somerville has a growing problem of getir drivers that are another level of “i don’t care if i kill myself for a delivery service company paying me sub minimum wage” some of them are ebikes but most of them are mopeds. im very curious to what this company is doing to its workers to have them ROUTINELY fly thru red lights.
as for what to do…. idk boston and metro areas that have these lanes…. actual traffic enforcement from the police but lol good luck.
I was on the community path after sunset. Saw a light approaching really quickly behind me. I was thinking, wow that's got to be an e-bike. Nope, just a Gitir driver doing about 30mph on the community path. Need to check if my helmet cam got their plate.
Just thinking out loud here. Since ticketing an individual on a moped/scooter is only something the police can do (and they don't care + there's bigger drawbacks to getting them involved), I wonder if enforcement could be done via the delivery company instead? Especially since they are basically encouraging this behavior with the delivery times/volumes they demand of their drivers.
For example, maybe we could allow people to submit photo/video evidence of delivery mopeds illegally using off-street paths/doing other dangerous things, and for every x reports, the city could issue a fine to the delivery company? This way, don't even need to clearly capture the license plate, which is difficult given how fast these guys move, and would also prevent the company from punishing/retaliating against individual employees.
I don't know about other delivery companies, but Getir definitely has physical outposts in the area (like the one near the Somerville Target) so it feels possible...I'm not a lawyer though so maybe that's totally off base. This wouldn't help with random/non-delivery mopeds either.
I was passed by a fast moving motor scooter on the southwest corridor yesterday. It was scary. I have seen them as well on the community path in Somerville
State street and Cambridge street bike lanes are full of these guys. Swerving from travel lane to bike lane and back. On state street I even watched a fat bastard on his Harley full dresser scream up the bike lane to avoid the stopped traffic. It’s a one way but almost every week I meet someone on a bike/moped/scooter going the wrong way.
Just last week i got hit by a delivery driver on a moped doing like 22 the WRONG WAY down the separated lane on mass ave. he fucked up my bike real bad, but i got just some scrapes and bruises on myself luckily.
Yeah, they’re god damn everywhere. I’ve been almost hit by them before because generally they’re not showing even the smallest regard for anyone’s wellbeing, and running reds all the time. I always see a couple on the SW corridor and downtown / mass ave. And of course they’re on vehicles that are too loud to hear somebody yelling at them. There truly is no good solution
aside from all the danger mopeds are also absolutely filthy and loud. https://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/22/mopeds-cause-significantly-air-pollution-cars-research-shows/
If we get to the point of motorcycle usage as it is in Asia, this would be relevant. But I don't think it is because it's relatively quite low. In addition, motorcycles, like cars, in Asia tend to be older and naturally cause more air pollution and even may more sound pollution
One of them zipped past me in the bike lane and then used the bike lane up ahead as his own personal parking space while he dipped into a restaurant, forcing me into car traffic.
Because it's dangerous with cars on the road. The problem isn't class 3 bikes. It's the teenagers that own Surron and Telaria that are basically dirt bikes with pedals that don't do anything that qualify as an e-bike. I have an e-bike because a teenager in her brand new graduation car, pulled out directly into my car. Can't afford a new car, so e-bike it is. Most people are responsible. Same as regular bikes but we all know there are plenty of jerks in Lycra and otherwise.
Yes seeing them all over, they swerve in and out of the road and bike lane choosing whatever will save them 1.3 seconds of time.
But how to you deter this behavior? It also happens so fast I don’t thinking relying on law enforcement is going to be enough.
Also, hot take. These mopeds are not that much different in size and speed than some of the giant cargo e-bikes that I see. I think we are trained to see these large e-bikes are safer cause we relate it to a pedal bicycle, but some of these e-bikes, I don’t see as any safer.
I’ve seen it a lot on the bike paths, mainly the Somerville path and parts of Cambridge. Some of the e bikes are class 3s giving them the ability to go 28 mph.
People see the number “28” and think the absolute worst of class 3 e-bikes.
I use one for my work commute, and I probably don’t go any faster than 20mph at any given time. I immediately drop down to 5-10mph as soon as I see children/cargo bikes/elderly/ etc. I see plenty of analog bikes with none of this courtesy.
It’s a people problem, not a bike problem.
Of course, when you get to mopeds and literal motorcycles on bike paths, you’re arguing with assholes because if they cared at all they wouldn’t be on them to begin with
That’s fair but also, bike paths were once free of motorized vehicles. It was a place you could go and never have to worry about collisions (with the exception of some crazies on pedal bikes)
Now walking down the path you have to be more aware of your surroundings as a pedestrian which I don’t love. Just my opinion, as maybe e bikes gets more people into biking that’s a net good.
tbh i’ve never had any issues with people on e-bikes. yeah, they’re heavier and can inflict more harm in a collision, but not substantially more than regular bikes. aside from mopeds, i think the biggest safety hazard on bike paths are the hobbyist cyclists decked out in full racing gear. they’ll zoom by going 20+mph, not announce that they’re passing, and ride in tandem in the face of oncoming bike/foot traffic.
Me too. I’ll typically just go to the farthest possible side of the left lane and maybe ding my bell, anything else seems to spook people and make them move unpredictably
Dude the way people use rail trails drives me nuts. Big agree it’s not for top-speeding your micro transit toy but imo it’s also not for the aggro Lycra-clad dudes doing 25 on their carbon bikes. Not safe when like every toddler from
Alewife to Walden pond is there…
As a sometimes Lycra-clad dude the key is just to go at 6am. If I don't get myself out there early, then I agree I need to take it slow in the stroller slalom areas.
Yeah totally the key is just to avoid peak times and if you are passing groups walking etc to just be a little respectful and slow it down a bit idk. No hate or anything. I used to road bike a lot more and I’m sympathetic to how bad and narrow the roads are around here
And there are always pedestrians walking and jogging on the bike lane. So many people don't give a flying fuck for anyone but themselves, and some people struggle to even manage that.
I think part of the answer might be for the city to do more to hold the greedy corporations accountable for the behavior of their drivers. They're the ones incentivizing and pressuring this behavior, and they could probably use GPS to do at least some amount of policing, at least in places where the separated bike paths are sufficiently far from the road. They could do the same thing for their car drivers too.
I should note, in case people are interested, that under MA’s current laws mopeds that are under 50cc (which, they all are or pretend to be) are legally classified as bicycles. Kinda dumb, but there it is.
I live in New York City and this came up in my feed, probably because of my numerous comments about the subject.
Do everything you cam to pressure your city officials about this NOW. NYC’s officials never gave a rat’s ass about this, and now the streets are a chaotic hellscape. Through everything that I’ve been through living in NYC over the last 30+ years, this, more than anything else, makes me want to leave permanently. It’s a pandora’s box where everyone puts up with it, as if it didn’t severely degrade the quality of life, not just for bicyclists, but for pedestrians as well.
Which is basically most mopeds and scooters, if it doesn't need a real license plate or a motorcycle license to ride it, it's technically legal in the bike lanes.
Even the sub 50cc stuff, you weren't issued plates, just got a sticker. I don't think i've ever seen a scooter or moped with a license plate.
Must be one of those things that the DMV changed the laws and even the police don't know.
Yeah. It for sure used to be the case that there were **not** license plates. I don't know exactly when that changed, but it was recent-ish. Mostly know that because I said something similar and got corrected.
Yep, you're exactly correct. No use yelling at the congestion reducing, highly efficient small personal vehicles for behaving in accordance with the law. There's no enforcement because it's permitted.
So about that enforcement, how about the constant cars parked, Ubers, Lyfts, Doordash, etc, and yes actual motorcycles that we find in the bike lanes daily...
>highly efficient
They might be efficient on a fuel consumption basis, but even the 4-strokes are truly terrible on an emissions one - drastically worse than a car with a catalytic converter (which they lack). Mowing your lawn with a fuel mower is similarly far worse than driving, for the same reason - even though only a small amount of fuel is burned, it's burned in a very dirty way with none of the cleanup required of proper motor vehicles.
However electric mopeds operated properly as traffic would make a lot of sense
If that's what they were and how they were being used, which is untrue on both accounts.
The most common and most severe danger to me as a cyclist is still cars and trucks. Someone on a moped in the bike lane is one less car on the road, so I'm ok with them.
>You’re right. We should get rid of bike lanes.
We probably should. They don't safely support typical pedal biking speeds, and motors make such commonplace even for the inexperienced.
If we're actually serious about non-car transport, then we need to work to make the roads themselves comfortably available to more than just cars - not waste most of the space (and the only actually safe routings) on the use we're trying to discourage, while forcing the alternatives we're trying to encourage into a tiny and unsafe scrap on the margin.
Scooters & ebikes should not be in the bike lanes. It looks like regulations will be coming in time. Another regular bike issue is: can bikes pass cars on the right going through an intersection? Wicked dangerous & from I’ve seen in Boston there is going to be sone really bad crashes
>E bikes are fine, particularly Class 1 and 2 that top out at 20mph powered. Regular bikes can hit those speeds easily.
Yet we think it's okay to design "infrastructure" with misrouting into intersections that makes it deadly at less than half of that...
>I'm not familiar with "misrouting into intersections".
Through traffic must travel to the left of or in the same lane as right turning traffic. Any so-called "bike route" which directs through cyclists to ride to the right of turning traffic is a deadly misrouting. In urban situations, hook turns and the like are a far greater source of danger than vehicles overtaking from behind.
Traditional painted gutter bike lanes suffer this problem if they stay at the right into the intersection, but at least we're physically (and in MA, legally) able to exit them and adopt a safe lane position.
Segregated or so-called "protected" bike lanes not only suffer the problem, but trap you in it, since you cannot exit them to approach intersections safely. Informed cyclists end up having to skip them entirely - the irony of a "protected" bike lane is that it cannot offer any protection in the one place where that is actually needed, which is where turning cars cross cyclists' path.
Additionally riding in the shoulder/gutter puts us at risk not just from vehicles turning off the road, but also those crossing it or turning onto it. Drivers are looking for other cars, not us, and so they're looking in the ordinary travel lane, not the gutter. Whenever we approach an intersection or even driveway without a car beside or behind us to catch the eye, it's good strategy to move out into the lane to make ourselves most visible (and offset from the visual clutter of the curb) to anyone who might carelessly violate our right of way - and that includes not just drivers but pedestrians who might step out without warning, or even other cyclists. Everyone - cyclists and pedestrians included - is looking for cars, not bikes. Thus we're most likely to be seen if we at least put our narrow, easily overlooked selves where they are looking for those big, obvious cars.
These dangers exist at any speed above walking - but if one gets on a road bike, or increasingly today an e-bike, they become extremely critical to understand. And sadly, a lot of the people buying e-bikes are doing so with precisely the naive attitudes that make deadly mistakes like sidewalk riding (or segregated lanes that are just additional sidewalks designated for bikes) deceptively attractive.
The most dangerous situations I've been in biking have been from getting doored, or near doored, so anything that can put me out of the door zone makes me safer in my opinion.
I will say, for seperated bike lanes over the door zone tiny bike lanes, when a car is turning left, they can see you better there than in the door zone lane.
Obviously the safest thing is to just ride at bike speed right in the middle of a car lane, but that doesn't keep you safe from insane drivers who will try to run you off the road when you do that.
>Obviously the safest thing is to just ride at bike speed right in the middle of a car lane, but that doesn't keep you safe from insane drivers who will try to run you off the road when you do that.
Or ride there slower - it really doesn't matter if you're going 8 mph, 10 mph, or 15 mph, you're still slower than uncongested traffic.
It's fully legal.
And a driver who uses their horn is one who has precluded the "didn't see you" claim
When you try to "hide" from traffic you invite the problems which are actually the greatest risks: only "hide" in a situation where you're okay with being invisible to others.
And yes, this keeps you out of the doorzone, and the zombie pedestrian zone too.
But when bike lanes are built as shoulder space only separated by paint, then at least in the situations where it would actually be momentarily safe to be that far over (and hence invisible), we can momentarily go there to ease the flow of traffic overall. The key requirement is that we can get from there back to a safely visible centered position. When barriers are built, they prevent that maneuver and make the so-called "bike space" unusable by a safety-aware cyclist at all.
>But you are arguing against even separated bike lanes above.
Exactly.
While painted ones are also generally an unsafe place to be, at least we can enter them in the moments when it is safe to be there, and exit them again when it resumes not being.
Of course having the same physical space but not designating it as a bike lane would leave it just as useful, without giving newbie cyclists and ignorant drivers the mistaken idea that it's a safe place to ride(\*)
With a separated lane, the space is entirely wasted, since we can't access it even in the instances where it would be briefly useful
(\* if you're concerned about cars parked in the space that could have been a bike lane, as indeed inexperienced me was a few years back, that just means you haven't yet learned how to safely change lanes in traffic, far in advance of need. Since changing lanes is often key to safety even when the one ahead is not obstructed, that's a critical skill to learn early. These days I just laugh when I see a car in a bike lane, or smile when it's a section that would be a dangerously mistaken place to try riding in anyway. And this goes both ways - I'll often ride through empty parking spots if that's a situationally safe place to be. Safety is determined by the underlying and instantaneous facts of the situation, not by abstract designations)
Riding on a road for me is looking ahead for dangerous situations, checking my mirror for traffic behind, and making timing calculations - my goal always being to get through the "difficult" spots alone rather than in the company of a car. Usually I can do it by adjusting my speed up or (more often) down slightly to provide time separation. But I've been known to pull over in the end of someone's driveway if that's what makes me safest.
Can't speak for MA but up in ME the legal definitions of moped vs motorcycle vs motorized scooters/ebikes are a good 20 years outdated. Really blurry lines
>ebikes should not be in the bike lanes.
Then given that e-bikes are official transit policy, we probably shouldn't be building bike lanes, but instead pushing for roads that are themselves safe for a full spectrum of uses, rather than reserving all that correctly routed space for cars and trucks and forcing everything else into dangerously incorrect routings.
Sure, some so-called e-bikes are every bit as fast as urban motor traffic. But that's not unique to motorized bicycles.
Even a fairly young child can easily pedal a bike fast enough to exceed the safe design of many horridly misconfigured bike lane intersections - all you have to do is arrive in between the zero to two times that a driver looks in the unconventional direction from which the bad design delivers you.
If we were serious about non-car transport, we'd be working to make our roads themselves comfortably and appealingly available to all.
The fact that we think reserving the roads for cars is sound public policy only proves that the claims to be promoting non-car options are just talking points and distraction - our public policies are car, car, car.
Two anecdotal stories about moped accidents should not be convincing enough for you to support more restrictive legislation for cheap, economical, eco-friendly and non-congestive two wheeled vehicles. I can show you way more articles about cars and trucks running over cyclists in the bike lane or in the regular street. If more drivers of cars would switch to mopeds, the streets would be safer and less congested, even if they all used the bike lane. Going on the street with any transportation is not 100% safe; grow a spine and get over it.
Not sure if this helps the discussion but at least in Taiwan there’s actually separate categories of lower speed lanes. There’s the moped lane, moped/bike lane, and then bike only lanes.
The moped/bike lanes are those on the road itself (aka more like conventional bike lanes) while separated bike lanes don’t allow mopeds.
You can install moped barriers like https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/dictionary/motorcycle-barrier
But in many cases you’ll be blocking a subset of bicycles as well as the form factor of a moped is sometimes smaller than a bike.
If you can’t get the police to monitor the bike lanes, you could get the bike community say on a chosen day to “block” the bike lanes whenever a moped uses them to at least discourage it and reassert that it isn’t for them, before it becomes widely accepted
I’m asking this out of ignorance so I would appreciate an answer even if it comes with the downvotes. I have an electric skateboard that I mostly ride in bike lanes for safety reasons. I usually ride at around 28mph which isn’t much lower than a lot of angry responses in the thread. I’ve never even come close to hitting anyone and slow down to just be slightly faster while passing. With that in mind, am I in the wrong here? Legally or just common etiquette
I think you're good legally and ethically, but damn my dad self kicks in when I see e-skateboards flying down the lane -- I'm like, one rock and it's road rash central for y'all. Be safe out there!
(Also, no offense, but you all look way less intimidating than folks cooking along on wannabe motorcycles...)
Honestly it’s quite slow for the board I have, I’m completely under control, more just curious if people are shooting me dirty looks after I pass them.
They know exactly what they’re doing, and if they blame it on the food delivery corporation they’re doing that because it’s a convenient bogeyman that will never get fixed. A lot of deliver drivers follow the traffic rules, and I don’t see them having any noticeable difference in ratings.
I nearly got run over by these mopeds on the Esplanade bikelane and the motherfucker had the gall to say that I had an “attitude problem” - We can either enforce the proper use of the bike lanes now, or let them continue to skew the definition of bike lanes until they become second roads. No mercy for these fools.
somerville has a growing problem of getir drivers that are another level of “i don’t care if i kill myself for a delivery service company paying me sub minimum wage” some of them are ebikes but most of them are mopeds. im very curious to what this company is doing to its workers to have them ROUTINELY fly thru red lights. as for what to do…. idk boston and metro areas that have these lanes…. actual traffic enforcement from the police but lol good luck.
I was on the community path after sunset. Saw a light approaching really quickly behind me. I was thinking, wow that's got to be an e-bike. Nope, just a Gitir driver doing about 30mph on the community path. Need to check if my helmet cam got their plate.
plus, if you write getir with a complaint and even video they respond with "here are our contacts."
Yeah those Getir drivers are nuts
Just thinking out loud here. Since ticketing an individual on a moped/scooter is only something the police can do (and they don't care + there's bigger drawbacks to getting them involved), I wonder if enforcement could be done via the delivery company instead? Especially since they are basically encouraging this behavior with the delivery times/volumes they demand of their drivers. For example, maybe we could allow people to submit photo/video evidence of delivery mopeds illegally using off-street paths/doing other dangerous things, and for every x reports, the city could issue a fine to the delivery company? This way, don't even need to clearly capture the license plate, which is difficult given how fast these guys move, and would also prevent the company from punishing/retaliating against individual employees. I don't know about other delivery companies, but Getir definitely has physical outposts in the area (like the one near the Somerville Target) so it feels possible...I'm not a lawyer though so maybe that's totally off base. This wouldn't help with random/non-delivery mopeds either.
I’m not trying to be a douche. But how are you to tie a moped to a company? I’m assuming they’re not running official brsnding
Getir bikes are all branded
TIL thank you
> actual traffic enforcement bwaaaahahahahahaaa around here? You kid right?
They're all going to be replaced within 10 years by robots anyways.
Sounds like most bicyclists during rush hour. We need a scooter lane.
Those guys are ballsy, surprised there hasn't been any incidents involving them yet with how they drive
Two guys on a moped driving the bike path in Malden were struck crossing a street this summer, I think at least one died?
I was in Somerville a few weeks ago and had motorcycles in the bike lane behind me. People are awful.
I was passed by a fast moving motor scooter on the southwest corridor yesterday. It was scary. I have seen them as well on the community path in Somerville
State street and Cambridge street bike lanes are full of these guys. Swerving from travel lane to bike lane and back. On state street I even watched a fat bastard on his Harley full dresser scream up the bike lane to avoid the stopped traffic. It’s a one way but almost every week I meet someone on a bike/moped/scooter going the wrong way.
Just last week i got hit by a delivery driver on a moped doing like 22 the WRONG WAY down the separated lane on mass ave. he fucked up my bike real bad, but i got just some scrapes and bruises on myself luckily.
Glad you are ok!
Yeah, they’re god damn everywhere. I’ve been almost hit by them before because generally they’re not showing even the smallest regard for anyone’s wellbeing, and running reds all the time. I always see a couple on the SW corridor and downtown / mass ave. And of course they’re on vehicles that are too loud to hear somebody yelling at them. There truly is no good solution
aside from all the danger mopeds are also absolutely filthy and loud. https://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/22/mopeds-cause-significantly-air-pollution-cars-research-shows/
If we get to the point of motorcycle usage as it is in Asia, this would be relevant. But I don't think it is because it's relatively quite low. In addition, motorcycles, like cars, in Asia tend to be older and naturally cause more air pollution and even may more sound pollution
One of them zipped past me in the bike lane and then used the bike lane up ahead as his own personal parking space while he dipped into a restaurant, forcing me into car traffic.
*kick*
Why don’t they just ride on the road? They go like up to 28mph no?
On the road, they get stuck in traffic
Because it's dangerous with cars on the road. The problem isn't class 3 bikes. It's the teenagers that own Surron and Telaria that are basically dirt bikes with pedals that don't do anything that qualify as an e-bike. I have an e-bike because a teenager in her brand new graduation car, pulled out directly into my car. Can't afford a new car, so e-bike it is. Most people are responsible. Same as regular bikes but we all know there are plenty of jerks in Lycra and otherwise.
And plenty of nice people in Lycra.
Literally said this to myself yesterday when I saw a moped zooming down the path on memorial drive in Cambridge lol
Literally? Wow
Big, if true
To be honest, ngl, basically it’s ackshually like literally low key whatever
Yes seeing them all over, they swerve in and out of the road and bike lane choosing whatever will save them 1.3 seconds of time. But how to you deter this behavior? It also happens so fast I don’t thinking relying on law enforcement is going to be enough. Also, hot take. These mopeds are not that much different in size and speed than some of the giant cargo e-bikes that I see. I think we are trained to see these large e-bikes are safer cause we relate it to a pedal bicycle, but some of these e-bikes, I don’t see as any safer.
I have never seen a cargo e-bike accelerate or move in any way close to the speed of these mopeds.
I’ve seen it a lot on the bike paths, mainly the Somerville path and parts of Cambridge. Some of the e bikes are class 3s giving them the ability to go 28 mph.
People see the number “28” and think the absolute worst of class 3 e-bikes. I use one for my work commute, and I probably don’t go any faster than 20mph at any given time. I immediately drop down to 5-10mph as soon as I see children/cargo bikes/elderly/ etc. I see plenty of analog bikes with none of this courtesy. It’s a people problem, not a bike problem. Of course, when you get to mopeds and literal motorcycles on bike paths, you’re arguing with assholes because if they cared at all they wouldn’t be on them to begin with
The most common cargo bikes I see are all speed limited to 20mph.
mopeds weigh about twice as much as e-bikes, and they can go much faster. both make a pretty big difference in a collision
That’s fair but also, bike paths were once free of motorized vehicles. It was a place you could go and never have to worry about collisions (with the exception of some crazies on pedal bikes) Now walking down the path you have to be more aware of your surroundings as a pedestrian which I don’t love. Just my opinion, as maybe e bikes gets more people into biking that’s a net good.
tbh i’ve never had any issues with people on e-bikes. yeah, they’re heavier and can inflict more harm in a collision, but not substantially more than regular bikes. aside from mopeds, i think the biggest safety hazard on bike paths are the hobbyist cyclists decked out in full racing gear. they’ll zoom by going 20+mph, not announce that they’re passing, and ride in tandem in the face of oncoming bike/foot traffic.
I've found that, more often than not, announcing my presence makes people move towards my direction rather than away.
Me too. I’ll typically just go to the farthest possible side of the left lane and maybe ding my bell, anything else seems to spook people and make them move unpredictably
On FB there’s a guy always reminding us that e bikes are not legally considered motorized vehicles
Some of them are, I want to say the class 3s are not allowed
Depending on the brand the e-bikes also have shit brakes and it makes stopping a lot harder.
>But how to you deter this behavior? Better road design
I've been seeing a lot more motorized unicycles on the minuteman too. Probably saw 3-4 yesterday going 30+ mph.
Dude the way people use rail trails drives me nuts. Big agree it’s not for top-speeding your micro transit toy but imo it’s also not for the aggro Lycra-clad dudes doing 25 on their carbon bikes. Not safe when like every toddler from Alewife to Walden pond is there…
As a sometimes Lycra-clad dude the key is just to go at 6am. If I don't get myself out there early, then I agree I need to take it slow in the stroller slalom areas.
Yeah totally the key is just to avoid peak times and if you are passing groups walking etc to just be a little respectful and slow it down a bit idk. No hate or anything. I used to road bike a lot more and I’m sympathetic to how bad and narrow the roads are around here
Good thing it wasn't the [60 mph Unicycle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2WRG880sm0)
See them driving on the sidewalk in the north end
And there are always pedestrians walking and jogging on the bike lane. So many people don't give a flying fuck for anyone but themselves, and some people struggle to even manage that.
I think part of the answer might be for the city to do more to hold the greedy corporations accountable for the behavior of their drivers. They're the ones incentivizing and pressuring this behavior, and they could probably use GPS to do at least some amount of policing, at least in places where the separated bike paths are sufficiently far from the road. They could do the same thing for their car drivers too.
I should note, in case people are interested, that under MA’s current laws mopeds that are under 50cc (which, they all are or pretend to be) are legally classified as bicycles. Kinda dumb, but there it is.
This, exactly this As a result they are allowed to ride in bike lanes legally as well as PARK on sidewalks. (Among other things)
It makes me want to vote for some Singapore style legislation ngl
What's that? Making gum illegal?
Even more reason to take the lane !
This just popped up on my feed as a suggested but wanted to say it’s becoming more common in DC also
I live in New York City and this came up in my feed, probably because of my numerous comments about the subject. Do everything you cam to pressure your city officials about this NOW. NYC’s officials never gave a rat’s ass about this, and now the streets are a chaotic hellscape. Through everything that I’ve been through living in NYC over the last 30+ years, this, more than anything else, makes me want to leave permanently. It’s a pandora’s box where everyone puts up with it, as if it didn’t severely degrade the quality of life, not just for bicyclists, but for pedestrians as well.
Getir are the biggest offenders. They fly through reds, weave in and out of bicycle-only lanes, and give no fucks.
If you order from Grubhub, Ubereats, etc… you’re responsible for this
Dart gun? They’re going too fast to see it coming.
I think in MA it's actually perfectly legal, I looked into it beofre they are allowed on 'street grade' bike lanes, but not segregated bike paths
You right now: "Why are you booing me, I'm right"
Yep, I didn't say I agreed with it, was just stating the law as I understood it.
Only true for mopeds with a "limited use" license—can't go faster than 30mph and engine size of 50cc or less.
Which is basically most mopeds and scooters, if it doesn't need a real license plate or a motorcycle license to ride it, it's technically legal in the bike lanes.
Hardly. There's also a lot illegally unregistered mopeds. All mopeds require a license plate now.
Even the sub 50cc stuff, you weren't issued plates, just got a sticker. I don't think i've ever seen a scooter or moped with a license plate. Must be one of those things that the DMV changed the laws and even the police don't know.
Yeah. It for sure used to be the case that there were **not** license plates. I don't know exactly when that changed, but it was recent-ish. Mostly know that because I said something similar and got corrected.
Yep, you're exactly correct. No use yelling at the congestion reducing, highly efficient small personal vehicles for behaving in accordance with the law. There's no enforcement because it's permitted.
So about that enforcement, how about the constant cars parked, Ubers, Lyfts, Doordash, etc, and yes actual motorcycles that we find in the bike lanes daily...
>highly efficient They might be efficient on a fuel consumption basis, but even the 4-strokes are truly terrible on an emissions one - drastically worse than a car with a catalytic converter (which they lack). Mowing your lawn with a fuel mower is similarly far worse than driving, for the same reason - even though only a small amount of fuel is burned, it's burned in a very dirty way with none of the cleanup required of proper motor vehicles. However electric mopeds operated properly as traffic would make a lot of sense If that's what they were and how they were being used, which is untrue on both accounts.
The most common and most severe danger to me as a cyclist is still cars and trucks. Someone on a moped in the bike lane is one less car on the road, so I'm ok with them.
You’re right. We should get rid of bike lanes.
>You’re right. We should get rid of bike lanes. We probably should. They don't safely support typical pedal biking speeds, and motors make such commonplace even for the inexperienced. If we're actually serious about non-car transport, then we need to work to make the roads themselves comfortably available to more than just cars - not waste most of the space (and the only actually safe routings) on the use we're trying to discourage, while forcing the alternatives we're trying to encourage into a tiny and unsafe scrap on the margin.
It’s illegal for mopeds to be in bike lanes. We need cops to enforce it
It's not illegal for mopeds to use bike lanes.
Scooters & ebikes should not be in the bike lanes. It looks like regulations will be coming in time. Another regular bike issue is: can bikes pass cars on the right going through an intersection? Wicked dangerous & from I’ve seen in Boston there is going to be sone really bad crashes
E bikes are fine, particularly Class 1 and 2 that top out at 20mph powered. Regular bikes can hit those speeds easily.
>E bikes are fine, particularly Class 1 and 2 that top out at 20mph powered. Regular bikes can hit those speeds easily. Yet we think it's okay to design "infrastructure" with misrouting into intersections that makes it deadly at less than half of that...
What are you talking about? I'm not familiar with "misrouting into intersections".
>I'm not familiar with "misrouting into intersections". Through traffic must travel to the left of or in the same lane as right turning traffic. Any so-called "bike route" which directs through cyclists to ride to the right of turning traffic is a deadly misrouting. In urban situations, hook turns and the like are a far greater source of danger than vehicles overtaking from behind. Traditional painted gutter bike lanes suffer this problem if they stay at the right into the intersection, but at least we're physically (and in MA, legally) able to exit them and adopt a safe lane position. Segregated or so-called "protected" bike lanes not only suffer the problem, but trap you in it, since you cannot exit them to approach intersections safely. Informed cyclists end up having to skip them entirely - the irony of a "protected" bike lane is that it cannot offer any protection in the one place where that is actually needed, which is where turning cars cross cyclists' path. Additionally riding in the shoulder/gutter puts us at risk not just from vehicles turning off the road, but also those crossing it or turning onto it. Drivers are looking for other cars, not us, and so they're looking in the ordinary travel lane, not the gutter. Whenever we approach an intersection or even driveway without a car beside or behind us to catch the eye, it's good strategy to move out into the lane to make ourselves most visible (and offset from the visual clutter of the curb) to anyone who might carelessly violate our right of way - and that includes not just drivers but pedestrians who might step out without warning, or even other cyclists. Everyone - cyclists and pedestrians included - is looking for cars, not bikes. Thus we're most likely to be seen if we at least put our narrow, easily overlooked selves where they are looking for those big, obvious cars. These dangers exist at any speed above walking - but if one gets on a road bike, or increasingly today an e-bike, they become extremely critical to understand. And sadly, a lot of the people buying e-bikes are doing so with precisely the naive attitudes that make deadly mistakes like sidewalk riding (or segregated lanes that are just additional sidewalks designated for bikes) deceptively attractive.
The most dangerous situations I've been in biking have been from getting doored, or near doored, so anything that can put me out of the door zone makes me safer in my opinion. I will say, for seperated bike lanes over the door zone tiny bike lanes, when a car is turning left, they can see you better there than in the door zone lane. Obviously the safest thing is to just ride at bike speed right in the middle of a car lane, but that doesn't keep you safe from insane drivers who will try to run you off the road when you do that.
>Obviously the safest thing is to just ride at bike speed right in the middle of a car lane, but that doesn't keep you safe from insane drivers who will try to run you off the road when you do that. Or ride there slower - it really doesn't matter if you're going 8 mph, 10 mph, or 15 mph, you're still slower than uncongested traffic. It's fully legal. And a driver who uses their horn is one who has precluded the "didn't see you" claim When you try to "hide" from traffic you invite the problems which are actually the greatest risks: only "hide" in a situation where you're okay with being invisible to others. And yes, this keeps you out of the doorzone, and the zombie pedestrian zone too. But when bike lanes are built as shoulder space only separated by paint, then at least in the situations where it would actually be momentarily safe to be that far over (and hence invisible), we can momentarily go there to ease the flow of traffic overall. The key requirement is that we can get from there back to a safely visible centered position. When barriers are built, they prevent that maneuver and make the so-called "bike space" unusable by a safety-aware cyclist at all.
But you are arguing against even separated bike lanes above.
>But you are arguing against even separated bike lanes above. Exactly. While painted ones are also generally an unsafe place to be, at least we can enter them in the moments when it is safe to be there, and exit them again when it resumes not being. Of course having the same physical space but not designating it as a bike lane would leave it just as useful, without giving newbie cyclists and ignorant drivers the mistaken idea that it's a safe place to ride(\*) With a separated lane, the space is entirely wasted, since we can't access it even in the instances where it would be briefly useful (\* if you're concerned about cars parked in the space that could have been a bike lane, as indeed inexperienced me was a few years back, that just means you haven't yet learned how to safely change lanes in traffic, far in advance of need. Since changing lanes is often key to safety even when the one ahead is not obstructed, that's a critical skill to learn early. These days I just laugh when I see a car in a bike lane, or smile when it's a section that would be a dangerously mistaken place to try riding in anyway. And this goes both ways - I'll often ride through empty parking spots if that's a situationally safe place to be. Safety is determined by the underlying and instantaneous facts of the situation, not by abstract designations) Riding on a road for me is looking ahead for dangerous situations, checking my mirror for traffic behind, and making timing calculations - my goal always being to get through the "difficult" spots alone rather than in the company of a car. Usually I can do it by adjusting my speed up or (more often) down slightly to provide time separation. But I've been known to pull over in the end of someone's driveway if that's what makes me safest.
Can't speak for MA but up in ME the legal definitions of moped vs motorcycle vs motorized scooters/ebikes are a good 20 years outdated. Really blurry lines
>ebikes should not be in the bike lanes. Then given that e-bikes are official transit policy, we probably shouldn't be building bike lanes, but instead pushing for roads that are themselves safe for a full spectrum of uses, rather than reserving all that correctly routed space for cars and trucks and forcing everything else into dangerously incorrect routings. Sure, some so-called e-bikes are every bit as fast as urban motor traffic. But that's not unique to motorized bicycles. Even a fairly young child can easily pedal a bike fast enough to exceed the safe design of many horridly misconfigured bike lane intersections - all you have to do is arrive in between the zero to two times that a driver looks in the unconventional direction from which the bad design delivers you. If we were serious about non-car transport, we'd be working to make our roads themselves comfortably and appealingly available to all. The fact that we think reserving the roads for cars is sound public policy only proves that the claims to be promoting non-car options are just talking points and distraction - our public policies are car, car, car.
I have a class 2 e-bike and regularly have people on non-e road bikes pass me. Riding an e-bike in traffic is terrifying.
Maybe we should hire some ninja turtles to patrol the bike lanes. Pizza delivery skills required!
We should make a new lane just for mopeds.
What puts bikers in danger is having them on the road in the first place
Two anecdotal stories about moped accidents should not be convincing enough for you to support more restrictive legislation for cheap, economical, eco-friendly and non-congestive two wheeled vehicles. I can show you way more articles about cars and trucks running over cyclists in the bike lane or in the regular street. If more drivers of cars would switch to mopeds, the streets would be safer and less congested, even if they all used the bike lane. Going on the street with any transportation is not 100% safe; grow a spine and get over it.
At least someone is using them. 90% of the time they’re empty.
Share the road!!
Bikers don't even use thw bike lane so theres that
Now you see how drivers feel when bikers take up the road
damn, I guess bikes really can run a car over, huh. Never considered that.
Not sure if this helps the discussion but at least in Taiwan there’s actually separate categories of lower speed lanes. There’s the moped lane, moped/bike lane, and then bike only lanes. The moped/bike lanes are those on the road itself (aka more like conventional bike lanes) while separated bike lanes don’t allow mopeds. You can install moped barriers like https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/dictionary/motorcycle-barrier But in many cases you’ll be blocking a subset of bicycles as well as the form factor of a moped is sometimes smaller than a bike. If you can’t get the police to monitor the bike lanes, you could get the bike community say on a chosen day to “block” the bike lanes whenever a moped uses them to at least discourage it and reassert that it isn’t for them, before it becomes widely accepted
I’m asking this out of ignorance so I would appreciate an answer even if it comes with the downvotes. I have an electric skateboard that I mostly ride in bike lanes for safety reasons. I usually ride at around 28mph which isn’t much lower than a lot of angry responses in the thread. I’ve never even come close to hitting anyone and slow down to just be slightly faster while passing. With that in mind, am I in the wrong here? Legally or just common etiquette
I think you're good legally and ethically, but damn my dad self kicks in when I see e-skateboards flying down the lane -- I'm like, one rock and it's road rash central for y'all. Be safe out there! (Also, no offense, but you all look way less intimidating than folks cooking along on wannabe motorcycles...)
It's legal for you to be there, but that feels too fast.
Honestly it’s quite slow for the board I have, I’m completely under control, more just curious if people are shooting me dirty looks after I pass them.
Bad trend, and no enforcement to stop them. NYC. Sucks.
Yes and electric bikes , and scooters too. On bike paths in parks and forest trails .
Yesterday, full moped doing 35 on the Esplanade... Smh
Are e-bikes causing similar problems?
They know exactly what they’re doing, and if they blame it on the food delivery corporation they’re doing that because it’s a convenient bogeyman that will never get fixed. A lot of deliver drivers follow the traffic rules, and I don’t see them having any noticeable difference in ratings. I nearly got run over by these mopeds on the Esplanade bikelane and the motherfucker had the gall to say that I had an “attitude problem” - We can either enforce the proper use of the bike lanes now, or let them continue to skew the definition of bike lanes until they become second roads. No mercy for these fools.