Further to yesterday’s post, this morning I took advantage of my strategic position at the edge of the city to go for a short ride outside of it:
But alas, these days there is no escape from The Scourge Of The Motor Scooter:
Motor scooters have been taking over the city’s bicycle infrastructure for the past few years now, but at this point simply seeing them in the bike lane now seems quaint, and you now find them in the woods, on the subways, and peering at you over the top of the stall when you’re trying to use the restroom.
In theory the proliferation of motor scooters in New York should be a good thing, since they’re small and efficient, and certainly a more practical choice than a car in an urban environment, which is why they’re so common in other parts of the world. However, in practice it’s been a shitshow, since this is New York and we suck at everything. The problem is that people here generally ride motor scooters like they’re bicycles–which is to say poorly, and absolutely anywhere they can possibly fit them. Poor cycling (and there has always been plenty of it in New York) really wasn’t that big a deal in the old days, since the riders were limited by their own meager power output. But now that they’re assisted by electric and gasoline engines it sometimes seems as though no place is safe, though the upside is people hate them so much they’ve forgotten how much they used to hate bicyclists.
As for the wider “micromobility revolution,” that was supposed to replace car trips, but from what I can tell it mostly consists of people rolling around languidly on various electrified contraptions and getting high in the middle of the day. Also, I may complain about what battery-powered shifting has done to the modern road bike, but it’s nothing compared to what motors have done to the commuter bike:
Due to all the e-bike battery fires, the Giant Retailer Named After A River won’t send this bike to New York City anymore:
Nevertheless, at least around these parts, this is pretty much the typical non-delivery person e-bike. I guess as a Jones rider I should appreciate the voluminous tires, and the fenders and rack are practical–and to be fair it’s far more useful than the typical Targ-Mart bike without being that much more expensive. So maybe this is progress? But it also weighs 68lbs, I can’t help wondering if the net effect in terms of effort of riding a 68lb bike with a motor versus a 30lb bike without one is basically a wash.
As for fire risk, you can of course avoid that by opting for a more reputable brand–well, usually:
Speaking of bike lanes, there’s a law that every three months newspapers must run an anti-bike lane opinion piece, and there’s the latest from the Washington Post:
New column: Bike lanes — part of a “road diet” that sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation — are often a stealthy way to push wholesale class and racial change https://t.co/SxsXRFFzCx
— Marc Fisher (@mffisher) November 20, 2024
I couldn’t read it because I don’t have a subscription, but I have a pretty good idea of where it’s going:
Despite its reputation as a liberal enclave, D.C. is not and will never be Amsterdam, Portland or one of those college towns where the streets teem with more bicycles than cars.
But sometimes, it’s not for a lack of trying.
The District’s planners are intent on putting many of the city’s most important streets on what’s called a “road diet,” which sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation and commuter headaches — and maybe a stealth mechanism for encouraging a wholesale shift in race and class in certain neighborhoods.
Bike lanes or no bike lanes, the people who don’t like them are generally unwilling to admit that the reason for traffic is…too many cars. Toronto is removing its bike lanes, and it’s a pretty safe bet that their traffic isn’t going to go away as a result:
At the same time, the opinion writer is right that bike lanes are often “Not about the bikes”–not in the sense it’s a conspiracy to make you live in a 15-minute city and eat bugs (though I’m not ruling it out), but in the sense that what designers are looking to accomplish with the bike lanes is often secondary (at best) to their utility for bicyclists. Designers are generally up front about using bike lanes to calm traffic and create shorter crossings for pedestrians and increase visibility and all that stuff, and it can certainly work, but the experience of actually using the lane on a bike can be rather fraught, like when they run them right past highway on-ramps
Sometimes the bike lanes in New York lull you into a false sense of security, which ends very abruptly at the first intersection, and you sometimes get the sense they built them fully expecting that nobody would use them.
Or that they’d say “fuck it” and start using motor scooters instead. You can ride those bad boys anywhere.