Tag Archives: multi-modal transportation

e-scooter hate

Here’s a Canadian e-scooter hit-piece. You definitely won’t find me on an e-scooter in Philadelphia, because both the outdated infrastructure and driver behavior make it much more risky than I could ever accept. But that suggests the solution: rethinking and modernizing infrastructure. E-scooters belong in the “bike lanes”, and bike lanes need to be modernized to accommodate all sorts of light personal vehicles. They need to be separated and physically protected from high-momentum vehicles designed for inter-city highway travel, and if they are combined with infrastructure for these high-momentum vehicles at all, they need their own signals at intersections so that the two are never, ever in conflict.

You need some enforcement, but we should remember that the core reason for all the traffic rules, licensing, registration, insurance, sobriety checkpoints, search and seizure, personal injury litigation, etc. is that cars are just so deadly. Yes, there are anecdotes of bikes and scooters running into each other and running into pedestrians and causing the occasional injury, but most of those are not going to be serious. So there is a question of how much we want to constrain personal freedom (as we do very significantly and appropriately with private cars) when it comes to much less dangerous forms of transportation (now, about those aggressive jogging strollers…)

I might allow autonomous golf carts traveling at low speeds (5-15 mph maybe) in the bike lanes, although today’s bike lanes are not wide enough for that. I might just ban private high-momentum human-driven vehicles from most streets and let the golf carts use them. Cities need this if forms other than cars are going to be viable forms of transportation in all kinds of weather for all kinds of people, and not just a from of recreation for the young and healthy. Of course, at this point the cyclists and e-scootists might decide they want to use the street too, and that might end up being okay. And then, especially if we don’t need so much space for parking as shared autonomous vehicles and human-powered transportation modes become more practical, we can turn part of what used to be the bike lane and sidewalk into gardens, affordable housing, or whatever a city needs. It’s a nice vision, and anything in the urban U.S. public infrastructure context has just taken much, much longer to progress than I would have thought in my youth. But I hold out some hope the breakthrough of autonomous electric vehicles, which is inevitable, could catalyze some faster change.

the end of drone deliveries? long live drone deliveries!

In an example of a bad headline, this article is headlined “Amazon ends California drone deliveries“. But in the first paragraph, you learn they are discontinuing them in one particular town where they have been pilot testing them. There could be any number of political or bureaucratic reasons for this. And in the third paragraph, you learn they are starting them elsewhere, in this case in a Phoenix suburb.

My take: Deliveries by small, light autonomous vehicles make a ton of sense. In my view though, we are considering flying drones because our ground-level transportation designs are about 50 years out of date. We need to evolve our thinking from “bike lanes” to dedicated lanes for all sorts of slow, light vehicles that aren’t going to cause serious injuries or damage if they run into things. They have to be completely separate from lanes designed for highway vehicles. They need to be separate from pedestrian walkways. They need their own signals (or maybe they don’t need signals at all, but only if they are nowhere near those deadly highway vehicles). They need to be well constructed, well maintained, and enforced. I would allow only zero-emission and quiet vehicles in these lanes. All of this should be cheaper and easier than continuing to feed the money pit that is our outdated transportation infrastructure system currently in place in urban areas.

Politically, at least where I live, this gets into the “green gentrification” debate, and we are losing that debate massively, having just elected a mayor who is openly hostile to anything that would reduce the amount of blood soaking our streets. This is irrational of course, when safe efficient street designs could help people of all incomes and backgrounds get to jobs and lead longer, healthier lives.

who is left behind by automobile-dependent urban design?

I like this list from Todd Litman on Planetizen of the groups of people who are left behind (quite literally, left at home or waiting for buses and taxis or friends or relatives that might never come) by car-dependent urban form.

Non-Automobile Travel Demands

Youths 10-20 (10-30% of population).

Seniors who do not or should not drive (5-15%).

Adults unable to drive due to disability (3-5%).

Lower income households burdened by vehicle expenses (15-30%).

Law-abiding drinkers.

Community visitors who lack a vehicle or driver’s license.

People who want to walk or bike for enjoyment and health.

Drivers who want to avoid chauffeuring burdens.

Residents who want to reduce traffic and parking congestion, accidents and pollution emissions.

I like this list because it is crystal clear that there is not any one political orientation, ethnic group, or income level disproportionately burdened. It is a large swath of the population cutting across all these groups. Reducing all the hidden subsidies and incentives to remain car dependent would not be a reduction of freedom for the population, as some self-styled “conservatives” would have us believe. It would be an increase in the options and lifestyle choices available to all of us.

The only thing I would change on this list is to start youths at age 0. Plenty of young families where I live (a very-walkable, somewhat-bikable-for-the-brave community with dirty-slow-but-reliable-public-transportation) put children in daycare by age 1, and almost all put them in preschool by age 3 or 4 because there is no public preschool provided. Then, starting at age 5, many people choose not to send their children to the public school within walking distance of their home because they believe a public, charter, or private school farther from home will provide a better education and give them advantages in life.

One more overlooked factor is that state law provides no flexibility on car seats and booster seats for children when using taxis or ride hailing services, or when driving on low speed urban streets vs. highways, or flexibility on helmet laws when safe protected bike infrastructure is available. (Mostly) well-intentioned politicians from car-dependent areas of the state pass these laws without considering the non-car-dependent portion of the population they serve.