Comments

1

Yeah, this administration's main goal is to stop all progress it seems.

2

Nope, these are not allowed due to Seattle's and King County's nanny complex. These are all over Southern Cal and no one has a bigger car complex than they do.

3

2 - You almost made a coherent thought, you just could not finish the final hurdles, huh?

4

@1: establishment Democrat something something grumble grumble

5

3 - Wow me with your brilliance please.

6

Agreed, Charles. Hills are also an issue of scooter functionality in Seattle--much less so in Tacoma, Spokane, et. al. I stipulate that hills did not figure into Durkan's decision.

7

Electric scooters are dangerous. Ask any emergency room doctor. The companies that are pushing them are capitalists. They are in business to make money. The idea that Durkin is a shill for "car culture" because she questions the wisdom of allowing these capitalists to dump hundreds or thousands of tiny, unsafe, underpowered, poorly regulated vehicles onto city streets without more information is absurd. She's exercising caution because of concerns about public safety. In other words, she's doing her job, unlike the author of this ridiculous and misleading article.

8

We’ll see about accident rates in Tacoma before we make a decision here. An electric scooter accelerates more rapidly than does a bicycle (even an electric bike), has a tighter turning radius, is harder to see due to lower profile, and the weight of the batteries can really hurt a pedestrian upon impact.

Of course Charles and The Stranger have to get their hate on Durkan for beating their endorsed candidate (guys? That was almost a year ago, right?), but if this had gone the other way and pedestrians were now getting hurt, we’d be reading about how Durkan’s pro-business decisions in favor of electric scooters put profits above people.

9

Fine, Charles, but you’re confusing the issue a bit. The safety comparison isn’t between scooters and cars, since scooters replace very few car trips. They do replace bus rides, bike trips, and longer-distance walks. Are the scooters safer than those transportation modes? Maybe. But I don’t know and neither do you, and neither does Durkan or any other city rushing to put them on the streets because there just isn’t much data yet.

10

It is indeed Durkan who has banned electric scooters from our streets due to "safety concerns."

The goal of every female politician right there: a sanitized city safe for toddlers; all she has to do is restrict all kinds of activities that people with average intelligence can handle. All systems evolve towards the lowest common denominator - the human toddler. Just like weed, the scooter thing - the ONE communal thing I've been looking forward to in Seattle - it must be severely restricted. You can't walk through Pioneer Square without scanning 360 degrees around you but by god, we can't have SCOOTERS!

11

@7: Let me change a few words of your post and see if it still works:

CARS are dangerous. Ask any emergency room doctor. The companies that are pushing them are capitalists. They are in business to make money. WHY DOESN'T DURKAN QUESTION the wisdom of allowing these capitalists to dump hundreds or thousands of tiny, unsafe, underpowered, poorly regulated vehicles onto city streets without more information?

Either the principle applies to both cars and scooters, or to neither. And I'd be willing to wager you any amount you like that emergency room doctors will see more car accident patients than scooter accident patients over the next six months.

12

These scooters are not a replacement for traveling by car, they are a replacement for walking. You of all people should appreciate that foot traffic is the heart of every city.

13

I'm telling everyone I know: Shared Scooters vs Shared Bikes is a race-based issue. White progressive urban libs love shared bikes, and dislike young black men if they aren't dancin' or rappin' (and let's be real, Showtime! ain't quite as fresh as it used to be) . A tale as old as time, folks.

15

@13 On what anecdotes are you forming this opinion? In San Francisco, urban "progressives" fought the bike-share program tooth and nail and the e-scoot demo overwhelmingly the Apple watch crowd. You might see a handful of young people on e-scoots but remember you need a smartphone and a credit card to use them.

16

As a pedestrian I'm actually thankful these are banned. It's bad enough getting nearly run into by bicyclists delivering food and Amazon employees on onewheels. Meanwhile, never ending construction eats up more of our sidewalks, which are already shared by more modes of transportation than any other public space in the city.

17

Peri427: This is the "what about Bill Clinton" argument that Trump's imbecilic followers always fall back on whenever any mention of President Toadstool's ugly behavior toward women is brought up, and logic and reason fail them, as it generally does.

Yes, cars are dangerous too, although much safer than they once were thanks to government intervention and regulation, such as seat belt laws and others that forced car makers to build safer cars. Thanks, government.

And yes, no doubt ER doctors in this country see more car injuries than scooter injuries. Do you think maybe the fact that far far more people travel by car here than by scooter might have something to do with it? It's like arguing that hand grenades are safer than hand guns because fewer people end up in the ER with hand grenade injuries than gunshot wounds. So no, scooters are not safer than cars. Do some research.

And yeah, I know, you hate Durkin. But don't use illogical Trump style, post-truth era, reasoning to make your arguments. These are perilous times. And trying to foment anger over an issue this tangential and irrelevant to the greater threat makes you appear as small as the simpletons who got us here in the first place.

18

Scooters are the fuckin’ fever dream of VC’s who want to monetize the “last mile” of the commute. They’re a fucking public nuisance that don’t play nice with pedestrians (clogged sidewalks) or bikes (hey, bikes - watch out for the motorized device zooming up on you in the bike lane). They take zero cars off the street. Keep them out of Seattle, and build the streetcar to take pressure off busses in the overcrowded Belltown-Downtown corridor. Scooters are even more useless than those fucking Lime bikes. FFS.

19

@11: It doesn’t:

“...dump hundreds or thousands of tiny, unsafe, underpowered, poorly regulated vehicles...”

Automobiles are none of those things, especially not when compared to bicycles or scooters. You’re welcome.

“And I'd be willing to wager you any amount you like that emergency room doctors will see more car accident patients than scooter accident patients over the next six months.”

Yes, it will be very, very hard for persons to be injured by scooters which will not be there. Sounds like a pretty safe bet. (Does your own personal experience include being repeatedly frightened by entities no one else ever seems to see?)

20

"...and is not a fossil fuel-burning machine."

2018 and still we have this widespread refusal to understand the fundamentals of electric vehicles.

Batteries are made out of pine cones and grass clippings (you could compost them if they wore out, but of course they never do). Fairies put fresh electricity into them every morning, harvested from the dew and the dreams of good children everywhere.

You know what else you can do to power a scooter? Put your foot down on the ground and push. We can't cede control of the world economy to the Fairies.

21

@12,

I've gotta imagine they're cutting into a good amount of uber/lyft business as well. As far as your other question to sportlandia there, I can't say for certain, but think he may have been attempting to make a "funny."

And I've got a fair amount of experience with these things, living and working as I do in downtown Portland where we've had a pilot program running for a few months now with three(!) different companies deploying their fleets around. They've honestly not been anywhere near the nuisance I was fearing. And I'm a pretty avid cyclist with not much vested interest in their success one way or the other. I see them pretty much constantly and haven't witnessed a single accident and only minimal disregard for street laws, etc.

You guys should definitely give them a shot (and yeah, I rented one once and will confess they're actually pretty freaking dorky-assed fun.)

22

Durkan’s transportation policy is simple: soothe the delicate feelings of the drivers in the Seattle Times comment sections.

The reason she doesn’t want scooters on streets is because she knows people will complain about them. Her highest priority is making sure car drivers’ feelings aren’t hurt. Not safety. Not mobility.

She just doesn’t want to take flak from comments section people.

This, by the way, is a textbook example of political cowardice.

This is not at all complicated.

23

Spokane has scooters now. They started to appear all over the place like mushrooms after rain about a week ago.

24

@15 as someone who helped make bike share a reality in San Francisco, bull-ass-shit. Urban Progressives supported it like crazy.

25

Charles, as you were flying to Orcas Island recently, did you consider for one second that everything you say about climate change and fossil fuels reeks of hypocrisy?

And why are we supposed to be impressed that you were born in Zimbabwe? Isn't that irrelevant? Or does it somehow establish your wretched of the earth cred? (Not that, it seems, your family was in any way poor there).

26

@24 hahaha what? Just about every neighborhood group tried to NIMBY the shit outta those bike docks, complaining about branding pollution (not my words) and, of course, loss of parking. Isn't it always about parking? The only reason they got done is because SFMTA installed them in the middle of the damn night. (friend there said he'd never seen anything like it.) I supposed you could invoke "no true Scotsman" and say these people aren't progressives, but that would be mostly wrong.

27

@7 cars are dangerous. ask any emergency room doctor.

scooters (and bikes and walking and skatboarding) are only as dangerous as the pedestrian environment we provide for them. if ATL can have scooters, then surely seattle can figure it out.


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