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I have no problem with busses, but tearing up road and making space for street cars is the biggest waste of money going on right now. If a project is economically viable without massive taxpayer subsidies I'm all for it. It seems like there's a big anti-interstate and street widening among the left right now when interstate widening is what needs to be done in many metro areas. Self driving cars are going to become more mainstream as 5G gets up and running. Wider interstates are a requirement. A big high speed rail project shouldn't be done either unless the operating costs allow it to break even and it gets at least 50% full volume most of the time. Creating these big mass transit projects like street cars and light rail only to have them filled 10% to capacity is a progressive black hole where money is wasted. Take the Detroid Q Line Streetcar as an example. Milwaukee also has one that will bleed cash.
In many cases they're just building these to try to attract businesses. It should be the other way around... they should be built based on a need, and for the most part there is no need for "streetcars."
You can't build a 21st century city based upon car commuting. It doesn't scale. You have to have rail and bus mass transit. City residents will no longer allow their residential neighborhoods to be desecrated by wider and wider freeways.
And utterly unworkable in most climates. I resent when "planners" sitting in corporate penthouses looking down at people deciding how people should live. You'd be crazy to ride those bike lanes on busy city streets.
It's perfectly workable in most cities as part of an overall larger strategy involving pedistrianisation, improved low or zero emmission public transport and the seperation of cycle lanes and other vehicles.
European cities are increasingly adopting this approach.
Public Transportation is for kids, old people, handicapped people, and those that are too poor to own a car.
In Singapore, even a corolla costs six figures... so most people are too poor to own a car and take the dirt-cheap but spanking clean, new, and convenient subway.
As a resident in one of the handful of cities that has been invaded by both bike share and electric scooters, I have to think that this will have a noticeable effect on public transportation usage as well as some urban transportation infrastructure planning.
Granted, there is a whole class of people out there who couldn’t see themselves in a million years getting on one as they are “just for kids” and “toys” not worthy of considering in the broader context of urban transportation but I will disagree. For those of us who don’t have that mental block of trying something different, these bikes and scooters available nearly everywhere, often just a few steps out the door are honestly the best thing since sliced bread.
My partner and I used to take the bus pretty often to go downtown or less frequently uptown but we haven’t taken the bus in months since we have the bikes and scooters a block or so away for the taking. It’s a cheap buck to coast downhill on a bike to downtown in 12 minutes or so (and you can ride it for another 15 minutes for that buck) or just under $3.00 on a super fun electric scooter, and we are definitely only taking the scooter back up the hill (those bike share bikes and clunky and heavy!). That’s barely more expensive (the scooter) and twice as fast as well as five times as fun as the bus.
While neither of us can conveniently use public transportation to get the short 6 miles to our jobs, our longer scooter rides these last couple of times has convinced me that I could do it in less than a half hour that which takes me 15-20 minutes by car (in heavy traffic- not fun). I know of several people who are starting to use these new scooters as daily transportation, the app lets the company know the frequency of usage and they start showing up closer and closer to your door in the morning. The hundreds that are parked everywhere downtown and in adjacent neighborhoods like mine are picked off and zooming about with mostly young folks wherever you go these days. We both took them down to an art exhibit down on the harbor downtown and back up this evening, had a blast and a beautiful ride home against the canyons above the sunset on the water downtown. Why be stuck in a car and worry about parking, or a slow, noisy bus when you can hop on one of these great little transportation vehicles?
There are obviously some growing pains with these companies and with some of the customer’s usage of their bikes and scooters but things seem to be settling down around here. Also the geography, weather and local demographics will play a larger part in limiting their adoption in many cities, but I just bet transportation planners will look back on this with a “who knew?” kind of exclamation when they will be widening bike lanes and designating “scooter zones” in the near future to accommodate the rapid adoption of them. That they are green and non-polluting is frosting on the cake.
BTW, we are both 57 and hop on the scooters and bikes with almost the finesse of a teenager so they aren’t just for kids. We are loving just not even considering getting in our cars for moving about through much of the city to get places except for the short daily commute for now.
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