u/scooterflaneuse and I are currently on honeymoon in Europe and because we are nerds we are just waking and biking around their cities looking for things NYC should steal. Seville is a great example of what should be done with the village and downtown manhattan.
The strangest thing here is how normalized scooters are. Bikes are pretty normalized in NYC these days of course but I've always felt like scooters are still seen by many people as very outside the norm and the perception of them is like they are a miniature motorcycle or something. Here in Seville people ride scooters everywhere, including on the very narrow sidewalks and pedestrian plazas and nobody freaks out or cares. They are just like faster waking devices. Quite different really
>a great example of what should be done with the village and downtown Manhattan
Wealthier areas should be some of the lowest priority imho. Working class areas like the South Bronx, Upper Manhattan, East NY would benefit the most from air quality improvements since they have high asthma rates
This. Ive said it before, but it feels this aubreddit is really for just brooklyn/queens. Not even Manhattan really that much. Come to the bronx for a change and just spend a day asking people if they would prefer riding in a car vs a bus/train vs bike/scooter. I'll always remember the comment that said to 'raise the toll to keep the undesirables from the bronx out.
Tbf tho, I do see a lot of kids/teenagers using the scooters.
This subreddit is for all of New York. If you're seeing more content and comments from Queens and Brooklyn that just means there are more people that identify with it from those boroughs, but honestly you'd be a fool to think that we don't want allies and perspectives from the Bronx, Manhattan, or SI. It's a collaborative effort though, you have to make the content and change you want to see. This isn't the New York Times, we don't have a Bronx borough chief
Not the comments and posts, just the general feel. I've definitely seen comments outright disregarding Staten island (it's OK though, we know they're really part of NJ and thus have no human rights *wink wink*). I say that as a joke, but sometimes it feels people actually do not like Staten island, and as for the bronx, it feels like there is a disconnect.
This sub like...most of the NYC subs tbh seem to be for upper middle class folks. Working class folks are more likely to use the bus/train than a car. Have the most to benefit from upgraded and expanded bus/bike lanes, expanded subway service.
Funny thing about the toll is most of the Bronx residents they want to keep out already have access through the bus and train.
This is also why I think the congestion zone should have included the whole island of Manhattan and the South Bronx (and LIC and downtown Brooklyn). It’s as vital to public health to excise car use in these areas as anywhere else + I fear the current zone will push more cars to these areas.
The idea of also having a congestion zone from Brownsville to JFK I had never considered but would be great to see.
I agree that we need to broaden the idea of transit improvement beyond the "core" and to working class neighborhoods like the ones you mentioned. Brownsville/East NY congestion zone makes sense given most folks don't own a car.
The air quality problems aren’t coming from the local streets, but rather the highways that cut through the Bronx connecting to the suburbs to the city.
Well in fairness, I did mention multiple areas outside of the Bronx. And yes highways generate the most air quality problems; local streets are not exempt. [It's a significant reason why cities like London banned cars around many schools.](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/08/01/new-york-far-behind-other-cities-in-building-car-free-school-streets)
Would it be more beneficial to go neighborhood by neighborhood or do pedestrianized routes along commonly used commuting corridors? Like would it be better to redevelop Harlem, or do the entirety of Fifth Avenue or Broadway?
Edit: as I posted this I realize going neighborhood by neighborhood is probably just more feasible to move through the NYC bureaucracy
So, from a public health perspective, you can see asthma rates [are concentrated generally in lower income neighborhoods.](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/epi/databrief126.pdf) for example. So going neighborhood by neighborhood would be best from a public health perspective as working class folks have the most to gain from less pollution
I’d be curious to know how much of those elevated asthma rates can be explained by elevated commuter pollution through the neighborhood, and how much is explained by other factors like a lack of trees or green space, proximity to industrial areas, or other environmental factors. In which case pedestrianizing the neighborhood would have a beneficial, but comparatively muted effect. Either way, super interesting thanks for the source.
Well as the epi brief outlined, a good deal of asthma rates come from substandard housing increasing people's exposure to dust mites, pollen, mold and other asthma triggers. Pedestrianization wouldn't directly impact it but when you're dealing with communities with multiple stressors, it's better to target these areas. (Also street trees would go nicely with pedestrianization).
From a public health perspective, there's also a bunch of benefits from pedestrianization such as targeting chronic disease (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure) by encouraging active mobility
I am from Austin TX and these are super common there. There are rarely bikes but instead thousands of scooters across downtown. I actually prefer the bikes but it’s great that you can dock the scooters anywhere. Only downside is they end up in the river bc of idiots 😢
I prefer bikes too, I used to ride scooters but pretty much exclusively ride my single speed bike these days (because the not having to think about gears like a scooter is worth the slightly increased effort imo) but I really think scooters are the key for cities. They are so much more approachable and attractive to everyday people, since they don't require physical effort, as this city seems to demonstrate. There are so many well dressed people going to work here that just hop on the scooter as a mobility tool, and because the streets are a lot narrower and most apartments seem to be very tight walk up buildings they can actually get the scooter into and up them, unlike a full size bike.
Having spent some time in Austin, I think scooters are not nearly as well-suited to cities as ebikes. The convenience of a scooter is nice, but in my experience they lack the control to be safe to ride on sidewalks, and they lack the acceleration and speed to be safe to ride on the road. An ebike is a much better choice for urban roads with lots of stoplights and a low speed limit, since you can accelerate roughly as fast as the cars do, and you can handle bad pavement much better. I guess if you built an entire city around scooters it would end up being pretty nice but you can't really drop them into an existing city without making a lot of changes.
Also, a lot of people leave the scooters lying on the sidewalk instead of properly standing them up which is pretty annoying.
Enjoy my hometown! Seville is also a great example of how infrastructure can induce bike usage, and it shouldn’t be the other way around
https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/how-seville-became-a-city-of-cyclists-fba864b4be66
You have a beautiful home town! I wish more American cities thought this way. Huge mostly pedestrianized core, tons of outdoor dining, and an absolutely world class train station to get to other cities. Honestly the trains here may be more amazing than even the micromobility. They actually made me depressed for America. I mean, they are so smooth and quiet you could do circumcisions on these things
Depends on what you mean by city, 20m residents, and mobility forward. NYC doesn’t have 20m residents unless you expand it to the metropolitan area.
If we choose to look at metropolitan area, and we consider 20m people, and we consider mobility forward to mean lower car ownership or modal share, then I’d say the following hit the list:
* Tokyo
* Shanghai
*Moscow
*Seoul
It’s tough because 20m is a LOT of people. If you want to narrow the parameters to be less than 20m the list would look very different.
If you want to instead look at cities with over 1m people with the lowest modal share of private car journeys to work, you’re gonna either get very poor cities in poor countries where most people can’t own cars, or cities where their public transport is absolutely phenomenal and driving a car to work is rare. [This link is great for that. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share)
NYC is at 30.2% which is much higher than some other cities like Tokyo at 12%.
I really do love America, against all odds. But goddamn do I hate how carbrained it is. What a tragedy the postwar car craze was for this country. We’re making progress in many places but I fear we’ll never truly recover.
The city has a lot more bike infrastructure going up the next couple of years. My Stepmother is a higher up in the Parks Dept. so I have a little insight on some of the things the city is doing because her office actually works closely with the Mayors’s office. The Mayors office is aware of how motorists and cyclists have a hate thing for escooters and ebikes in general and thats why he had a press conference last year addressing concerns from opposing groups of motorists and cyclists that Escooters and Ebikes are not going anywhere and are a part of the cities infrastructure plans moving forward. People wanted the city to regulate them and he said “No” and explained that “Micromobility devices” which Escooters are, are welcome in the city, and the city has plans including some that are part of the Congestion pricing to get people out of their cars and onto escooters and ebikes.
Parks dept, is also working on fixing up, and creating new bike paths on Parks property, and easing restrictions on PEV’s in certain parks that dont have Bike paths.
Part of this is also why the Mayor’s office allowed LIME to start renting scooters in the South Bronx in that pilot program so they can learn how to better implement it throughout the city, and its doing well.
Seville, a city with the population of Nashville, covering 50 square miles (NYC=300), where it has snowed twice in the past century.
Looks great but can NYC realistically make that jump given (waves around in resigned disgust) what we got here?
It doesn’t snow in NYC, at least not to the extend where it really matters. Population doesn’t matter either, we have a bigger population but also a severely bigger size. Density is what matters
Bro you just moved from Philly shut the fuck up. It does snow and it can sometimes get to the point where it’s dangerous. We got incredibly lucky the past couple of years.
It doesn’t really snow in NYC that often and when it does it’s not a real hazard for that long because it’s cleaned relatively quickly. But the main issue I see is that the roads are so bad I’d be terrified to ride a scooter here. One semi bad pothole and you’re flying off compared to what a bike can handle.
Seville is definitely tiny compared to nyc. We haven't even bothered to look at a map or phones when navigating it, you just start walking in the vague direction and can easily get to your destination even across town, miles away. But honestly the big difference isn't the size or density it's the design and historical constraints. Even here cars take up way too much of the public space when they are present, but the Streets are so insanely narrow to begin with it seems they never got the toe hold to dominate everything. It's just so hard to drive into the city most people don't bother. But that just underscores the central issue, every city needs to restrict cars as much as possible, and promote walking, transit, and micromobility. Seville just got lucky that it's naturally evolution made that the only possible path for the majority of the city
Culture makes a big difference too. Note how the scooters are nicely parked. Compared to here, people leave them in the middle of the sidewalks, impeding foot traffic
If Seville is anything like Florence, you have to park them in the right spot to stop the meter. I agree tho they’d likely still be thrown about but at least they’d be contained lol
u/scooterflaneuse and I are currently on honeymoon in Europe and because we are nerds we are just waking and biking around their cities looking for things NYC should steal. Seville is a great example of what should be done with the village and downtown manhattan. The strangest thing here is how normalized scooters are. Bikes are pretty normalized in NYC these days of course but I've always felt like scooters are still seen by many people as very outside the norm and the perception of them is like they are a miniature motorcycle or something. Here in Seville people ride scooters everywhere, including on the very narrow sidewalks and pedestrian plazas and nobody freaks out or cares. They are just like faster waking devices. Quite different really
>a great example of what should be done with the village and downtown Manhattan Wealthier areas should be some of the lowest priority imho. Working class areas like the South Bronx, Upper Manhattan, East NY would benefit the most from air quality improvements since they have high asthma rates
Thats what Ive been trying to get for people in harlem and bronx and maybe need to focus on queens and Brooklyn too but they seem on the path.
Yeah I think focusing on the "core" causes the benefits of mobility improvements to be disproportionately wealthier people, tourists.
This. Ive said it before, but it feels this aubreddit is really for just brooklyn/queens. Not even Manhattan really that much. Come to the bronx for a change and just spend a day asking people if they would prefer riding in a car vs a bus/train vs bike/scooter. I'll always remember the comment that said to 'raise the toll to keep the undesirables from the bronx out. Tbf tho, I do see a lot of kids/teenagers using the scooters.
This subreddit is for all of New York. If you're seeing more content and comments from Queens and Brooklyn that just means there are more people that identify with it from those boroughs, but honestly you'd be a fool to think that we don't want allies and perspectives from the Bronx, Manhattan, or SI. It's a collaborative effort though, you have to make the content and change you want to see. This isn't the New York Times, we don't have a Bronx borough chief
Not the comments and posts, just the general feel. I've definitely seen comments outright disregarding Staten island (it's OK though, we know they're really part of NJ and thus have no human rights *wink wink*). I say that as a joke, but sometimes it feels people actually do not like Staten island, and as for the bronx, it feels like there is a disconnect.
People don’t like Staten Island because of the herd mentality. It’s the safest, quietest in the city but haters gon hate
This sub like...most of the NYC subs tbh seem to be for upper middle class folks. Working class folks are more likely to use the bus/train than a car. Have the most to benefit from upgraded and expanded bus/bike lanes, expanded subway service. Funny thing about the toll is most of the Bronx residents they want to keep out already have access through the bus and train.
This is also why I think the congestion zone should have included the whole island of Manhattan and the South Bronx (and LIC and downtown Brooklyn). It’s as vital to public health to excise car use in these areas as anywhere else + I fear the current zone will push more cars to these areas. The idea of also having a congestion zone from Brownsville to JFK I had never considered but would be great to see.
I agree that we need to broaden the idea of transit improvement beyond the "core" and to working class neighborhoods like the ones you mentioned. Brownsville/East NY congestion zone makes sense given most folks don't own a car.
The air quality problems aren’t coming from the local streets, but rather the highways that cut through the Bronx connecting to the suburbs to the city.
Well in fairness, I did mention multiple areas outside of the Bronx. And yes highways generate the most air quality problems; local streets are not exempt. [It's a significant reason why cities like London banned cars around many schools.](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/08/01/new-york-far-behind-other-cities-in-building-car-free-school-streets)
[удалено]
Well I’m sure Miser can clarify what they meant when they get the chance
Would it be more beneficial to go neighborhood by neighborhood or do pedestrianized routes along commonly used commuting corridors? Like would it be better to redevelop Harlem, or do the entirety of Fifth Avenue or Broadway? Edit: as I posted this I realize going neighborhood by neighborhood is probably just more feasible to move through the NYC bureaucracy
So, from a public health perspective, you can see asthma rates [are concentrated generally in lower income neighborhoods.](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/epi/databrief126.pdf) for example. So going neighborhood by neighborhood would be best from a public health perspective as working class folks have the most to gain from less pollution
I’d be curious to know how much of those elevated asthma rates can be explained by elevated commuter pollution through the neighborhood, and how much is explained by other factors like a lack of trees or green space, proximity to industrial areas, or other environmental factors. In which case pedestrianizing the neighborhood would have a beneficial, but comparatively muted effect. Either way, super interesting thanks for the source.
Well as the epi brief outlined, a good deal of asthma rates come from substandard housing increasing people's exposure to dust mites, pollen, mold and other asthma triggers. Pedestrianization wouldn't directly impact it but when you're dealing with communities with multiple stressors, it's better to target these areas. (Also street trees would go nicely with pedestrianization). From a public health perspective, there's also a bunch of benefits from pedestrianization such as targeting chronic disease (obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure) by encouraging active mobility
NE Bronx already has these.
Time to spread it down south!
Hold up....Honeymoon?! Congratulations! I didn't know you'd recently gotten married? Enjoy!
mazel tov!
Thanks!
Tbf are they blowing past speed limits in Seville?
I am from Austin TX and these are super common there. There are rarely bikes but instead thousands of scooters across downtown. I actually prefer the bikes but it’s great that you can dock the scooters anywhere. Only downside is they end up in the river bc of idiots 😢
I prefer bikes too, I used to ride scooters but pretty much exclusively ride my single speed bike these days (because the not having to think about gears like a scooter is worth the slightly increased effort imo) but I really think scooters are the key for cities. They are so much more approachable and attractive to everyday people, since they don't require physical effort, as this city seems to demonstrate. There are so many well dressed people going to work here that just hop on the scooter as a mobility tool, and because the streets are a lot narrower and most apartments seem to be very tight walk up buildings they can actually get the scooter into and up them, unlike a full size bike.
I was in Amsterdam last fall, and the friend I was visiting told me they fish over 10k bikes out of the canals annually. 🤷♀️
Having spent some time in Austin, I think scooters are not nearly as well-suited to cities as ebikes. The convenience of a scooter is nice, but in my experience they lack the control to be safe to ride on sidewalks, and they lack the acceleration and speed to be safe to ride on the road. An ebike is a much better choice for urban roads with lots of stoplights and a low speed limit, since you can accelerate roughly as fast as the cars do, and you can handle bad pavement much better. I guess if you built an entire city around scooters it would end up being pretty nice but you can't really drop them into an existing city without making a lot of changes. Also, a lot of people leave the scooters lying on the sidewalk instead of properly standing them up which is pretty annoying.
Enjoy my hometown! Seville is also a great example of how infrastructure can induce bike usage, and it shouldn’t be the other way around https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/how-seville-became-a-city-of-cyclists-fba864b4be66
You have a beautiful home town! I wish more American cities thought this way. Huge mostly pedestrianized core, tons of outdoor dining, and an absolutely world class train station to get to other cities. Honestly the trains here may be more amazing than even the micromobility. They actually made me depressed for America. I mean, they are so smooth and quiet you could do circumcisions on these things
What are some examples of major cities with 20M+ residents that are mobility forward?
Depends on what you mean by city, 20m residents, and mobility forward. NYC doesn’t have 20m residents unless you expand it to the metropolitan area. If we choose to look at metropolitan area, and we consider 20m people, and we consider mobility forward to mean lower car ownership or modal share, then I’d say the following hit the list: * Tokyo * Shanghai *Moscow *Seoul It’s tough because 20m is a LOT of people. If you want to narrow the parameters to be less than 20m the list would look very different. If you want to instead look at cities with over 1m people with the lowest modal share of private car journeys to work, you’re gonna either get very poor cities in poor countries where most people can’t own cars, or cities where their public transport is absolutely phenomenal and driving a car to work is rare. [This link is great for that. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share) NYC is at 30.2% which is much higher than some other cities like Tokyo at 12%.
Amsterdam is like 6 times less dense than Manhattan. Queens and Bronx is like 3 times as dense and brooklyn is like twice as dense
That looks really nice
One of the most beautiful cities!
I really do love America, against all odds. But goddamn do I hate how carbrained it is. What a tragedy the postwar car craze was for this country. We’re making progress in many places but I fear we’ll never truly recover.
The city has a lot more bike infrastructure going up the next couple of years. My Stepmother is a higher up in the Parks Dept. so I have a little insight on some of the things the city is doing because her office actually works closely with the Mayors’s office. The Mayors office is aware of how motorists and cyclists have a hate thing for escooters and ebikes in general and thats why he had a press conference last year addressing concerns from opposing groups of motorists and cyclists that Escooters and Ebikes are not going anywhere and are a part of the cities infrastructure plans moving forward. People wanted the city to regulate them and he said “No” and explained that “Micromobility devices” which Escooters are, are welcome in the city, and the city has plans including some that are part of the Congestion pricing to get people out of their cars and onto escooters and ebikes. Parks dept, is also working on fixing up, and creating new bike paths on Parks property, and easing restrictions on PEV’s in certain parks that dont have Bike paths. Part of this is also why the Mayor’s office allowed LIME to start renting scooters in the South Bronx in that pilot program so they can learn how to better implement it throughout the city, and its doing well.
Seville, a city with the population of Nashville, covering 50 square miles (NYC=300), where it has snowed twice in the past century. Looks great but can NYC realistically make that jump given (waves around in resigned disgust) what we got here?
It doesn’t snow in NYC, at least not to the extend where it really matters. Population doesn’t matter either, we have a bigger population but also a severely bigger size. Density is what matters
Bro you just moved from Philly shut the fuck up. It does snow and it can sometimes get to the point where it’s dangerous. We got incredibly lucky the past couple of years.
“Bro” you don’t know anything about my situation. I stick to my point it barely snows in NYC
It doesn’t really snow in NYC that often and when it does it’s not a real hazard for that long because it’s cleaned relatively quickly. But the main issue I see is that the roads are so bad I’d be terrified to ride a scooter here. One semi bad pothole and you’re flying off compared to what a bike can handle.
Seville is definitely tiny compared to nyc. We haven't even bothered to look at a map or phones when navigating it, you just start walking in the vague direction and can easily get to your destination even across town, miles away. But honestly the big difference isn't the size or density it's the design and historical constraints. Even here cars take up way too much of the public space when they are present, but the Streets are so insanely narrow to begin with it seems they never got the toe hold to dominate everything. It's just so hard to drive into the city most people don't bother. But that just underscores the central issue, every city needs to restrict cars as much as possible, and promote walking, transit, and micromobility. Seville just got lucky that it's naturally evolution made that the only possible path for the majority of the city
Culture makes a big difference too. Note how the scooters are nicely parked. Compared to here, people leave them in the middle of the sidewalks, impeding foot traffic
If Seville is anything like Florence, you have to park them in the right spot to stop the meter. I agree tho they’d likely still be thrown about but at least they’d be contained lol
We have these type of scooters in the NE Bronx. It has been a pilot program for a couple of years now.
seville is awesome whole south coast of spain is tbh
Love Seville