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0 pointsacdha3y ago0 comments

It all comes down to infrastructure. They’re not a big problem here in DC compared to cars because we have wide sidewalks and a growing number of protected bike lanes. People driving cars are responsible for 100% of the fatalities, almost all of the injuries, and almost all of the blocked sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. and that’s where the focus should be.

What I would like is basically rebranding bike lanes as low-speed mobility lanes. Take the parking and/or right lane full-width, put up bollards, and zone it for vehicles with a max speed of 20mph (bike, scooter, trike, hoverboard, electric wheelchair, who cares - if it doesn’t pollute and takes up about as much space as a person, it’s welcome). If space allows, add protected parking spots for pickup/drop off and handicapped parking and tell everyone else that they need to pay market-rate for parking.

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10 comments · 2 top-level

aidenn03y ago· 4 in thread

I moved away from the DC area long before electric scooters were a thing. Does metro PD still give jaywalking tickets to pedestrians being loaded onto ambulances (this used to be a thing)?

rektide3y ago

Scooters arent a big problem in DC, but it's definitely not problem free. Bike racks are sometimes taken up by nothing but rental scooters. People sometimes leave rentals in highly inconvenient places that block the path (supposedly there's some process for telling companies & they have to move them, but I've never tried this).The scooters mostly say "don't ride on side-walks" in huge letters at their base, but tons of people do.

I wouldn't say there are big problems at all, it mostly works ok. I'm glad there are new options. But infrastructure alone isn't enough. Like the parent, I do think there are low-quality users who don't give a shit & act bad, in a way I'd never see from for example a bicycle user. How problematic is that? So far it's generally not so bad. But bad users, bad parkers, and full bike racks all take their toll. It seems unlikely a lot of these things will get better over time.

acdhaOP3y ago

No - they basically went on soft-strike during the BLM protests. You can run a red light in front of them and unless you hit their SUV it’s unlikely they’ll react.

bilbo0s3y ago

Just in case anyone is believing this, take my word for it, don't believe the hype.

DO NOT run a red light in front of a cop in DC. I'm just putting that out there as kindly intended advice. If you go to DC thinking it's free reign, you're likely to be disagreeably surprised. Especially if you're in the parts of the city that I'd imagine most of the people on HN would be likely to be in.

And Heaven help you if, well, other agencies watching DC misinterpret your red light running. You may be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find yourself trying to explain that to people who, as a general rule, don't believe in coincidence.

Yeah. Just don't draw that kind of attention to yourself in DC. That leads nowhere good.

1 more reply

aidenn03y ago

Is that just SE of the Anacostia or the touristy parts too?

mjevans3y ago· 4 in thread

Make it 3D instead of taking space from cars and I agree.

Cars are dangerous and the best engineering solution is to isolate pedestrian scale speed and mass transfer from multi-ton industrial equipment. So go 3D, give cars their own isolated layer, give pedestrians and slightly faster moving exposed humans their own layer.

asoneth3y ago

This is sort of what Boston tried to do with the big dig[1], where several highways were buried under the city. It ended up costing billions and took 15 years to complete. Also, while the RFK Greenway is nice it is also regularly bisected by busy surface roads and on/off ramps so it sometimes feels more like a grassy median than a real park.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

trgn3y ago

Money well spent. We put excrement underground, might as well do the same for cars.

On a side-note, I was in Boston this summer and it's so much more of an airy and accommodating place than I remember from 10-15 years ago. Lot's of the COVID traffic calming and patios still in place. Awesome, go Boston!

burtness3y ago

Wouldn't the path of least resistance here be giving cars the surface layer?

mjevans3y ago

Vehicles also include construction cranes, dump and garbage trucks, etc. Those might have unlimited height, but weight is also a factor.

I'm split between an idea like Tokyo's underground mall areas (which work really well with climate control) and just over-specing several stories above ground for a platform layer that can be level across the whole city and completely free of non-emergency moving vehicles.

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