| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 3 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||
Most motorists absolutely hate e-scooters and e-bikes. They hate them with a white-hot passion. You will never see more road rage than against a scooter when I ride it in a traffic lane. The scooter goes about 17mph, and with 3+ traffic lanes available to cars, they will pile up behind a scooter, scream out their open windows, honk and cut me off, and spit in my face: yes literally spit all over my face, because they hate personal mobility so much. Motorists hate anything that isn't a car and is in their way. Motorists hate Critical Mass; they hate light rail or streetcars that hog their rights-of-way; they hate pedestrians (especially when pedestrians aren't wearing the right clothes); they hate Lyft, Uber, and Waymo especially; they hate big trucks and they hate Amish people with horse-drawn buggies. Motorists will establish coalitions to vote against public transit measures in their home towns. They have come out in City Council and other public meetings, to protest and rail, so to speak, to rail against the expansion of light rail into their neighborhoods, because not only do they hate the construction, but they hate the "type of people" that light rail brings, and ultimately they hate the gentrification that comes from a fixed-route project that will ultimately close their shitty exploitive businesses and replace them with more elevated exploitation and richer moguls. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
As someone who's canvassed on transit and bike mobility issues before, I think you've spent too long in online urbanism circles. There's a kernel of truth in what you say but it's exaggerated and victimized way too much. Your examples are also pretty textbook online urbanism and ignores other vulnerable road users (motorcycles, mobility scooters, etc) | |||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | nonameiguess 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
e-scooters kind of sit in an uncanny valley of shittiness. I'll upfront say it's not at all fair to anyone using them responsibly, but there's a lot of cultural baggage that is going to make them uniquely reviled compared to alternatives. For instance, I've longboarded all around the city of Dallas for years and nobody has ever honked at, cut me off, or spit on me. But temporary rental scooters with no permanent docking station carry with them the stigma of: - People riding them on sidewalks to putting pedestrians in danger - "Parking" them right in front of someone's gate, blocking the entrance to their house - Obviously drunk partiers using them in lieu of getting a ride or taking the bus - Groups of them sitting around half knocked over completely blocking a sidewalk or other pathway meant for cyclists, runners, walkers, and other pedestrians Fair or not, you're like the kid using a razor scooter at the skate park. Nobody likes you but it doesn't mean they hate everyone at the skate park. They just hate scooter kids. | |||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | skrtskrt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
I assumed comment is referring to people that advocate for transit as “anti-personal mobility”, they are counting cars as the only “personal mobility” which is beyond laughable. | |||||||||||||||||