Scooter Mania! (Portland: condo, crimes, college)

[mathlete]

If you want to see the future visit Taipei, Taiwan. Something about climbing onto a scooter causes normal people to become instantly demon possessed. Running red lights, barreling down sidewalks and bike paths, going the wrong way, hopping off and leaving scooters sprawled across the sidewalk so pedestrians have to step out into the road to pass . . . nothing is sacred.

I'd much rather see motorized vehicles of all types other than electric delivery vehicles banned from urban environments but that will never happen.

[psichick]

Originally Posted by Rob Allen

Riding e-scooters on the sidewalk is prohibited in Portland. People will of course do it anyway, but the city doesn't have to fix up the sidewalks for them.

Yesterday, the city started attaching cards to the scooters with the major rules detailed:
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2018...tric-scooters/

In case that first sentence was for me, I meant they should fix them up in general, for the handicap people (my friend had a really bad fall because of this), not for the scooters. Sorry I wasn't more clear.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by psichick

In case that first sentence was for me, I meant they should fix them up in general, for the handicap people (my friend had a really bad fall because of this), not for the scooters. Sorry I wasn't more clear.

Portland has a MASSIVE sidewalk maintenance and construction backlog due partly to all the once semi-rural subdivisions on the east side that lack sidewalks completely and that were annexed by Portland over the years. So there is always a tension in the budget priorities between fixing old existing sidewalks on the west side and inner east side neighborhoods, or fixing the lack of any sidewalks at all in the outer east side.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

Just so you know, Portland will happily pave over dirt roads and install sidewalks, but makes the residents of those streets pay for them.

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...x.cfm?&c=35715

Portland even makes residents pay for any sidewalk "repairs".

A lot of those unimproved areas remain unimproved because nobody wants a $50,000 lien on their house (or a nice generously provided mid-interest loan), and then have their property taxes go up several hundred bucks a year.

A few years ago , we discussed this to death here on CD, maybe someone can find the thread.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Just so you know, Portland will happily pave over dirt roads and install sidewalks, but makes the residents of those streets pay for them.

https://www.portlandoregon.gov/trans...x.cfm?&c=35715

Portland even makes residents pay for any sidewalk "repairs".

A lot of those unimproved areas remain unimproved because nobody wants a $50,000 lien on their house (or a nice generously provided mid-interest loan), and then have their property taxes go up several hundred bucks a year.

A few years ago , we discussed this to death here on CD, maybe someone can find the thread.

Right. I was just trying to point out that sidewalks are a deeply complicated and political issue in Portland. "just fixing them" would be a multi-billion dollar project taking a decade or more. I'm not saying that shouldn't happen. I'm all for improving sidewalks and bike lanes. Just that it is a massive undertaking with a lot of political undertones.

[psichick]

Just saw this thread.

//www.city-data.com/forum/hobbi...-our-town.html


pretty much everything that everyone has stated here. interesting that someone stated there's a lawsuit already.

[SkyDog77]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Portland even makes residents pay for any sidewalk "repairs".

A lot of those unimproved areas remain unimproved because nobody wants a $50,000 lien on their house (or a nice generously provided mid-interest loan), and then have their property taxes go up several hundred bucks a year.

A few years ago , we discussed this to death here on CD, maybe someone can find the thread.

This is not unique to Portland.

Denver property owners are responsible for upcoming mandatory sidewalk repairs

[take57]

Just took a ride on one of the new 'sit-down' scooters (Razor) and dayum, that was some fun!
Of course they are a menace and I can already hear motorist's howling about one more thing they have to watch out for but goodness, these are very easy to ride and with the attached basket on the front are fairly practical for quick grocery runs and such.

My wife who hates this sort of thing was giggling like a schoolgirl the entire ride. I hope folks ride responsibly because for those of us of a certain age where riding the stand-up scooters is a little dicey these babies are going to be tremendous for a short ride getting from Point A to Point B in the city.

Ride safe kids...

[Thom52]

We recently visited Paris, walking about 5-8 miles a day in the city. E-scooters were thicker than flies at a stockyard. They just battle it out with cars, which are luckily a lot more tolerant of alternative transportation than USA drivers. But yikes! Not a helmet to be seen, sometimes riding two people on a scooter, wrong way on wet cobblestone or cracked and rough streets doing what looked like 20-25mph. Lots of them scattered about between uses and they seem to hire people to gather them up overnight and redock them.
Sidwalks, streets whatever...its all fair game for their routes.

The thing that really amazed me was I never saw an accident while we were there. I asked about that. Apparently my experience of seeing no accidents is rare and head trauma and other injuries is a MAJOR problem.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Thom52

We recently visited Paris, walking about 5-8 miles a day in the city. E-scooters were thicker than flies at a stockyard. They just battle it out with cars, which are luckily a lot more tolerant of alternative transportation than USA drivers. But yikes! Not a helmet to be seen, sometimes riding two people on a scooter, wrong way on wet cobblestone or cracked and rough streets doing what looked like 20-25mph. Lots of them scattered about between uses and they seem to hire people to gather them up overnight and redock them.
Sidwalks, streets whatever...its all fair game for their routes.

The thing that really amazed me was I never saw an accident while we were there. I asked about that. Apparently my experience of seeing no accidents is rare and head trauma and other injuries is a MAJOR problem.

I visited Portland yesterday. Yikes, motorists where thick as thieves and breaking laws right and left. Half the cars I saw were speeding. People were merging and changing lanes without signaling. Making right turns without stopping. Making rolling stops through stop signs. Going 40 in a 30 zone. Parking illegally.

And not one car had control devices built-in to prevent speeding of the sort that the city demands be installed on scooters. I saw no helmets either despite the fact that helmets are proven to reduce head injuries in high speed car accidents, which is why NASCAR drivers wear them. Ask any trauma surgeon how many head injuries they see from high speed car accidents.

Just saying.