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by jefe_
2558 days ago
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I visited D.C. recently and the National Mall is a decent 'padded room' for tourists to ride scooters, but even with large open areas and wide paths there were still numerous instances where scooters disrupted flow of pedestrians. I think Manhattan lacks the space necessary for tourists to ride the scooters, and everyone to store them, and introducing the scooters with existing strategies would quickly become a large safety and traffic congestion problem. If they could do the following, then it may be possible: Restrict to residents and possibly allow visitors who have ridden a certain amount in other cities. Restrict availability in large parts of the city to certain hours. Strong enforcement of no riding on sidewalks. Scooters must be stored in docks or racks, may not be left on streets (providers must rent storefronts or space in/near bodegas with penalties for scooters left on streets). Even with all of this, I still think the scooters would become burden. |
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Storing them and riding them on sidewalks are the biggest common complaints that people have; next to that it's mostly on people to operate them safely, and I'm okay with that. People are always going to ride them on sidewalks, but NYC is an east coast city, people will have no problem yelling at people to stop so I'm comfortable with social enforcement. There aren't enough police officers in the country to monitor every sidewalk that people use for two minutes. Improving bike lanes is a general issue that NYC is working on, and the first step to having any sort of electric scooter is to make them legal _at all_, since they are currently illegal to ride on the sidewalk, bike lanes, and streets.
As for storage, I think we can live with it -- people park bikes on sidewalks and most places there's room to put stuff that won't get in anyone's way. I'm not worried about tourists -- for a tourist a scooter/bike is a horrible way to get around the city (except in the big parks). And in the boroughs, tourists are not really an issue the way they are in Manhattan.