?)
For the youngs who don’t get that cultural reference.
Back to Bird being in trouble: What’s the endgame of these companies? Do they hope to convert people to buying an eScooter? Only Bird is offering to sell an eScooter. And I doubt many people have bought it. People are, um, flocking to the Ninebot/Segway MAX. And when they regret that purchase, they’ll go for the Boosted Rev. Because they will have learned buying cheap is actually expensive.
I think all of the eScooter rental companies had the endgame of being acquired and cashing out. And it looks like that’s not going to happen. As smug as the “eScooters will become eBikes” tweet was, there is probably truth in it. The rental eBikes haven’t faced the public disdain of eScooters. They’re also built like tanks to begin with and are very hard to steal and camouflage as a purchase. But everyone is overlooking what rental eScooters have accomplished: They’ve introduced people to a transportation alternative. People who wouldn’t have thought of pedaling a bike got their first taste of something different. And I can tell you from the traffic to eScooter posts at this blog, renters are turning into purchasers. It’s just too bad they’re all going cheap. Again: Only the Boosted Rev is worth money.
User/Owner Reports
I Can’t Ride a Bike. Can I Scooter?
But eventually, I got the hang of it. By about 15 minutes into my 21-minute, 46-second ride, during which I traveled exactly .99 miles, I felt like I could ride a scooter without first checking that there were no moving cars within a block of me.
I spent a month commuting by scooter – here’s why Britain isn’t ready for it
I did save some money – my normal commute, on San Francisco’s light rail system, costs $5 a day, so I saved roughly $75 by taking the Bird instead. The discomfort wasn’t worth it, though.
Some of these problems are also the fault of the city itself. San Francisco, like the UK, needs more bike lanes to keep riders safe, and for one of the world’s wealthiest cities, the state of its roads is inexcusable. As cities grow, commuters need alternatives to cars, and governments are being seriously slow to catch on.
At the end of the third week, when I locked my scooter at a train station (you’re not allowed to take them on the trains, because they don’t fold), I came back a few hours later to find that someone had cut the cable attached to the front wheel through with a pair of scissors or pliers, rendering it useless.
eSkateboards
Swappable batteries. Drivetrain unknown at post time. Arc Boards is a Singapore-based company with a reputation for quality products and good customer service. They don’t make junk and their prices reflect that. The reveal for this one can’t happen soon enough.
Last Kick
Can you guess who?
It’s RuPaul, who tried to red pill drivers.
Bonus Material
Since I suck at these posts right now, it’s unfair to readers to wait for or miss news. I recommend these:
Posted once a day: Transportation Alternatives Daily Bike Forecast by Bike Snob NYC
Has a Morning Links compilation: Biking in LA
Updated many times a day: Streetsblog and Streetsblog NYC
Previously here:
Alt-Wheels Notes #4
Alt-Wheels Notes #3
Alt-Wheels Notes #2
Alt-Wheels Notes #1
Alt-Wheels Notes category
Mike Cane's Atomic Supermen 