Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:07 on 2019-08-22 Permalink Reply  

• Sean 09:05 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  I came across this poor little guy earlier this week: https://i.imgur.com/XQU1krv.jpg

• Kate 09:11 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  !

• Chris 09:19 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  The Gazette article oddly focuses on injuries and deaths. Is their point that since some people are hurt that these things should be banned?

  Of course there are injuries! Just as there are biking, driving, and walking on icy sidewalks. So what?

  “at least 11 people have died in the U.S. since 2018”. Yeah, well, there are 100 motor vehicle deaths in U.S *every day*. And way more injuries.

  “In Atlanta, usage has been banned at night.” Imagine doing that to cars!

• Max 09:28 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Somebody posted this to reddit this morning. It’s about the economics of another brand of scooter.

  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shared-scooters-don-t-last-171119677.html

  Assuming the Lime scooters also last only a month on average and cost hundreds of dollars to replace, then this is a stupid program.

• CE 09:28 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  I saw one parked on the curb pointing out into traffic on Atwater just as it meets Dr. Penfield. I felt like I had hit peak 2019 right then.

• Blork 09:30 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  @Chris, it depends on the ratio of usage to injury. There are like a million cars in Montreal, and a handful of injuries each day. Hundreds of thousands of bicycles, and a handful of injuries each day. A couple of hundred e-scooters and a handful of injuries each day. Obviously, the e-scooters have a vastly higher rate of injuries per usage.

• Chris 09:58 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Blork, yes, raw count, per vehicle, and per distance travelled are all important metrics. The article didn’t give anything other than raw count, so hard to compare anything else. Not sure if there are good stats for scooters yet, but for autos there certainly are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

  Also don’t forget that scooters aren’t *doing* the killing, they are *getting* killed. Like the article says: “In Atlanta […] there have been four fatalities since May. In the most recent case, a rider ran a red light and hit a moving oil truck. In the other incidents, users were struck by vehicles.”

  Another factor to consider: (most) people have been biking since childhood, driving since late adolescence, and using scooters since… last week! So of course no one is comfortable with how those things work, and likely falling more often, like a kid first learning to bike.

  But again: what is the Gazette’s point focusing on injuries? To me, it smells like hit piece.

• Uatu 10:41 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Eh, the Gazette is read mostly by old, cranky seniors who can’t fathom the kids and their obsession with the scooters and the phones and the series of tubes that connects to the phones. I’m just waiting for the Bill Brownstein/Josh Freed/Dr. Joe Schwartz yawnfest columns and opinion pieces to show up on the old folks network aka CTV 6pm news, cjad, the gazzoo ;P

• CE 12:36 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  I just encountered someone riding one on Parc just below Jean-Talon. He was riding south on the sidewalk and then decided to hop down onto the street. Against traffic. This is a 6 lane stretch of street where all the north-bound cars are racing and preparing to turn. All this while wobbling and seeming unsure of himself on the scooter, obviously one of the first times he had ever been on one.

  There’s something about these things that either turns part of the riders’ brains off, or makes them feel invincible.

• Ephraim 14:39 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  I’m still waiting to see someone use one legally (on the street with a helmet) and waiting to see one parked legally. Still haven’t seen a single one that was within 100% compliance with the law. I’ve seen two on a scooter with no helmets, I’ve seen them parked all over the sidewalks and I’ve seen three people on a Jump bike.

  Has ANYONE actually seen people use these legally or park them within the legal parking zones? Or am the only one that sees them littering Sherbrooke streets sidewalks?

• Ephraim 18:03 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Just to show what I mean, here’s a screengrab https://i.imgur.com/zvlADnV.jpg and you can see 3 scooters… with the blue being where they are supposed to legally be parked… and not one is in that zone…. and yet they release them. So who’s wrong… the rider who gets the scooter released via the app while in the wrong place, or Lime, for letting them release the scooter parked illegally?

• Ian 18:33 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  I’m with Ephraim, I see them parked wherever and people riding them as if they have all the rights and privileges of both motorists and pedestrians with none of the obligations.

  Whenever I see one parked in a stupid in-the-way place I move it behind a dumpster in the nearest alley. I encourage you all to do the same.

• Chris 19:51 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  ‘all the rights and privileges of motorists’, eh? Like the right/privilege to park your car along the whole length of both sides of just about every street, for free usually?

  Ian, so you’re a vigilante, eh? What if I said: every time I see a car parked illegally, I deflate a tire. I encourage you all to do the same. That ok too?

  How about we disallow car parking x metres from every intersection and reallocate that space for bike, scooter, and moped parking. We’ve sorta been reclaiming that space with bixi stations, this is an extension of that idea. Compliance will likely increase when they have more than a tiny smattering of parking places.

• Ephraim 20:57 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Chris…. it’s not about CARS, it’s about PEDESTRIANS. The deal they made with the city isn’t being respected… their app is allowing the scooters to be released illegally. The solution is pretty simple, fine Lime, or threaten to remove their licence… they will fix their app damn quickly.

  Did you read the article about how bad it is in San Diego? They have people repossessing the scooters because people are dumping them all over the place, including on private property. And San Diego has started the process to revoke Lime’s authorization for non compliance of geofencing.

• Dan 21:09 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  We can argue about scooters vs. pedestrians, cars and parking all day long. As Max pointed out, these are dumb because they are not sustainable and are going to be piling up in garbage heaps and bodies of water in no time.

• Faiz Imam 21:54 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Hopefully we can manage to create procedures to manage and store them to make it more financially sustainable. There’s plenty of space on the street, its just that most of it is taken up by that other vehicle everyone complains about.

  It reminds me of images from 100 years ago of beautiful European public squares jammed with cars. It took a while to figure out how to deal with them, but it got done. This is not an impossible to solve problem.

  But In the long run, I hope this trends gets people to buy their own private ebikes and escooters. They really are an excellent innovation that allows people to travel farther faster, ebikes in particular have actually been shown to replace car trips, which is huge.

• Chris 22:49 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  Dan, not sustainable relative to what? To biking? Absolutely! To cars? I doubt it (though can’t be bothered to try to see if anyone has run the numbers).

  Ephraim, I’ve been to San Diego and seen it first hand. Tried it too. Scooters everywhere. Juicers driving truckloads of them around. They were strewn around everywhere: sidewalks, private lawns, parks, beaches, bike paths, the road, everywhere. Not ideal at all. I fully agree they shouldn’t be on sidewalks. So that means they need to go on roads, which means they’ll compete for space with cars, which makes it about cars too.

• Dan 23:19 on 2019-08-22 Permalink

  No one is taking these things instead of their cars. If they’re going to go through the trouble of finding a half-dead scooter in an alley to get to work, they’re going to get a bike. They are not sustainable as in the situation you just described in San Diego. They’re garbage.

• Ephraim 15:29 on 2019-08-23 Permalink

  Chris, no one is talking about scooters versus cars, other than wanting people to do this safely and therefore wear helmets rather than have their brains smashed all over the pavement.

  No, the problem is these all over the sidewalks. There are designated spaces to park these on the pavement. They should never be on a sidewalk. But they are getting left all over the place and Lime promised that they wouldn’t. They aren’t keeping up their end of the agreement. So, they can either fix their app or they can take their scooters elsewhere. Montreal is a city with a LOT of pedestrians, we need to care.