Additional to Friday’s put up, right here’s extra from Streetsblog on the current moped motorbike crash on the Manhattan Bride bike path:
It’s an honest report, and it’s price studying (in the event you can abdomen it) because it exhibits the place New York Metropolis’s bicycle infrastructure is at the moment headed–although it’s Streetsblog, so there’s nonetheless the compulsory excuse-making for the supply employees and gratuitous reminder that automobiles are worse:
At this level it’s most likely each unfair and pointless to focus solely on supply riders since all kinds of individuals are actually utilizing high-speed motorized contraptions within the bike lane, not simply supply individuals. In the end if the bike lanes are to stay secure for individuals on regular bikes it is going to require enforcement, which is an issue, since any relationship that will ever have existed between advocacy and the NYPD is totally damaged. Clearly advocates’ deep frustration with the NYPD is justified in some ways, however on the identical time they’re now just like the buyer who can by no means return to the native Starbucks as a result of they threw an iced Frappucino within the barista’s face. Satirically, their solely hope could also be that the law-and-order set additionally hates unlawful motor scooters:
Right here’s the context for the “collector automobile,” by the way in which.
After all every group hates unlawful motor scooters in its personal inimitable self-serving fashion (“It makes it scary to trip my bicycle!” “Third world-style crime!”), however it’s uncommon that one thing bothers the owners of Park Slope and Whitestone equally, so it might be that town may have no selection however to do one thing–and by that I imply truly do one thing, not simply declare a “local weather emergency:”
I do know at the least a few of you’ll find my pointing the next out to be irksome, however excessive warmth in July in New York Metropolis is commonly a direct results of it being July in New York Metropolis, when you possibly can traditionally rely on it being what meteorologists name “scorching as balls:”
Talking of advocates and the NYPD, that is about as shut as they arrive to a dialogue:
My guess is that they tagged Streetsblog because it’s about not crashing your automobile into individuals and issues and their beat is automobiles crashing into individuals and issues, although it is also as a result of that is one other topic advocates hardly ever deal with that nonetheless needs to be addressed. Just like the motor scooters, stoned driving has turn into shockingly pervasive in New York Metropolis, and I stay aggravated that few individuals even wish to think about it when discussing why the streets hold getting extra harmful. As an alternative, the present trend is guilty big-ass automobiles:
I feel driving big-ass automobiles within the metropolis is dumb, they usually positive ain’t serving to something, however over the previous 20 years the most important change I’ve observed by far is just not the automobiles individuals drive–it’s the way in which they drive them and the smells that come out of them. There’s kind of a “new recklessness” on the market, and whereas I don’t low cost my rising age and concomitant fuddy-duddyness I can’t assist pondering plenty of it’s simply telephones and weed. In case your financial institution stored making errors along with your cash and it began smelled strongly of weed in there you’d most likely at the least query their claims that it was as a result of a brand new pc system. But relating to “sharing” the highway with drivers we’re not supposed to fret about the way it actually reeks of weed when you’re driving by site visitors now, as a substitute it’s as a result of the RAV4 has turn into extra common than the Camry.
Anyway, it’s not trendy to have a look at hashish as something apart from a panacea, so I’m positive we’ll hold blaming the automobiles. As for the motor scooters, I count on a helmet giveaway any day now. As a result of helmets repair the whole lot.
