There’s nothing like a ride to put things in perspective:
Though I can’t help adding some additional perspective, which is that, while it’s true that nobody has taken away our freedom to ride in New York so far, they have gotten pretty close:
I also seem to remember the advocates being on board with all that stuff at the time.
Just something to keep in mind.
Speaking of 2020, one of the most profound ways in which the cityscape has changed since then is the proliferation of food delivery riders. Advocates have allied themselves with food delivery riders, and they have generally dismissed any criticism of them by deploying the classic “…But Cars!” counter-argument–which is fair enough, since delivery riders don’t cause nearly as much carnage as drivers.
Nevertheless, delivery riders have made getting around the city more fraught for pedestrians, users of the bike lane (it’s not really a bike lane anymore, it’s now a motor scooter lane), and yes, even drivers, and I was surprised to see that advocates are finally acknowledging this–or one is, anyway:
Not only that, but he’s calling them “a drag” on cycling and even citing them as the reason people are giving up on riding bikes, all while suggesting they’re worse than cars and trucks!
Heady stuff indeed. Until recently this would have been positively unthinkable, like Grant Petersen saying friction shifters are a pain in the ass.
Charles Komanoff, the author of the piece, is the city’s preeminent congestion pricing pundit. However, congestion pricing has been “paused” indefinitely. So in the meantime it appears he’s tinkering with the delivery rider problem, like a hairstylist practicing on the dog while his salon is being renovated. The problem, as Komanoff sees it, is that food delivery trips are too long, and he thinks if they’re shorter things will be less chaotic:
But long trips are the only reason this whole industry exists. Before delivery apps you just ordered food locally. But now if you get a hankering for some out-of-the-way restaurant all you have to do is tap on your phone and a guy on an e-bike or motor scooter will go get it for you:
To address this, Komanoff, who thinks taxes fix everything, says that we need…a tax, go figure:
I’m not sure why that would work. For one thing, who cares if the trips are shorter if everyone’s still whizzing around to bring you the food? Short trips are supposed to be the problem with driving, but now they’re going to fix the food delivery shitshow? Also, nobody ordering out-of-the-way Viking food is doing it out of necessity, the city’s vibrant Viking community notwithstanding:
No, ordering in is a luxury and a convenience–some might go so far as to call it an extravagance–and even Komanoff admits he has no idea if an additional tax would work. But he does say that even if it doesn’t we could use the money to build “deliverista hubs:”
That’s all fine, but it’s worth noting that until 2020 we had regular restaurants. Then we started building restaurants outside the restaurants:
Now we need to start building even more infrastructure so that restaurants can serve diners who can’t even be bothered to leave their homes.
Urbanists talk a good game, but once you start digging you realize it’s really just about turning the city into one giant restaurant.
But the biggest problem with this plan seems to be that it reduces food delivery riders, who are human beings, to data points you can plug into a model and whose behavior you can manipulate simply by increasing or decreasing a dollar figure. Whether delivery riders are making short trips or long trips they want and need to make money. They’re also probably traveling long distances to do so; living close to the city line myself I see delivery riders streaming in and out of the city from points north. The same contraptions that facilitate trips to and from the Viking food restaurant also make it possible for them to commute to and from places outside of the city where the cost of living is much cheaper. So whether their Viking food runs are .5 miles or 1.5 miles they’re still creating what Komanoff calls “a drag” on cycling by turning the paths into motorscooter superhighways.
In a perfect world these shitty delivery apps would take some of their venture capital money, build their own facilities, provide their own vehicles, and hire their own delivery riders as actual employees. Instead they just build fancy offices for themselves and make the rest of it everyone else’s problem:
Will someone running a DoorDash delivery be allowed to so much as take a leak there? I admit I’m speculating, but my guess would be no.
By the way, Komanoff also links to the New York City comptroller’s Street Safety in the Era of Micromobility report, which contains this table:
If you ignore the e-bike and moped deaths, and you consider that ridership has increased considerably since 2010, you might conclude that the streets are actually getting safer for people on regular bikes.
Either that or we’re disappearing altogether, which is probably more likely.