Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta

Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by kqr on Monday October 31, 2022 @01:52PM (#33409734)

Ordinary upright/city bicycles have significant controllability problems at high (>50 km/h) speeds compared to e.g. cars. I think that's where "even bicycles" comes from, in this context.

(Why am I using >50 km/h as the benchmark? Because that's the sort of speeds you easily end up at if you try to keep up with cars downhill.)

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Edit: it seems that people are missing critical words in my comment:

- "Ordinary upright/city bike" means "not road/touring/etc bikes". They are constructed differently and comfortably do well over 50 km/h.

- "Downhill" means significant gravity assistance for a few seconds up to a minute, and not "sustained under pedaling power alone". I'd be impressed if you regularly did 50 km/h on the flats with one of those bicycles.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by TheCoelacanth on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:37PM (#33410478)

To be fair, if you're holding a professional cycling race, you should probably close off the roads to other traffic.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by Ylpertnodi on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:23PM (#33410226)

>Because that's the sort of speeds you easily end up at if you try to keep up with cars downhill

Not many people will do >50kmh even downhill (even with disk brakes), and on the few occasions I've done so, I absolutely would not say there are "significant controllability problems". In fact, quite the opposite.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6Z8UgVOuw Nb - these were shot in the days before the 'supertuck' (sitting on the crossbar) was banned.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by taeric on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:28PM (#33410315)

I easily hit 35-40 mph on every commute to work with my bicycle on one of the downhills. Just 30mph is trivial to get to on any of the downhills with my bike, and is just slightly faster than many of the ebikes go with very little effort.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by arcticbull on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:17PM (#33410116)

> Ordinary upright/city bicycles have significant controllability problems at high (>50 km/h) speeds compared to e.g. cars. I think that's where "even bicycles" comes from, in this context.

Who on earth is using ordinary city bikes at 50km/h near cars? Even class II e-bikes are limited to 20mph/32kph.

Class III are limited to 28mph/45kph but are forbidden from bike paths.

[edit] 50kph under your own power is the average speed at the Tour de France.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by grogenaut on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:29PM (#33410335)

I used to commute from Bellevue WA to Kirkland WA, the mainly way across the freeway was either to go down this road over the freeway that didn't used to have sidewalks https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6393386,-122.2032674,17.25z or go 2 miles out of the way and up a huge hill. The right lane is where people wanted to go to get on the freeway at the time. It was easiest to just get in the left lane and do 40mph down the hill which is what cars did speed wise. People gave me plenty of berth if I was moving at car speeds. If I went slow on the right I got tailgated.

My bike was quite stable at 40mph.

No I wouldn't go that fast on a bike path, this was only due to the power of gravity.

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Re:Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta by taeric on Monday October 31, 2022 @02:31PM (#33410372)

As I mentioned in sibling response, it is somewhat easy to get those speeds in any hilly place. Keeping them for extended times is, of course, out of the question. And my return commute has me well below that. Again for obvious reasons. :D

Now, I fully agree with the spirit of your post. Even the spots I'm talking about are short bursts.

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