04-16-2023, 03:54 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-16-2023, 03:58 AM by danbrotherston.)
Yeah, I saw this on twitter. The ONLY thing here which surprises me is that a private for profit company was stupid enough to agree to this. Like...I think the meritocracy is a lie, I think mediocre people are in high level management positions all the time. But this is a step above...utterly idiotic.
For the region, I understand it. Our regional staff don't care about this being successful, they only care about appeasing all their loud stakeholders, and their loud stakeholders mostly only care about maintaining the status quo. So the IHT is banned because the accessibility committee opposed it because shared bikes and escooters are "dangerous" somehow in a way which regular bikes apparently aren't.
On a good day, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is just so idiotic, I really can't even.
What should have happened here, is the region should have made these stipulations and then they should have received zero bids on implementing this. My guess is that at the time it was agreed on, we were still in the position where there was so much money floating around that companies couldn't give it away, which is why stupidity like this happens. It would have been much better if no company had invested here because it would have forced staff to confront their bad planning.
But alas, was not to be.
So, instead we'll have a ton of bikes that nobody will ever use (because they're not allowed to use them) and then this failure will be used to say "see bike share isn't wanted here" instead of being forced to face the broken policy they setup.
But at the end of the day, this isn't even top 10 for problems in the region right now...hell, not even top 10 of transportation issues....which is why it's so depressing.
For the region, I understand it. Our regional staff don't care about this being successful, they only care about appeasing all their loud stakeholders, and their loud stakeholders mostly only care about maintaining the status quo. So the IHT is banned because the accessibility committee opposed it because shared bikes and escooters are "dangerous" somehow in a way which regular bikes apparently aren't.
On a good day, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is just so idiotic, I really can't even.
What should have happened here, is the region should have made these stipulations and then they should have received zero bids on implementing this. My guess is that at the time it was agreed on, we were still in the position where there was so much money floating around that companies couldn't give it away, which is why stupidity like this happens. It would have been much better if no company had invested here because it would have forced staff to confront their bad planning.
But alas, was not to be.
So, instead we'll have a ton of bikes that nobody will ever use (because they're not allowed to use them) and then this failure will be used to say "see bike share isn't wanted here" instead of being forced to face the broken policy they setup.
But at the end of the day, this isn't even top 10 for problems in the region right now...hell, not even top 10 of transportation issues....which is why it's so depressing.