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Re: Bike Share System
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Home away from home
 
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So, are you saying that two wrongs make a right? The fleecing of our country by opportunists (whether those at the bottom that exploit the social safety net programs, or those at the top that find ever-creative ways to shirk their taxes) is a shame. I denounce them both equally. I'm no party-line simpleton (in fact, most would call me a RINO) but I do believe that we have lost all sense of "work hard and pull yourself up" in our society. And, when I see "free bikes for all!" I can't help but see more government handouts with little thought behind it.
Posted on: 2014/12/26 14:41
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Home away from home
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State run bike store in JC? First, nice way to screw the privately owned bike stores. Yeah, let's ask for more suburban tax support while putting people out of work and damaging the tax base!
And, nearby in Newark, you can see a great example of how to provide inexpensive bikes to the poor-people donate bikes, other people donate their time to fix them up and to sell them cheaply. Putting the state in charge would only screw things up-just imagine the salaries and benefits to the people who would manage it. http://bike.bgcn.org/
Posted on: 2014/12/26 14:24
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Home away from home
Joined:
2013/3/29 21:43 Last Login : 2023/9/5 18:27 From Bergen Hill
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1980
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Do you believe Newark is a better place to live? If so, move there and spend less in property taxes. Quote:
I was understanding you, up to a point. Then I remembered that a bunch of people will claim their stock losses on their taxes while burying profits in other tax shelters. Everyone in this country receives benefits and handouts. Some start with more in their hand than others. Given our current national issue with obesity, I can easily see urban areas encouraging a healthy behavior, such as bike riding, over others. I can even see a state run bike shop in town providing limited service for free. I guess it?s just ?more leftist crap? when it is the poor getting the handout, but when Citi decides to rewrite federal laws so that they can pass off their losses to the US tax payer it doesn?t affect their self-esteem at all. Heck, they aren?t getting anything for free? right?
Posted on: 2014/12/26 14:11
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Dos A Cero
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Home away from home
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Wow... More leftist crap about giving things away without expecting people to earn them or do anything to carve a living for themselves. Have we forgotten the most basic of notions that a man (or, woman) can and will derive pleasure and satisfaction from the fruits of his or her labor? I can see making a case for some tax relief to encourage a behavior, as suggested at first, but the idea that cities should give away bicycles is just asinine. The problem with idealists is that they only delve in ideas, never bothering with reality. Give out bike vouchers for paying your property taxes? What happens after a year or two? You get to keep a bike collection? After 10 years? And, what happens after a bicycle handed out by the government breaks down? Who is going to pay to fix it? Because I guarantee you that people that get a free bike will expect free maintenance and repairs for life... Why, you ask? Because they never had to pay for it and don't understand that things cost money and through misguided governmental policies we have decoupled personal responsibility and self esteem from the person and their actions, instead fostering a culture of entitlement.
Posted on: 2014/12/26 13:37
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Home away from home
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Amen. Lots of other ways to do it too. And they're usually very cheap compared with the huge (and often hidden) subsidies and social costs we pay to cater to car monoculture.
Posted on: 2014/12/26 2:31
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Home away from home
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We should also be lobbying ways that put bikes into the hands of a many people as possible. The best way would be to make all bikes and bicycle gear tax-deductible at a state or federal level.
There must be similar things that can be done at a local level like getting corporate sponsorship to hand out bike gift cards to high school grads and low-income families...the City/County returning some budget surplus in the form of bike vouchers to property tax payers...
Posted on: 2014/12/25 23:35
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Home away from home
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Ok, that explains the school taxes, but their municipal rate is low too. I know people who owns property in the Portuguese section of the city. They pay very low taxes, I am not referring to tax abatements, just regular taxes.
Posted on: 2014/12/25 23:19
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Home away from home
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Two things; as corrupt as Newark has been, Jersey City traditionally been worse. And while the populations are quite close, Newark gets even more of a gift from NJ taxpayers re:school funding. They keep their taxes down because they get several hundred million dollars more in Abbott funding than Jersey City.
Posted on: 2014/12/25 20:21
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Home away from home
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Could you tell me how morons in Newark keep property taxes low compare to JC? It has been that way for awhile.
Posted on: 2014/12/25 20:04
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Home away from home
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btw, for those who are not equally obsessed with cycling, high performance bikes, etc:
Cycling Explained
Posted on: 2014/12/23 15:41
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Home away from home
Joined:
2013/3/29 21:43 Last Login : 2023/9/5 18:27 From Bergen Hill
Group:
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1980
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Obviously, I am in the camp of giving people more public transit options. Bike share is exactly that. Subsidies are used in every industry to encourage various behaviors, regardless of the beneficiaries? finances.
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Newark is run by morons. What else do you expect?
Posted on: 2014/12/22 17:57
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Dos A Cero
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Home away from home
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If you are holding up Newark as a poster child to be emulated, you have gone off the deep end. If anything, I would argue we want to do the exact opposite of ANYTHING they do in Newark. Their track record (crime, growth, etc) is miserable. As for the article, it seems like bike lanes were placed where NO ONE was using them so it might make sense to remove them. But, bike lanes and other traffic calming measures can and do improve conditions FOR EVERYONE. We should be implementing some more of those measures here in JC. Traffic is simply a mess, with careless and aggressive drivers and clueless pedestrians that exarcerbate the situation.
Posted on: 2014/12/22 17:45
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Home away from home
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Off topic, but in addition to eliminating bike lanes here is something else for car-a-holics to get really excited about - Manhattan would need 48 new bridges if everyone drove:
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/10/7372787/manhattan-bridges
Posted on: 2014/12/22 16:02
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Home away from home
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Bike lanes disappear in Newark for parking.
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/201 ... arking_for_customers.html
Posted on: 2014/12/22 1:45
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Home away from home
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I will hand it to you: you have a very good, positive attitude. Ride on, and keep the rubber side down!
Posted on: 2014/12/18 19:25
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Home away from home
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I'm sure it will take time. Big structural changes usually do. Western Europe's been marching away from the car for 30-40 years and they're way ahead of us (having saved tens of thousands of lives in the process), yet they're nowhere near finished. Quote:
Today a niche, tomorrow the world! Quote:
Glad to have you aboard! Please accept this festive holiday ham and remember to vote bike!
Posted on: 2014/12/18 19:10
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Home away from home
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Now you are being obtuse. The docking stations SHOULD NOT be failing. Any smart person should have envisioned that these things will undergo a ton of abuse. As such, they should have engineered the docking stations to withstand that abuse. That's not a failure of maintenance. That's an engineering failure because they can not withstand the abuse that was easy to forecast/expect. A better analogy would be if your theoretical Civic or Camry would fail within months of purchase because they were driven on the piss poor streets of JC, or because people slammed their doors when entering/exiting them.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 19:01
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Home away from home
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This would be true, IF all things were equal. But, they are not. None of the Citibike stations are in areas considered poor. CitiBike is a midtown and downtown thing. And, even the Phase II expansion is geared to affluent areas and the quickly gentrifying ones. The Phase III expansion is a nebulous "possible". I doubt they will actually expand that far out, at least not for another 5 or 10 years. Listen, you don't have to convince ME about the benefits of a bike share system, or the benefits of cycling. I am a believer. I ride as much as I can because I *know* it is good for me, and the environment. But, I am not going to play dumb or engage in mental gymnastics to try and formulate all kinds of ideas or thoughts to convince others as to why this should be. CitiBike is a niche solution, that appeals to a niche sliver of the population. Let's not delude ourselves otherwise. Even if you assume that ONLY NYC residents are holders of annual memberships (and, obviously, we know that is NOT the case) that would mean that less than 1.5% of the NYC population is a member. I would guess that less than 1% of the NYC population is an annual member.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 18:54
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Home away from home
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A Honda Civic or a Toyota Camry are both highly reliable cars, but if cheap out on maintenance and don't bother getting the oil repaired, the engine is still going to freeze up. Is that an engineering problem? No, that's a maintenance problem, which is no different than not maintaining CitiBikes because there isn't enough money to pay for them. Quote:
So what you are saying is that the Philadelphia Bike Share system is not yet operating. Meaning, Philadelphia's Bike share might operate without subsidy, but it is not at present operating without a subsidy.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 18:43
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Home away from home
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I really do wonder if Alta will ever pay for "lost parking revenue". As per the DOT Commissioner, it was besides the point to try and come up with a number and ask them to pay since they were losing so much money. By that philosophy, we shouldn't expect Citibike to pay ANYTHING any time soon. They have NO IDEA if/when they will turn a profit.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 18:31
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Home away from home
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Definitely a problem, one that many smart people are working hard to solve. I think they are making some headway, with schemes in which some kind of risk pool, like a charitable institution or bank or housing authority, underwrites the risk of loss or damage to the bikes on behalf of the low-income users.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 18:07
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Home away from home
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Now we're getting caught up in semantics. OK, Citi Bike is subsidized with space. So are other forms of mass transit. Citi Bike operations are not subsidized financially by taxpayers, while those other forms of transit are. My only point is that it should be treated the same way. In fact, arguably, bike share should be treated better, because it has an even lower carbon and pollution footprint than those other forms, and it contributes to the public welfare in many other ways, from those I've already mentioned to encouraging exercise (thus reducing diseases of sedentary life and the accompanying huge healthcare costs), improving the general livability of neighborhoods (less noise and danger and isolation), etc., etc., etc.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 18:00
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Home away from home
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A lot of the people who could really use bike share because they don't have a car probably don't have a credit card needed to sign on . . .
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:53
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Newbie
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The subsidy issue is an interesting one. It looks like Citibike will pay something to New York City for the parking revenue lost to the placement of the docking stations.
http://observer.com/2014/11/citi-bike ... -much-else-at-the-moment/
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:48
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Home away from home
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Also a fair point to bring up, and one that is discussed often in the bike, transit, pedestrian advocacy community. In a very direct sense, you're right, the demographics of bike share ridership do skew that way, (and also toward young people) for various reasons. What we should be asking, though, is not who rides bike share, but who benefits from it: who benefits from the presence of the bikes on the streets, and from the bigger and faster spread of biking and bike infrastructure that it helps to promote. That answer is a lot more complicated. The constant traffic violence enabled by car monoculture disproportionately affects non-whites, low-income residents, children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations, so when we roll back passenger-car domination, by any means necessary, we benefit those populations disproportionately. Some of them will benefit while riding their own bikes or walking to the bus, because the streets are made safer for bikes & peds by the safety-in-numbers effect. Ground-level air pollution is usually worse in minority and low-income communities, and biking reduces that. Some will benefit because all those rich white dudes on bike share bikes tend to demand loudly that the government make the roads even safer for bikes in myriad ways (and government tends to listen to them), and because many will forgo car ownership, even though they can afford it. It's all a virtuous cycle, you might say. And BTW, over time that cycle tends to draw in people from different populations to use bike share, as the streets get safer for bikes; this study found more women joining the men over time. So yes, please, for now, give me more rich white dudes on bike share bikes (and fewer in Hummers, and fewer owning cars, and more agitating at the council meeting, and so on).
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:48
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Home away from home
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elsquid is one of the very vocal minority-as proved by him being just about the only biker I've ever knew that rode his bike on the Lincoln Highway over to Newark!
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:43
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Home away from home
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The difference is that NO ONE is claiming that buses or subways are NOT subsidized. You can not claim that CitiBike is not subsidized while they are obviously getting some prime real estate free of charge. Quote:
A lot of people in NYC would disagree with you in that assessment. Citibike stations do not take a "tiny percentage of street parking". On some blocks, the Citibike station can take a quarter or more of a side of the street.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:43
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Home away from home
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That's an interesting point, and probably fair, but here are some counterpoints: If you consider taking away little bits of surface street space to be a subsidy, then we are already subsidizing buses by giving them bus stops, bus-only lanes, etc. If giving away sidewalk space is a subsidy, we are already giving that subsidy to the thousands of subway entrances that carve out sidewalk space at many intersections, not to mention the bus shelters that take up more sidewalk space. The difference is that those mass transit systems get big financial subsidies on top of all that "space subsidy." Further, taking away a tiny percentage of street parking and filling it with bikes, as Citi Bike stations have done, has demonstrable public benefits, including better sight lines for drivers, traffic calming, and of course encouraging the gradual shift away from car ownership in the urban core.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:08
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Home away from home
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Your arguments do not AT ALL change the FACT that CitiBike has been an engineering failure. You are providing explanations as to why the failures happened, but you can't deny or argue the failure itself. Simply put, CitiBike has been an engineering failure: bikes that are too heavy, docking stations that are prone to glitches or breakdowns, etc. All of your explanations may be true, but they still do not change the facts. Quote:
Completely and utterly untrue. BikeShare in Philadelphia is expected to launch in Philly next year, without expecting a subsidy. Quote:
I never argued any of these points. But, let's get something straight, and which may cause some people's brain to crap out: you know who is the overwhelming user of bike share systems? Rich white males. Funny how all the liberals who rail against the (perceived) rich white male world domination, and the need to finance and subsidize others into equality, are now having to do the mental gymnastics of justifying a subsidy for the people they are always quick to dismiss or criticize. Honestly, I don't care one way or the other about subsidies for CitiBike. I think the idea has some merits. I never argued against it, or for it. I simply stated that the program has been a financial and engineering failure. I think it is a mistake for JC alone to offer a subsidy to Alta to run CitiBike. That offer should be in concert with NYC. But, just be clear and cognizant of the fact that if you are arguing for subsidies for CitiBike, you are arguing for subsidies for rich and/or well heeled citizens.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 17:06
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Home away from home
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You make many points here, and I'd like to address some of them one by one: >>it was sold to the public as needing zero subsidies --A fair point about the past politics, but irrelevant to whether it should have subsidies, or whether it should be done at all. It is now being sold as probably needing subsidies. So we're good! >>It hasn't worked in NYC --It hasn't? With over 12 million trips of over 20 million miles ridden on Citi Bike, with the outer boroughs screaming for a major expansion (now planned), I would submit that your definition of working is faulty. It should only fail so well in JC. >>Who's going to use those bikes with 6" of snow on the ground, or in dry, 20 degree weather? --Well, I am, but more importantly: Who uses a public playground in that weather? Is public sidewalk foot traffic reduced in that weather? Are public parks much emptier in that weather? Public sports fields? The waterfront greenway path? Yes to all, right? So, we should de-fund all those things because they're somewhat seasonal? Or wait for a private business to meet the demand? >>I'd be shocked if the ridership/membership signups in JC are a fraction of what Fulop projects. --You could be right. I do think it should start small. But that's a calibration, not an argument against bike share.
Posted on: 2014/12/18 16:56
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