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mondoman712
New roads don’t reduce traffic, they create more. It’s called induced demand. We should be building viable alternatives to driving.
Crank? Isn’t this pretty standard for the tories at this point? They’ve pedalled conspiracy theories before.
Bike rental in the Netherlands is great for certain uses but not for others. You can’t use the OV-fiets as a tourist, and you generally have to take them back to where you got them from.
Docked systems are better, and you can remove most of the cost of the docks by doing the “dockless docks” where you just have to return them to designated areas. This can work for both bikes and scooters.
Companies like bird & lime take advantage of the lack of regulations, but there’s clearly a demand. Cities can take advantage of this by regulating, providing infrastructure, and charging the companies to operate, things already done for cars.
There’s a lack of infrastructure to accommodate rental scooters which cause the problems you mentioned. Having safe places to ride (i.e bike lanes) and designated places to park them would solve these issues. I could also argue that cars do all the same things.
Reducing demand for public transport is a good thing in a developed city. You want there to be more space for people that aren’t going to choose micromobility, which is much cheaper for a city to provide more capacity for.
I’d be interested to see some research into your theory of ebikes replacing more car journeys and escooters replacing more public transport journeys.
I agree with your points on why ebikes are safer, but scooters are also more compact and therefore easier to transport and store when not riding, and the safety issue is really solved by having safe places to ride. Having the choice available is important because different people have different priorities and preferences.