Bicycles and Scooters

Ah, it’s good to do an actual rant. It’s been forever. I live in Seattle. Seattlists tend to be more liberal, more open minded, more woke, and more progressive. Sure, there’s the “Seattle Freeze” where they might seem cold and distant, but for the most part, they just want to eat their locally sourced organic genderfluid kale, like everyone else. They are also aware of climate change, and want to do what they can to minimize it’s negative effects. Electric cars are everywhere. Recycling is seen as a badge of honor. If you so much as own a plastic bag, people look at you like you just murdered a puppy.

So it was no surprise when, in 2020, rentable scooters arrived in town. They started with 500, and now there are almost 4000 devices in Seattle. They were soon quickly joined with rental bikes. The concept was simple. Cars are bad, but hills are difficult, so you can rent an electric scooter, go to your destination, then leave the scooter for the next person. You’d pay a nominal fee, and they’d be spread throughout the city, so you’d always be able to find one close to you when you needed it. You could save money not having a car, but most importantly, you could feel BETTER. Sure, you could feel like you’re better for the environment, but the real benefit was feeling like you were better than those disgusting car drivers. Even Tesla drivers (before they realized what Musk is) were shunned for “perpetuating” car love.

I live three miles away from my job. I generally walk both ways. Which, according to rider logic, means I’m even better than they are. Both for the environment, and as a person. So why the fuck do I have to deal with these god damned assholes on the sidewalk?

Back in 2015, Seattle passed the “Let’s Move Seattle” law, which raised money to create bike lanes. 12 million dollars later, and I’m still dealing with these motherfucking assholes on the sidewalk. Here’s a hint. It’s called a sideWALK. Not a sideRIDE. Each of these scooters and bikes even include stickers telling people not to ride on the sidewalks (look at the main picture above. I even zoomed in for you). When you sign up for the apps, you have to take a quiz, and one of the questions is if you can ride on the sidewalk. (The answer is “no”, by the way.)

Per 46.61.710, “Operation of a motorized foot scooter or class 3 electric-assisted bicycle on a sidewalk is unlawful.” It has an exception for cases where there are no other options, and I understand that. Which is why we paid so much for the fucking bike lanes. I work on 4th Ave, and there’s a bike lane on 4th Ave. I also have to jump out of the way because riders are assholes and refuse to use the bike lanes they themselves demanded. The law further states, that they “shall yield the right-of-way to pedestrians and human-powered devices at all times.” This never happens. Never. Not one single time in the last 5 years. Not once.

Now, I’ll be fair, and say that there are tens of riders in this city who do use the bike lanes. They signal. They follow the laws. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the 99% of riders who are such fuckwits that they act like they own the place and that we should be honored to share the same space with them. Do you see how they are helping the environment? Do you see it? Do you? Do you see how they are helping the environment?

Then we get to the next issue. Storage. Where should we put the scooters and bikes in between assholes rentals? Why, the sidewalk of course. You know, where the people are trying to walk. So let’s leave a bunch of scooters and bikes in the way. It makes perfect fucking sense. To combat this, the city recently started painting “scooter/bike parking” spots on the sidewalk, between trees. Can you guess what happened?

Yup. They fucking ignore them and leave the stupid bikes in the middle of the fucking sidewalk. Because they are assholes.

Why won’t the police do anything about this? Every year, during the sports games, I’ll walk by 3 or 4 uniformed officers standing around at each intersection directing traffic. And every time, only one of them is actually doing anything. So why can’t the others yell at these entitled rentafuckers? Or ticket them. Seattle repeatedly has to pay settlements because the cops keep using excessive force. So here’s an opportunity for them to make up that money. It’s a low risk interaction. Hell, I’d even be fine if they wanted to use excessive force on these idiots. You know, get it out of their system.

Let’s say the ticket is $100 per infraction. The average police officer salary is like $60 an hour. So if they just issue one ticket an hour, they’ve more than paid their salary. And as anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes on a sidewalk can tell you, they could just stand on a corner issuing tickets, and soon we’d have enough money to pave the streets (and bike lanes) in gold.

They’ll tell you that there’s no room for it in the budget. That’s what the tickets are for. The police are there for “hard crime”. Cool. Like directing traffic? Why not hire some more officers whose sole focus is traffic laws. Hell, I’ll volunteer. Deputize me. You don’t even have to pay me. Just give me the ticket machine and the authority, and I’ll bring justice to Gotham.

There is some good news. Starting this year, Lime is rolling out a software fix that will beep at the assholes when it detects that they are on the sidewalk. Unfortunately, that software fix only alerts the rider, instead of my suggestion of bursting into flames.