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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

Mountain Man said:
Bike lanes and pathways have been super busy lately, good to see so many people getting out of their cars! I do still hate the escooters though, just a free for all with them, on the road, on the sidewalk, in the bike lane, people doing the slalom with over ear headphones on... Does the city ever enforce the rules for these?
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I think it's cool that there's a quick easy way for people to hop onto a scooter and have some fun, but it's also the root of the problem. So many part time scooter drivers that are new to driving a scooter and new to pathway etiquette. There are some bad cyclists, and even some bad pedestrians, but scooter drivers seem to be the worst. The people that have their own scooters seem to be better drivers, but not the case with the people who rent them twice a year, and don't use the pathways other than for that.
 
I ride my bike to work 3x a week and am regularly walking around the beltline and mission. I dont think I've ever had an experience with a scooter rider than negatively impacted my life in any way whatsoever. Ive seen them parked in the middle of a sidewalk a couple times but otherwise, they're fine
 
potatopizzafan said:
I ride my bike to work 3x a week and am regularly walking around the beltline and mission. I dont think I've ever had an experience with a scooter rider than negatively impacted my life in any way whatsoever. Ive seen them parked in the middle of a sidewalk a couple times but otherwise, they're fine
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The parking in the middle of the sidewalk is the big issue though - I have moved dozens of scooters on to lawns and into the roadways because they were blocking the sidewalk to the point where no non-able bodied person could travel. Wheelchairs and strollers are prevented from using the space every single time they block access.

Think about it this way - if we treated cars the way we treat pedestrians, the equivalent system for vehicles would be to remove all parking lanes on every road, narrow up travel lanes to be only 1.2 cars wide, then allow people to randomly leave cars in the middle of the road and suffer exactly zero enforcement penalties for doing so. Sure a few motorbikes could still get through, what's the big deal with abandoning property in the middle of the travel lanes?

That's what parked scooters often are on the sidewalk (among many other offenders, such as cars parking on the sidewalk and the random construction debris everywhere). Unlike our roadways, the sidewalks are not designed with excess width to accommodate haphazard debris and privately owned vehicles parked in every location, everywhere to maintain mobility under all scenarios.

EDIT - I don't think scooters should be banned, but I actually don't see another way to stop this issue as enforcement is non-existent for most sidewalk issues.
 
potatopizzafan said:
I ride my bike to work 3x a week and am regularly walking around the beltline and mission. I dont think I've ever had an experience with a scooter rider than negatively impacted my life in any way whatsoever. Ive seen them parked in the middle of a sidewalk a couple times but otherwise, they're fine
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I'm jealous, I've been taken out by them in the bike lanes 2x and have had far too many close calls. The issue is people just unaware they aren't alone in that space, and aren't the fastest. Most people are fine, but I've had far more incidents and close calls with the scooters than other cyclists.

People parking on sidewalks and in the bike lanes are just as big of an issue, and they are usually completely clueless when you point it out to them "You can go around" is not a good response to parking on the damn sidewalk lol.
 
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Source: instagram

I've had one incredibly close call with a wildly intoxicated scooter user who nearly plowed into my wife and I (while we were standing on the sidewalk) before almost running into 9th ave traffic. I've seen a lot of jackass scooter users who haven't come all that close, but at some point having faster and more aggressive people weaving around on the sidewalk becomes intimidating and unpleasant even if no collision occurs.

What's frustrating is that the technology exists to make e-scooters good citizens; they can have their speed limit governed, and they can be required to park in locations where there is space to spare. There are a ton of locations where scooter parking could be established; in some cases on sidewalks with large enough and coherent enough furniture zones or whatever. In some cases, they could be parked on the road; trading one car stall for 15 scooter stalls should be a win for local business. And I reckon there are plenty of on-road places where they could be parked without taking up parking space -- a bunch of scooters don't provide the same obstacles to visibility or to hoses, and they could reasonably be parked in otherwise unusable curb space at intersections and by hydrants.

All of that would make e-scooters the safe, environmentally friendly mode of transportation that they promised to be, and would substantially reduce both the dangerous stunting and the blocking of pedestrian access. But the companies know that joyriding is the main source of their income, and the city only cares about pedestrian access on paper, not with deeds.
 
Both speed limits and no parking zones are in use for Calgary's scooter programs. They are limited to 20 km/hour normally as that is Calgary's pathway speed limit and that drops to 15 km/h in high traffic zones such as Stephen Ave and Inglewood. No parking zones are enforced in select areas although sidewalk parking is obviously still allowed. As ByeByeBaby mentioned, if Calgary was more willing to give up a parking stall or two on streets the sidewalk parking could easily be replaced.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
they can be required to park in locations where there is space to spare
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Like with geofencing? Is it precise enough to tell whether a scooter is off or on a sidewalk?

One potential weakness with this is that the original parking spot being good doesn't guarantee the scooter will stay there until the next time it's activated. It's easy to move a locked scooter, or even just kick it over. Thankfully, I think Bird and Neuron know this, and have people on the ground moving scooters around and off the sidewalk, if only to keep them charged and well-distributed throughout the inner city.
 
Surrealplaces said:
The people that have their own scooters seem to be better drivers, but not the case with the people who rent them twice a year, and don't use the pathways other than for that.
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Ironically the city disallows personal e-scooters everywhere but pathways, while shared scooters can be ridden everywhere but in the road
modes-travelling-downtown-cycle-ways.jpg
 
whatchyyc said:
Ironically the city disallows personal e-scooters everywhere but pathways, while shared scooters can be ridden everywhere but in the road
View attachment 470631
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That's absurd. For starters, how does one get their personal scooter to a pathway? There's really no reason not to treat them the same as bikes or e-bikes.
 
potatopizzafan said:
I ride my bike to work 3x a week and am regularly walking around the beltline and mission. I dont think I've ever had an experience with a scooter rider than negatively impacted my life in any way whatsoever. Ive seen them parked in the middle of a sidewalk a couple times but otherwise, they're fine
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They seem to be fine during the week, it's the weekend where the problems begin. People using them during the week are probably regular users, but going down the paths on weekends I almost always run into issues. The two biggest issues for me is
1) scooters left on the path
2) drivers making sharp turns on the path or weaving in the middle of the path without looking first.
 
The City actually has different rules for personal vs shared escooters? That's completely ridiculous, the shared ones are the problem, personal ones are mostly regular users. How do one wheels and the like factor in? they are in the lanes the same as scooters and bikes all the time.
 
Mountain Man said:
The City actually has different rules for personal vs shared escooters? That's completely ridiculous, the shared ones are the problem, personal ones are mostly regular users. How do one wheels and the like factor in? they are in the lanes the same as scooters and bikes all the time.
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I think it's related to liability.
 
Mountain Man said:
The City actually has different rules for personal vs shared escooters? That's completely ridiculous, the shared ones are the problem, personal ones are mostly regular users. How do one wheels and the like factor in? they are in the lanes the same as scooters and bikes all the time.
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Personal scooters are not speed governed like the shared ones, I assume that is a factor too.
 
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