tandempower

Well, there needs to be some way of ensuring accountability for the complaints. Otherwise you could have people reporting scooters frivolously to trigger fines against them and cause unnecessary work for inspectors.

jon c. 

The clutter and the safety concerns are real and observable. That any corporate entity wishes to block the use of such vehicles due to economic concerns is conjecture with no significant basis.

dedhed

https://www.google.com/search?q=bird...6L4uCq9HmVOwM:

dedhed

So there is no basis in reality of a $500/unit fee besides, "I seem to recall"

And municipalities don't license and restrict other forms of "for hire" transportation?

https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/08/n...-car-licenses/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxica..._United_States

https://www.google.com/search?q=taxi...firefox-b-1-ab

Mobile 155

fietsbob

Holding your breath on this? Don't..
GM is Shutting down whole plants and sacking thousands

Reuters

Rowan

Sacking over 14,000. Great company for effing up everywhere it has been, including Australia. Just watching the TV ads for its products now for sale in Australia is beyond embarrassing.

Who would want to buy bikes from it based on its history? Not me.

350htrr

They are shutting down the assembly lines for vehicles.... SO, They ARE, MUST be switching over to E-bicycle manufacturing....

tandempower

Mobile 155

tandempower

But there are people trying to choose alternatives to driving and there are various external sources obstructing them. You can just pretend like it's simple honest supply and demand and competition without anti-competitive market manipulation, but that is willful denial of efforts to stifle alternative transportation.

It's tripping your competition and then saying, 'oh, poor kid, better watch where you're going," as if you weren't the one who tripped him.

fietsbob

GM was instrumental in taking Out a functioning Transportation option,
right after WW2,

Rail based Municipally Run , Public transit..
to sell Rubber tired Diesel powered Busses..

And at the same time Marshall plan was loaning Europe Money
to rebuild theirs..

now nobody wants anything but privatized transportation ,
everyone has to buy their own stuff.







....





...

I-Like-To-Bike

Constant repetition of a myth or falsehood doesn't make it any more true, no matter how much it may fit your personal set of beliefs.

See https://www.bikeforums.net/20675431-post141.html for more details. But stick with your preferred alternate reality if it makes you feel better.

tandempower

But can you prove it?

Mobile 155

There has been no evidence that anyone in this forum has been denied the right to try alternative forms of transportation. The best that can be said is that a large part of society is not interested in helping non conformists be non conformist. But almost all of society is willing to let them be non conformist if they wish to do so. No one is told they cannot ride a bike, walk or take a bus anywhere they want. Except were it might be dangerous like freeways. All the other forms of transportation are available. So no one is restricting scooters or bikes or walking. That is not to say there should be no regulations as to what people have to put up with so that bikes and scooters can have free range of our public walkways and roads.


There is still no connection to GM and the back lash that cities are having with Escooters and Ebikes dropped at random anywhere on a city street or sidewalk. And because the problem is just as bad in China as in the US it cannot be blamed on GM or the automotive industry. And besides if I and 9 out of 10 households in the US can buy our own vehicle to drive on highways how hard can it be for the 1 to 5 percent to buy their own scooter or Ebike? It sounds like the bigger complaint is that not everything is free to use. I suspect if cars we free to just step into and go where people wanted there would be no mass transit or scooters and maybe Ebikes. I will say it again, people don't want to do things the hard way except maybe for entertainment.

Mobile 155

Are you sure the fall of light rail trolleys was GMs fault?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gm-...ally-happened/

350htrr

Nobody, not even me said it was GM's "fault"... But, GM hastened it along... You know, something like a bakery existed in a small town for decades, and along comes a billionaire that has a wish to make HIS bakery the toast of the town and after a decade that bakery is still there, hanging on, and... the billionaire buys it and ends up the "best bakery" in town... WOW, how "fortunate" was that…??? Did that mom's and pop's bakery that disappeared, was it because of natural selection...?? I would say not, It Was that a conscientious "killing" of a less powerful competitor, by an overly powerful new and rich business ...??? THAT IS why there is and still are Laws against that kind of thing, and GM and others WERE found guilty of breaking some of those laws... That is how I read the past...

Mobile 155

I believe he stated GM was instrumental in taking out a functioning transportation system. The court documents, and you can easily look them up, said GM and several other companies conspired to take over National and Pacific to create a monopoly to supply bus parts and tires. The court briefing also stated that National and Pacific were already dismantling the Trolly lines. And Pacific was never owned by GM, it was part of Southern Pacific Rail till 1953 and finally became part of LAMTA till the city took it apart in 1963. When was the court case again?
The Great GM Conspiracy Legend

So what do we know and what do we believe? Like it has been said they were bleeding money like water and were ripe for a take over. And there was no public interest to save them. So how would they have lasted anyway? Remember the conspiracy to create a monopoly was made in 1948 , GM, Standard Oil and Firestone, and LAMTA had control of the Trollys in 1963.. Well after the attempted monopoly was broken up.

Here is some more interesting reading on what happened to the Trollys. https://www.ranker.com/list/what-was...istopher-myers

jon c. 

In GM's statement today, they said they wanted to known as a tech company rather than an auto company.

I-Like-To-Bike

Presumably to the conspiracy minded "critical thinkers" of BF-LCF, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the electric traction moguls were instrumental in "taking out the [allegedly] functioning transportation option" of horse drawn trolleys, just as presumably Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, Walter Chrysler, Louis Chevrolet, et al. were instrumental in "taking out the [allegedly] functioning transportation option" of horse drawn carriages.

fietsbob

collusion happens
capitalism only cares about profit. not you ..
watch the death of humanity be profitable in the short term
but you still die.

live where it mighr burn?

Rollfast

And they just let like 14-15,000 workers go and shut down several assembly plants to prove it.

Rollfast

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was only a movie?

Mobile 155

I don't really get the connection the conspiracy people are trying to make. . Mankind doesn't stay static in hardly anything they do. We don't farm like we used to. We don't mine like we used to. we don't build like we used to. Many more people have traveled several times across the ocean and not bemoaned the passing of the Hindenburg as a flight choice. Yet with all of the options available to everyone to walk, ride a bike, ride a scooter, get an small EV that only works as a LSV, take a bus, ride a train, fly on a plain only the automotive industry has somehow worked to make life hard for every other form of transportation?


But with all of the old options of transportation still available to everyone who cares to use them the very idea that so many have decided to use cars, even if they use bikes and walk more than many LCF people, causes apoplexy. In truth it doesn't matter if GM wants to sell Ebikes or not. It is what the customer is willing to buy that matters. And I just have a hard time believing the people that call themselves LCF are more aware than those that are not interested in being car free. I also don't believe GM will move anyone towards or away from car free. Nor am I convinced GM is very active in the Escoter and Ebike dockless debate.

tandempower

GM and other transportation companies are in the precarious position of solving the problems they have created. GM seems to be planning for a future of reduced car ownership by the look of their current factory closure plans, and there are going to be pressures on them to try to increase business to save jobs or rehire people who get laid off. Imo, the solution is to create more low-paying jobs, because that would ease the burden on consumers without driving up unemployment. After all, why would everyone want to spend as much as people spend on driving to not drive?

I don't even think most people ever wanted to spend that much money on driving to begin with, but they didn't think they had alternatives.

Cars & pavement per capita should keep dropping for environmental/climate reasons, and maybe the easy way to reduce driving is for people to move closer to work or work closer to home. You seem to think that the sprawl-driving paradigm is unchangeable, but you can't go on denying the problems it causes forever.