likeadeuce
Valerie AuroraIt’s weird to me when people frame calls for bike-friendly infrastructure as in conflict with disability accommodation. Make a city good for biking requires lots of smooth curbless bike paths that are perfect for mobility scooters, much better than trying to use your scooter on the road or the sidewalk. I see people zipping around on their mobility scooters everywhere in Amsterdam. They also have these tiny little cars for people with disabilities that are allowed to use all bike infrastructure
Bike-friendly infrastructure goes hand in hand with public transit, which can and should be wheelchair accessible, much more than taxis or private cars. And then e-bikes add a whole class of people who can’t comfortably ride a regular bike but aren’t ready to use a mobility scooter to the group of people who can zip around the city independently. I’ve seen so many disability accommodations on bikes here, even bikes driven by arm power as well as recumbent and tricycle bikes.
And then for people for whom taxis or private cars are still the best option, guess what! The roads aren’t clogged with a bunch of people going very slowly, being angry with each other, and transporting giant useless hunks of metal everywhere. Unload your wheelchair or mobility scooter near one of the many curb cuts without a huge line of cars honking behind you. Bike-friendly infrastructure is disability-friendly infrastructure; most apparent conflict comes from car-first infrastructure.
Just saw 3 mobility scooters on the bike path on my 10 minute bike ride, including one used by a minor with their guardian walking beside them. There’s lots more to do for disability access but excellent bike infrastructure is an important step
Nature is healing. My mentions are full of people arguing against bike infrastructure for reasons that always apply even more to car infrastructure. Y’all, being vision-impaired is much worse in a car-dependent suburb than in a bike friendly urban area! Plenty of disabled people can’t drive! I am disabled! And the final answer is always that your local municipality should provide free accessible van rides to disabled people who can’t take public transit (and many do)
I do think that there is a lack of ability to imagine a better world. We can do more than just take away cars from people living in car dependent infrastructure; we can build bike lanes that are safer for pedestrians, add more public transit, infill sprawl with denser housing connected to good transit, make mobility devices free and good, AND offer free on demand accessible van rides for the immunocompromised and others who can’t take public transit or drive. We don’t have to choose just one.
Momo@vaurora
This!! All of this!!! Yes, goddamn, who said we only have to do one and be done with it!!
This!! All of this!!! Yes, goddamn, who said we only have to do one and be done with it!!
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷@vaurora I'd argue that ability to imagine better alternatives does exist - on the side of the people proposing, say, reducing car dependency.
However, the disingenuous opposition then does the "but" dance and intentionally reduces the proposal to one that riles people up, and removes the positive complexity from the dialogue.
(Because their own positions are that limited; say, with efuels.)
⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe@fishidwardrobe @vaurora Yes, thanks for underlining my point.
Very few people have, in my experience, such a narrow understanding. *I* want people to get rid of cars - if and as soon as they *can*, and of course we realize there are exceptions, actual needs, current obstacles.
But few people pause to consider if they really need a car, or whether they *want* one, or how politics would have to change to enable not having one. They respond to the "attack" on something they currently need.
Nazani@vaurora Let's take weather into account, too. In theory, I could use an ability-adapted bike to get to the grocery store or appointments 20 miles away, but would it be safe for me to be outside for an hour + in very hot or cold weather? No.
Dazzling Urbanite
🍵 holly@Nazani @vaurora When you live somewhere that accommodates humans first over cars the grocery store and the doctor are much closer by. This is in part because mixed zoning and no parking minimums are part of human-centered design. Here in NL your doctor needs to be within 15 min of your house, and grocery stores, pharmacies, etc are peppered throughout every neighborhood.
OpenDNA⚙️
Russell Neches@Nazani @vaurora (1) You are describing car infrastructure. Divide all of those numbers by 10 or 20. (2) Contrary to what one would expect from a lifetime of experience with car dependent infrastructure might expect, weather has basically zero impact on the viability of bicycle transportation. The impact of bike infrastructure on people who need mobility assistance is just that they have shorter trips by whatever transportation they happen to use. https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU?si=wQXF0Xadtt727pgY
Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)
@ryneches @vaurora I'm describing where I live, where there is 0 chance my town will be reconfigured unless it all burns down.
Weather has 0 impact? It can take several days for my street to get 1 lane cleared of snow enough to drive on.
Look, I'm all for more bikes, but for a big % of people they're never going to be feasible. The more of these "utopian" ideas I read, the more it looks like seniors & disabled are going to be forcibly segregated from "fit" society, deprived of all spontaneous mobility.
Weather has 0 impact? It can take several days for my street to get 1 lane cleared of snow enough to drive on.
Look, I'm all for more bikes, but for a big % of people they're never going to be feasible. The more of these "utopian" ideas I read, the more it looks like seniors & disabled are going to be forcibly segregated from "fit" society, deprived of all spontaneous mobility.
@Nazani @vaurora First of all, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is advocating a scenario where you or people like you would be deprived of mobility any more than you already are. As you said, your city has already implemented the maximum pain it possibly can on people with mobility issues. Adding more options to get around without a car, even if you do not personally use them, will improve your access to the places you want to go by increasing density and reducing pressure on car infrastructure.
@Nazani @vaurora Please check out the video I linked. It specifically addresses these concerns, including the problem with clearing snow.
"Utopia" means "no place," but these are real solutions that exist in real places. They are extremely popular, and they are usually implemented at no additional cost because roads have to be replaced every 30 years or so anyway. The Netherlands has snow and it has people with disabilities. How do you imagine they feel about this?
Who else benefits from the Dutch cycling infrastructure [231]
mekka okereke 
Yep.
I often see the "Bike infrastructure is bad for the disability community" view from folks that are disabled, and in the US, but aren't poor, and aren't Black. I am very sympathetic to the fact that having a car makes life much more convenient for them from a mobility perspective. ♥️👍🏿 But they don't seem to acknowledge that millions of US disabled folks do not own a car, and cannot afford a car service.🫤
Folks with disability are less likely to own cars.
If we ignore bikes for a second, and just say that "It should be easy, safe, convenient, and affordable, for people with disabilities to navigate our city, even if they do not own a car." then we end up building a lot of public transportation infrastructure and common sense accomodations that can be dual purpose for bikes, e-bikes, and other mobility devices.
And we can make accomodations for cars even in "car free" spaces where appropriate, as we already do for delivery vans.
Darnell Clayton 
@darnell @mekkaokereke @vaurora Kinda. We don't really have much bicycle infrastructure here in Japan. It's more that car infrastructure is less hostile, owing to fewer people in cars, smaller cars, smaller streets, an attitude that cars don't own the road, and that road rage is absolutely unacceptable behavior.
I AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑🔥@mekkaokereke @vaurora I think the secret is that many of the people with the “what about the disabled” line aren’t disabled and don’t care what happens to the disabled.
They’re using them as a straw man “gotcha” for the “leftist elite cyclists” who likely DO care about people who need accommodations.
They don’t want more accommodations for the disabled, the poor, the pedestrians.
Matt May@mekkaokereke @vaurora I don’t have a side here, because I think the policy involved is much more nuanced, but social-media-length interaction with bike advocates tends to lead to a lot of hand-waving that doesn’t talk about more than wheelchair cases. And then some dick will jump in to say more people need to exercise so they don’t get disabled.
Disabled people aren’t going to throw in with any group that doesn’t show they can stop for a second to listen to the full set of issues. Full stop.
@vaurora Yes! Here's a company here that makes all kinds of different accessible bikes, several of which I've also seen around on the streets. https://www.vanraam.com/en-gb
AndrewC (migrating to ohai)
Zumbador@vaurora Maybe it's because some of the changes are so fundamental, that it's difficult to imagine? Like - it's not just about taking a bike rather than a car. It's about planning spaces so that work and home are not so far from one another, and the same for places to get food from.
Having more communal spaces, more "third spaces" where people can be with one another when they're not working or spending money, so that we are much more likely to build the human connections that we'll all need for support when we get old or become sick or disabled.
Having more communal spaces, more "third spaces" where people can be with one another when they're not working or spending money, so that we are much more likely to build the human connections that we'll all need for support when we get old or become sick or disabled.
Bruno Girin
cognitively accessible math@brunogirin @Zumbador @vaurora A local planner here in the midwest said *exactly* those two things were the issues to tackle to make most impact fastest. A whole section 'round here got rid of the minimal parking thing (college campus makes that more attainable) and it's not only more walkable, it's just nicer looking. The same developer did their "next" building without the nasty-looking "below the apartment parking" out front and yes, invested some of the dollars saved into beautifying the front landscaping.
abadidea@vaurora can confirm I see people in wheelchairs of all kinds (powered, unpowered, whatever) in bike lanes regularly in NL and I see people who use wheelchairs or scooters out and about in NL far more than I did anywhere in the US
also, I saw a guy who had a wheelchair that can attach and detach from the front half of a bike. He left the bike half outside and took the wheelchair half into a restaurant. incredible
@vaurora and only tangentially related, but: have you seen the tandem bikes that are especially for disabled people who can’t ride a bike unassisted? they have a chair at the front that’s tilted back a bit so they don’t need to keep their balance and they have a good view, and if they are able they may contribute to pedaling, while someone else on the back steers and pedals. I have seen families using one of these twice now
MJ Ray@0xabad1dea @vaurora semirecumbent tandems?
Kim@0xabad1dea @vaurora
https://hasebikes.com/en/your-bikes/tandems/
and
https://www.circecycles.com/products/morpheus/
are the popular ones. Lovely machines, but like most recumbent cycles they're not just for disabled people. Their main advantage over a conventional tandem is that both riders can see where they're going, and it's a bit easier to hear each other. They're also less long than most tandems, which makes them easier to store/transport.
https://hasebikes.com/en/your-bikes/tandems/
and
https://www.circecycles.com/products/morpheus/
are the popular ones. Lovely machines, but like most recumbent cycles they're not just for disabled people. Their main advantage over a conventional tandem is that both riders can see where they're going, and it's a bit easier to hear each other. They're also less long than most tandems, which makes them easier to store/transport.
John Robinson@vaurora As a longtime cyclist (60+years), I have never had a problem sharing a cycle path with a mobility scooter in UK or elsewhere.
@vaurora I'm still trying to find out how well Dutch infrastructure works for visually impaired pedestrians. In the UK, many blind people object to cycleways because they're afraid of cyclists not giving way to them as they cross. I can't work out how much of this is a problem when cyclists behave more consistently and hatred of cycle users isn't part of the culture.
dr2chase@kim @vaurora In the US (I have a theorem, it is mine) I think a fair amount of bad bike behavior towards pedestrians is driven by bikes-are-vehicles and jaywalking rules. Instead of the simple "you should be able to politely not-hit pedestrians all day long" we have "don't jaywalk" & "ring a bell" & other traffic rules normalize the idea of not thinking about yielding to pedestrians. I've decided to follow the simple rule, it has corollaries (prefer to pass behind people), but it works well.
RDS (shawphd on Twitter)
Rachael L@vaurora whenever folks around me (Seattle) oppose — or at least “express concern” — about bike infra stuff for disability reasons usually citing car use they immediately go down my trust list. I AM a disabiled person who can’t drive a car but can bike. The majority of folks with disability here can’t drive or can’t afford cars but can transit, use sidewalks or … bike. Folks opposing bike access for disability rarely come back with transit or sidewalks just keeping car space.
Pieter Kuiper 🌍🇳🇱
Darwin Woodka@vaurora yeah I'm tired of the not everyone can bike excuses. Not all disabled can drive either. What's the real point here?
@darwinwoodka @vaurora I think the point is attention seeking - to generate a lot of replies. There’s no “serious” debate to be had with someone who pretends to live 20 miles from a grocery store AND care about urban mobility.
Cassandrich@vaurora The complaint I've seen isn't that bike-friendly infrastructure isn't or can't be made accessible, but that some bike activists completely ignore the existence and needs of disabled folks and the systems they're presently relying on. This at least feels like part of a pattern in lots of "radical" spaces with folks eagar to smash bad systems disabled folks depend on to live (like big pharma) without any plans for how to meet those needs afterwards.
AutisticMumTo3@AutisticMumTo3 @vaurora Indeed, this is one reason why bike friendly infrastructure needs to be coupled with excellent public transit.
@dalias @vaurora
Even with excellent public transport some will still need to travel by car. My twins have sensory issues with buses. They need accompaning everywhere for safety reasons. & I am in wheelchair for anywhere beyond the front door of my house. One of them has to get my wheelchair out of the car so has to accompany me everywhere & they can't be left home alone. The closest to public transport we can use is taxis so long as the vehicle has a boot that can take a wheelchair.
Even with excellent public transport some will still need to travel by car. My twins have sensory issues with buses. They need accompaning everywhere for safety reasons. & I am in wheelchair for anywhere beyond the front door of my house. One of them has to get my wheelchair out of the car so has to accompany me everywhere & they can't be left home alone. The closest to public transport we can use is taxis so long as the vehicle has a boot that can take a wheelchair.
@AutisticMumTo3 @vaurora Especially in a post-pandemic world I imagine ideal public transit being something your tiny-EV pods hook up to and get carried by without exchange of aerosols, not today's busses.
𝓥𝓲𝓬𝓽🍓𝓻𝓲𝓪@dalias @AutisticMumTo3 @vaurora This. If public transit had some private pods with good air filtration and routine cleaning, that would solve my issues and I’d use it. I’m all for minimizing personal vehicles, but I can’t ride a bike or walk and I’m immunocompromised, so typical public transit crowds are out. I hate traffic. I hate being traffic. But I need better solutions than just “use a bus”.
@KweVictoria @dalias @vaurora
Being a diabetic my immune system doesn't work as well as most folk's. I'm also over 50 and overweight. OK I'm not officially immunocompromised but I am still clinically extremely vulnerable as regards Covid and my immune system doesn't work at a good level any more. That pod system would help me too
Being a diabetic my immune system doesn't work as well as most folk's. I'm also over 50 and overweight. OK I'm not officially immunocompromised but I am still clinically extremely vulnerable as regards Covid and my immune system doesn't work at a good level any more. That pod system would help me too
LisPi@KweVictoria @dalias @AutisticMumTo3 @vaurora I've been profoundly disappointed by how basically no transport provider here has seriously considered fixing any of the problems with their current buses in a permanent BSL-3 pandemic.
It's unreasonable to expect people to defray full PPE kits on their own.
@lispi314 @KweVictoria @dalias @vaurora
Agreed. My guess is its the expense when the govt has been trying to get everything to go back to as pre-pandemic rather than requiring the change
Agreed. My guess is its the expense when the govt has been trying to get everything to go back to as pre-pandemic rather than requiring the change
@vaurora
Mobility scooters aren't suitable for all disabled. They are more for those with limited mobility rather than no mobility for starters. Power wheelchairs are slower than bikes so not so suitable for within biking distance but outside what is generally considered walking distance as well as they are likely not to have the range to be of use once you get to where you're going so the disabled person would need to recharge their wheelchair before doing anything which can take hours.
Mobility scooters aren't suitable for all disabled. They are more for those with limited mobility rather than no mobility for starters. Power wheelchairs are slower than bikes so not so suitable for within biking distance but outside what is generally considered walking distance as well as they are likely not to have the range to be of use once you get to where you're going so the disabled person would need to recharge their wheelchair before doing anything which can take hours.
@vaurora
Then there are those disabled people who's disability isn't solvable with such devices. Their legs work just fine. They are just not safe walking that far which can be for a whole variety of reasons. Also you can't get the wheelchair version of a twin disability buggy a parent/carer might use for kids so you can't just strap disabled twins with such disabilities into a wheelchair and push them anywhere if they are too big for the disability buggy.
Etc, etc.
@vaurora Sigh, it's not weird for people who don't want to understand something to keep reciting something they've heard with an example or two. The examples should be posed as problems to be solved, not excuses for not considering.
See also: but what if the weather's bad?
See also: but what if the weather's bad?