If you have a cane or a wheelchair then good luck when you come across a pile of bikes on the sidewalk. Even one of those JUMP bikes tipped over can be a problem. I used to see this all the time in Santa Monica. Bikes lined up close together would either fall like dominoes or get kicked over by hoodlums, blocking walking paths or potential parking spots. What's hilarious is the number of believers willing to say about anything to defend the the almighty bicycle, no matter how obstructive and unsightly they can be.
No, no!A pile of fallen over bikes and scooters isn't unsightly!Cars driving on roads designed for them is what's unsightly!
Uh huh. (look up previous HN threads and you'll see that exact argument)
If there's one thing I'm looking forward to with the next economic recession, it's the disappearance of these bikes and scooters.
Somewhere like Copenhagen, bicycle parking [1] is outside the main route of the footpath. Often, it replaces one or two on-street car parking spaces -- you can fit 15-25 bicycles in that space.
Even when there isn't any more space, people will lean bicycles further and further along the side of a building, leaving space to walk past.
(The dockless rental bicycles are supposed to use any normal bicycle rack, and most people do. I think it's in the instructions when starting the app. Scooter users are also supposed to put the scooter out of the way after they've used it, but the only people I've seen do this are the 'juicers' redistributing them.)
I don't think I've ever seen that where I live. The closest I've seen is in suburban neighborhoods where people don't park their car all the way into their driveway, but even that's pretty rare.
That is much more rare than lime bikes on sidewalks, at least here. Also, cars on sidewalks don't tend to fall on people's feet by getting slightly knocked over.
Here's hoping they fail in other markets as well.