Herewith, a scooter we came across while in Oz today. From the looks of this, the City is ready to crack down on sidewalk scooter parking – hell, it even looks as though they had special scooter-size stickers made. In classic NYC fashion, this is, at the same time, visionary and short sighted.
Visionary because, let’s face it, sidewalks are for walking on.
Short sighted because, let’s face it, the street is no place to park a two-wheeled vehicle.
Bicycles, scooters and motorcycles should be a huge part of the solution to NYC’s congestion and smog woes. Unfortunately, the City really goes out of its way to make riding on two wheels as difficult as possible. There is a dearth of dedicated bike parking (either racks for bicycles or dedicated areas for scooters and motorcycles). lately, it seems that there are all sorts of crack downs in effect – pulling over scooters to check for papers; zero tolerance enforcement of lane splitting and lane sharing; enforcement of “parade” rules that are primarily targeted at bikers in the first place. At the same time, there are some smart enforcement actions, such as the recent noise rules (loud pipes do not save lives – like car alarms, they just annoy the hell of people); this kind of sidewalk parking crack down; targeting bicyclists who ride on sidewalks; making better bike lanes; enforcing bike lane regulations.