The way to get people out of their cars is to make it less convenient / easy than at least one other option. Your bus every 15 minutes* isn't doing it. Try a complete actually-connected bikeway network. (* No bus comes every 15 minutes on nights or weekends or other random days or if we forget or...)
@enobacon I have a greenway->bus->park that I’d like to try to get to the office, but:
The route only runs hourly (seriously! On week days!) AND
They don’t allow e-bikes on our buses. Blanket ban based on the idea that all e-bikes are too heavy for their racks.
I’m lucky because it’s actually substantially faster for me to bike a street route, but I’d love to incorporate the greenway (calmer/nicer) & I wish I had a backup. Had to stay an extra hour this week bc of lightning.
Mastodon must be getting easier to use, judging from the apparent intellectual skill of some recent replies. Long way to go to match the burdsite namenumbers crowd though.
I'm not saying an electric #cargoBike is going to solve every feminist issue in our cities, but it's a heckuva stroller/diaper bag/"sag wagon" for "encumbered travel". Being able to take kids to school or the park without having to park a car and then walk through the gauntlet of crosswalks and whatever, and they can jump out and run to the swings as soon as you get to the park sidewalk, etc. It's so great for kids to learn the neighborhood and mobility by bike.
@enobacon Making sure that women are included and respected to the same degree as men in the planning process is feminism. Exaggerating observed gender differences or assuming traditional gender roles isn’t. Kern addresses that pretty well in the book IIRC. The language we use to discuss caregiving or traffic safety concerns should be inclusive, though it’s certainly fair to acknowledge that exclusion of women contributed to some issues being ignored historically.
I need to do something about this "8 pages of notifications about 15 clicks" thing in the mastodon UI. What app do I want? (chrome, linux, and/or android)
I need to get an 18in cut-and-hold pruner to carry on the #cargoBike for the blackberry vines around SW #Portland@ShawneMartinez do I need to cut down a 3ft one? 🩸 #Tigard
@enobacon@ShawneMartinez I've seriously considered carrying a machete on my bike or when out walking for this exact reason (this and low-hanging branches in the ROW). Then I remember how everybody panics about the dumbest stuff and reconsider. :/
does it suck to ride a bike in the surburbs with shitty suburban traffic? Yes!
does it suck to drive in the suburbs and get stuck in endless traffic? Also yes!
Are there giant empty bike-lane-sized swaths of street everywhere? Hell yes!
Engineers and planners would like you to just ride in that hellscape and not question their authority, or something. Even more than half of the space with cars in it wouldn't be needed if people weren't driving a half mile and similar nonsense.
#PBOT Bicycle advisory committee presentation about "#ClimateEmergency declaration" work "depending on funding" is so totally absurd. #pdxBikes save you money, cars cost obscene amounts of money to serve... Totally bullshit strategy that you'll somehow get people out of their cars without cutting back on how much debt you rack up encouraging them to drive 🤡 💸 💸 💸 #InducedDemand
@ascentale Also they constantly talk about how it was so visionary to stop building more freeway (though they really did as much as terrain would allow anyway) but can't add up how removing car space might reduce car use 🙃
Of all the levers you have available to pull on for #ClimateAction, the big long one labeled "ride your #bike instead of driving" requires a moderate effort and you might need to wear a hat when it rains, but the rest of the levers are too short for you to move them.
@pleaseclap@robgalanakis@UncensoredNews "... our transportation system is completely stupid" article?) but you'll also be reducing your own reliance on cars, saving money, withholding money from those 100 companies, and possibly inspiring your friends and neighbors to take the orange pill. Like if you were going to buy an e-car but bought 10 e-bikes and gave them to your friends, you see the VMT reduction there right? Also #eBikes displace ~3x car miles so it's not like eating vegan at all.
what's with the #eBike obsessed bot/"Name12345" accounts on the bird site lately? A bunch of them had the same cleavage-laden profile pics and links to "dating" sites, but some are just faceless and very into e-bikes?
who isn't going to drive to the Walgreen's on Barbur, rather than ride the bus and spend ten minutes risking their life crossing ODOT's absolute sea of bullshit to get there from the transit center
@htdrake All they had to do was give up one of the two thru lanes in each direction (wtf that stupid slip lane at the TF & Cap corner of Walgreens) for a street which only has one thru lane in each direction on both ends of these two blocks. Drivers get confused by too many choices anyway. ODOT Engineers literally said that the chance of stopped cars backed up onto the freeway was a more significant safety issue than kids being able to cross the street 🙄 -> #ODOTGTFOpdx
"unlike a light rail train, the shuttle won't be able to avoid getting stuck in traffic, so replacing a train with a shuttle isn't a one-to-one match" 🙃 if only somebody could do something about that #pdxTraffic! Like, if one of the many many car lanes to the airport could be a #busLane ¯_(ツ)_/¯ #Portland#TriMet#FuckTedWheeler#ClimateInaction
re: why #Portland can't have nice things: The trick is to make each "ride your bike in relatively car-free safety" event an expensive optional line-item requiring lots of money for "traffic control", but frame as unavoidable the $2M+/day we spend letting cars have free reign of the entire system for the other 362 days.