[lordofthemark]

@phog 191112 wrote:

This is not nearly as fraught as the pronunciation of NIKON. The British say “Nickon”, as if you just nicked one. Just about everybody else say “kneekon”, like “Nihongo”. And Americans (and Nikon themselves, when advertising in the US), say it is “nighkon”, with a hard “I”.

Momma don’t take my kodachrome away.

[lordofthemark]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]20111[/ATTACH]

[lordofthemark]

@creadinger 191086 wrote:

There’s an “improperly Parked” e-scooter thread on my Del Ray, Nextdoor app right now. All kinds of people advocating to saw it in half or throw it in the street or set it on fire or call the police… Only a few useful suggestions like move it 3 feet so it’s not in your way. I had to mention that at least it was a dockless scooter and not a dockless car blocking the sidewalk because you actually can move the scooter.

It’s off topic, so I have refrained from advocating setting improperly parked dockless cars on fire but most commentors seem to think the e-scooters are the absolute devil. There also seems to be an illegitimate fear that e-scooters are universally ridden by unruly teenagers and once you get a few in your neighborhood the TPing, lighting poo on fire, and bricks through windows is sure to follow. WTF.

EDIT: I should mention that the initial question was probably innocent from someone who’s legitimately not sure – Like, “How is the city handling this? Should I I report it or not?” The replies have mostly been useless.

Note on Next Door people in nearby neighborhoods can see the thread too – so you are probably getting the Old Town crowd as well – quite a few of those folks are on the warpath about escooters.

[lordofthemark]

As for stop sign only intersections they are different, as waiting for the green is not an option. Where visibility is poor, and there are conflicts between peds and right turning cars due to volumes of both, that argues for signaling precisely to solve that. King and Beauregard has a very large number of right turning vehicles and, for the west end, a high number of pedestrians.

[lordofthemark]

As for the fuel usage justification, almost no other country has found that persuasive.

[lordofthemark]

As for stop sign only intersections they are different, as waiting for the green is not an option. Where visibility is poor, and there are conflicts between peds and right turning cars due to volumes of both, that argues for signaling precisely to solve that. King and Beauregard has a very large number of right turning vehicles and, for the west end, a high number of pedestrians.

[lordofthemark]

@peterw_diy 190983 wrote:

Which would mean that at many intersections with mere stop signs it would often not be legal to proceed due to poor sight lines. Shoot, there are intersections where even on a bike, without six feet of hood and dashboard in front of the rider, it’s difficult to check cross traffic from behind the stop line. It’s absurd to expect people to follow such laws.

Ken, thanks for the details. Yes, failing to respect the stop lines and crosswalks without RTOR is deplorable. And I’d like to see more intersections ban RTOR especially where sight lines are poor. The only reason I much like RTOR is that it allows cars with internal combustion engines to move sooner and burn less fuel, but hopefully electrics and hybrids will neutralize concerns about fuel waste when idling.

Dockless scooters though, they just suck. There are too many physical and economic challenges for those to ever be a decent option.

I believe all the externalities of scooters can be remedied. In many cases the remedies are already available it’s just a matter of will. Far easier than remedies for the automobile. As for scooter company finances, that’s on the companies and their investors. Maybe they will work out, maybe they won’t. But meanwhile I will advocate for remedies, especially ones like bike lanes and parking corrals that daylight intersections that have other benefits. And I will oppose unfair criticism of scooters that appear to to criticize them for things we accept in autos.

[lordofthemark]

Or wait. Radical suggestion, I know.

That sucks but TBH it sounds like she was partially at fault.

A. You can wait a very long time at some locations for a clear crosswalk (King and 28th being an example) Especially because the lights at 28th and King are set to enable traffic on King, so its a long time between walk phases across King. Assuming the sidewalk is not blocked the NEXT time you get a green across King. Its really not reasonable.
B. In any case lots of people won’t wait. If we are worried about safety, we need to deal with what people will actually do.
C. It nice to see blame put on the rider/pedestrian, rather than the driver who is actually in violation of the law.

For any motorist in the right lane where right on red is allowed, blocking the crosswalk is pretty much required to proceed safely.

A. Or they could, as you said above, just wait. In this case just wait for a green to turn on.
B. In four of the five cases I was referring to, the cars were not attempting to turn on red. Just gridlocking the intersection with 28th
C. In the case where my friend was hit, there was no right on red issue, it was where a trail crossed a road. Again, they were just gridlocking, and ignoring the crosswalk.
D. Of course banning right on red at more locations is good for this very reason. I assume that has not been done at King and Beauregard to preserve auto LOS. And, ironically, because few pedestrians there. The whole intersection will be redone as part of the Alexandria Gateway project, I hope RTOR will be banned at that point. How RTOR on makes sense at a location where visibility requires blocking the crosswalk, I do not understand.

So yeah, it’s often not a big deal and is far more understandable than blocking right of way or littering private property with these rolling e-waste** contraptions, both of which are easily avoidable.

There are plenty of options to improve scooter parking – including parking corrals at intersections (daylighting of which might help with the right on red problem above). Scooter companies are working on better scooters with longer service lives .

[lordofthemark]

@peterw_diy 190939 wrote:

Parked and blocking, or temporarily blocking with vehicle operators inside?

Temporarily blocking – but anyone trying to cross with the light would have had to go outside the crosswalk to get around. A friend of mine got hit by a truck that way, her bike was totaled, but by a miracle and good instincts she was not badly hurt.

But yeah, lots of people, both drivers and people engaged in the public discourse, don’t think that cars “temporarily” blocking a crosswalk is a big deal. Not as bad as someone putting one of those ugly scooters on their lawn. Feh.

[lordofthemark]

@peterw_diy 190841 wrote:

The free weekly Alexandria Times this week pulled a hard 180 this week and published a piece sympathetic to scooters, focusing on new riders. It has nice bits about replacing car trips, reducing environmental impact, etc. — but I LOLed on this scooter apologist quote about Scofflaw Scooterists:
As if the riders who park the bikes badly and the residents who abuse the scooters wake up with a “let’s go do some crimes” mentality and, you know, it’s just a question of which large metallic object they were gonna block the sidewalk with. Ha!

Yesterday evening, as I was riding down King from Beauregard to North Hampton, I saw one scooter rider riding on the sidewalk (west side of King) and five, count em, five cars blocking crosswalks (one the crosswalk at Beauregard on the east side of King, four at 28th and King, on the east side of King, two on each side of 28th) So, er, yeah.

[lordofthemark]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/21/e-scooter-startup-spin-will-place-dozens-solar-powered-docking-stations-two-cities-this-summer/?utm_term=.bf9fd116ec1b

[lordofthemark]

@Brendan von Buckingham 190917 wrote:

Bicycles have now been restricted from taking the lane on Quincy Street. They must use the bike lane according to the new signs mounted on the bollards. The signs were new to me this morning. I can’t find an image of the sign in the AASHTO standards, but it’s white and defines a split where cars must ride left and bikes must ride right. I would have taken a picture of the new signs this morning but a northbound cement mixer truck with trailer was wiping them all out as it turned right on Wilson while I followed behind it at its seven o’clock to make my right turn too.

ISTR a car bike split sign at the entrance to the SB PBL on Hayes (though I can’t find it on google street view) I am pretty sure that sign did not indicate taking the lane was banned, and even if it did, I don’t think that would be enforceable in Virginia.

[lordofthemark]

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mm040km

Evidence from a variety of research studies indicates that e-bicycling, more so than conventional bicycling, substitutes for car travel.

[lordofthemark]

@bentbike33 190884 wrote:

ftfy

Added the link.

Thank you. I was wondering what the Jewishly proud yet Anglican PM had to do with cycling, or how these differed from Gladstone gears. More extravagant? Higher power?

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 190733 wrote:

The website is very opaque on the assumptions underlying the different scenarios. I don’t know how to get predictions for a zero rise.

Here’s an interesting graph from the EPA:
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-level

My interpretation is that a zero rise null hypothesis might be inappropriate.

It seems possible that the modest difference in flood risk between the slow rise scenario and the fast rise scenario reflects that any reasonable low end estimate of global warming leads to a significant rise. Ergo, OP’s initial statement may not be at all misleading.

I sympathize that it is difficult to do the analysis to challenge the implications of the OP’s statement (not the statement itself, which is clearly true) – in that case it seems like the best thing would be to just leave the OP’s statement alone.

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