Since Uber bikes "lock to an object, ideally a bike rack," I hope Uber plans to install bike racks around the city. I'm very much pro-bike share, but 5,000 of these clunky bikes sitting idle for hours at a time will take valuable rack space away from personal bikes.

Local municipalties choosing not to provide voluntary support for matters outside their jurisdictions is not the same thing as refusing to enforce governing law that applies to your municipality. Yet another false equivalency. And the term “sanctuary city” is a horrible misnomer.

So glad our sidewalks will be put to use subsidizing Uber’s valuation instrad of providing a olpublic thoroughfare for, you know, walking. Wishful valuation is all bikeshares accomplish: they provide next to zero true municipal value, window-dressing novelty knick knack for tourists aside.

I just heard from Joel Miller at SDOT regarding Uber bikes and bike racks. His response:

"Thanks for emailing. And yes, SDOT shares this concern. We will be using $400,000 of permitted fees collected from the bike share companies to install more bike racks and bike corrals citywide. Additionally, we’ve asked Uber/Jump and Lyft (when they launch) to not require users to lock the bikes to bike racks until we have installed a portion of the additional racks."

That $400,000 could have been a dispersal of 5 cents to EVERY citizen of WA State! CRIME! OBAMA!!

Can a municipality be sued for failure to uphold the law? For example, if it could be proven that a crime was committed or abetted by an individual not following the provisions of I-693? I'll bet the good citizens of Republic will find out in relatively short order.

Rake those forests! Sweep back those rising sea levels with a broom!

5 - Authorities will simply remove the human impediment. It might be a court order if necessary.

Al Jazeera recently ran a doco on China's waste management problems that opens with an aerial of acres and acres of discarded bikes (grouped by color) that are the remnants of failed bike-share schemes in Beijing:

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2018/10/china-war-waste-181011063048342.html

8 Just like those Atari 2600 "E.T." cartridges in Arizona.

6 I have encountered teams of forest-rakers during all of my European hikes.

Raking or no, at some point you have to blame the annual "worst of all time" forest fires on poor forest management on the part of California.

Regardless of why it is happening, it is the state's responsibility to come up with a solution outside of "just let the state burn once a year."

You need controlled burns, you need teams clearing out the built up detritus and flammable debris. Other states do these things. What is wrong with California?

Obviously what's wrong with California is they didn't elect Teddy for governor.

Also;

Today is the 103rd anniversary of the murder of Joe Hill.

@11- Everything from Beetle kill to decade of drought to refusal by logging companies to selectively cut and clear. Maybe the CCC needs to be restarted? because private industry has refused to cooperate

@14: I believe the other states have to deal with climate change too, although I am no scientist.

Also, the southwest states are dealing with droughts that are worse in some places than CA, states such as Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Per the National Association of State Foresters, Colorado has comparable acreages of forest, and New Mexico is not far behind with 16.5 million acres to California's 23 million.

I don't know if "California is bigger and hotter" than other states aptly explains what is going on.

@6 FTW!

Finland is near the Arctic, huge areas of California is near the Tropics and desert! Finland's forests were extensively logged and replanted in planned smaller forests divided by roads, California has large forests that have fewer fire breaks. The vegetation, ecosystems, wild life, climate, weather, watersheds, topography, usage, etc. etc. are all different between Finland and California. And the Dotard-in-Chief thinks California can do what Finland does to prevent wild fires! How on earth did this man manage to graduate from high school?

Forget high school, I know 4th graders who know more about forests than that orange mutant!

@16: New Mexico and Colorado have had brutal fire seasons the past two years.

@11:

As has been stated repeatedly throughout the course of this tragedy, the Camp Fire most likely started on federal land in the Plumas National Forest before spreading to private holdings; and the state has absolutely no control over how those resources are managed.

Obviously my only beef with the turkey toss is the implication that leaving a dead, feathered turkey carcass is somehow a substitute for hunting something down and making the kill. Next time throw a live turkey in there!

@23:

Perhaps they could drop it from a helicopter - you know, give the turkey a fighting chance to fly away first...

@24:

perhaps some local radio station could organize that at some shopping mall

The Archer the dog video may have just made my entire week.

@17 -- "How on earth did this man manage to graduate from high school?"

He didn't need to -- instead, le Prez simply started up Trumpf U,
gave himself a nice shiny Diploma
[inherited $415,000,000.00],
and never looked back
(serial divorces / bankruptcies are seldom pretty).

@14 -- "California is a big state and we are experiencing almost a decade of climate change-induced drought that has killed a bunch of trees and dried everything out... "

Not to mention more growth-promoting moisture in the Spring...

Getting awful Tired of this Hoax.
WHEN were they gonna call it off?

"The other difference is that they will be unlocked using a pass-code and ID number rather than a smartphone"

No. It doesn't require a different-each-time passcode, like most docked bikeshares do. In the case of a dockless bikeshare, getting a passcode would still require a smartphone. You enter your phone number on the rear rack keypad. Then it prompts you for a four-digit PIN code, which is the same each time. Once it verifies that code, the bike is unlocked.

Which is great, since people who don't have smartphones can access them too. And if you just find one on the street, you don't have to get your phone out to activate it.

But if you do have it in your hand, you can also unlock it the same way you do with a LimeBike, by scanning a QR code. When I've used JUMP in DC, though, that method hasn't worked very well, and I've always ended up using the keypad instead.

Also, as DOUG. notes, they're meant to be locked to a stationary object. But it can only tell whether the U-lock is inserted in the slots for it in the bike, and not whether there's a pole or rack inside the lock. I've seen plenty of them that aren't attached to anything, and that's technically a violation of the user agreement. But they're so heavy, and so useless without activation, that stealing one is impractical and senseless.

@25 "As God is my witness, I thought Turkey's could fly".