Re: [OT] Judges discover constitutional rights to bike lanes and also drug use in homeless shelters

On 2025-05-12 20:30:57 +0000, Pluted Pup said:

On 5/7/25 11:32 PM, Your Name wrote:

On 2025-05-08 04:17:17 +0000, Pluted Pup said:

On Tue, 06 May 2025 16:33:28 -0700, BTR1701 wrote:

On May 6, 2025 at 12:28:41 PM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman""<ahk@chinet.com>  wrote:

Rhino<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
 

. . .
 We used to be able to park in front of the house overnight if we wanted, for example if there was an overnight guest who'd come by car. But the city banned overnight parking many years ago.

 Parking infringes upon shared use of the public way, and overnight
parking usurps the public way for private use. There's no issue with
short term parking but there's sure as hell an issue with long term
parking.

 Here's a guy who stuck it to NYC when they tried to tell him he owned the
sidewalk and the street for purposes of personal injury liability for
pedestrians and cars.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doQBGhwKVR0

 I peeked at that video and comments earlier and it just seems
like celebrating a scam artist. It does not seem to merit the
title "Queens Man OUT SMARTS NYC Democrats".
 Often enough I saw "actual justice warrior" post about something
actually important and then it's just lengthy videos
about other videos without even allowing ten seconds of what he's
talking about to be shown or heard.
 Videos of talking heads looking at the camera demanding the
viewer trust what he is ranting on about are my least favorite
form of mass communications. Let's get back to reading and writing!
 

 "The property is yours when ownership is inconvenient and expensive for us,
but it's ours when we want it for parking and sidewalks."
 

I don't remember the
rationale they used but I think they were worried about snow removal
being more difficult if cars were parked on the street. Then a few years
back, they put in bike lanes - bike lanes that basically only run down
our street but don't connect to anything else, making them esentially
useless for getting around town. Then they put in a cross walk which has
an island in the middle of the road but which is almost never used. (I
can see it from my kitchen window.) Because of the island, it is now
illegal to even STOP on our block so people actually risk a ticket even
for stopping for a moment to drop someone off. Progress!

 That's ridiculous. The whole point of a road is to access property. Of
course it's there for pickup and delivery, and to allow people to get
dropped off or picked up.

 I suggest that if activists want bicycles to be treated as a serious
method of transportation than start doing it: require all bicycles
to have side view mirrors like motorcycles have and prosecute bike theft
seriously, and not as some sort of harmless practice like even car theft
is often treated as. But "activists" don't want normal people to
bike, they want it to have an outlaw image like "activists" have.

 The morons in charge here in New Zealand decided a pedestrain crossing was needed on the main road near us. Instead of simple painted stripes, they made an over-complicated mess costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars ... for ONE pedestrian crossing:
 Â - For no apparent reason, they moved the bus stop
   on one side of the road further down.
 - They installed a raised area in the road creating
   a bump, which means traffic has to slow down to go over it.
 - They widened the footpath at side of the crossing.
 - They installed a pedestrian crossing lane with traffic lights
   and a push button for the pedestrains to stop the traffic,
   and lowered the curb (for people in wheelchairs, people with
   babies in strollers, etc.).
 - They also installed a separate "cycle crossing" lane with
   its own push button and its own lowered curb ...
 - They then installed a sign which reads "Cyclists Dismount",
   which means cyclists then become pedestrians, so why is
   there a separate crossing lane and push button!?!
   (I've yet to see any cyclist or scooter rider actually dismount.)
 And, after all that, you'd be lucky if a dozen people actually use it each day! The road itself is only busy at the peak morning and afternoon times - the rest of the day it is very easy to cross anyway.
 There are other similarly hideously expensive and over-complicated pedestrian crossing installed around the city.

 Goldbrick engineering.  Attention seeking behavior.  Symbolism
over substance.  That's the type of "bike activism" that I think
of that's bad.  Are bicycles a serious mode of transportation or
just another political stunt intended to annoy normal people?

Cycling will never be a serious mode of transport in most places nor for most people. Cycling is a bit more efficient than walking, but cycling is still a highly inefficient and uncomfortable form of transport compared to a car.
The local city council has wasted billions of dollars putting cycling lanes all over the place, and it is extremely rare to see anyone actually using them (even most of the few cyclists you do see often ride on the footpath, depsite it not being legal). The cycling brigade keep campaigning for putting a cycling and walking lane over the Harbour Bridge, but after the initial "wow" factor, it will again barely ever be used by anyone - it's simply too steep and too long, plus (unlike say London or Sydney) there is absolutely nothing on either side of the bridge because it is part of the motorway system, so that means an even longer cycle / walk to get anywhere useful.