Saturday, October 24, 2020

Thwack does scooters

 Happy #NDEAM #PedestrianSafetyMonth RantWoman just needs to howl and yowl and SCOOTERS happen to be handy. Thanks partly to the #pandemic, RantWoman has not been out and about as much as average so to date, RantWoman has missed out on a whole bunch of scooter issues.

Recently RantWoman was making one of her regular bus transfers. RantWoman happened to be carrying a couple bag-your-own-purchases canvas bags full of groceries. The transfer involves about a block of walking but no street crossings. The first bus stops at a zone with two bus shelters and a couple trees with only slightly treacherous tree wells. 

(RantWoman would happily post a photo except RantWoman cannot figure out a path to do so several days out.)

RantWoman noticed not one but TWO scooters parked, one near a tree well and the other behind a bus stop.. RantWoman guesses she should be glad to have enough vision to notice the scooters visually: Scooters are smaller than say #bikeshare bikes so there is less chance the white cane will find them and possibly more chance that one will trip without finding the scooter first. Well maybe. 

That day RantWoman trundled off to her bus stop. RantWoman cannot remember whether she tried to send the grumpy tweet mentioned below that day or a day or two later.

Anyway, RantWoman has decided to allow Ambassador Thwack to have his own Twitter handle. This is an effort to keep some of RantWoman's consistent Twitter threads separate, though letting Twitter help organize the content streams is proving rocky. Anyway, Thwack tweeted a grumpy tweet tagged with #FindItFixIt. RantWoman got back an invitation from @SeattleDot to download the #FindItFixIt app and report it that way.

App downloaded. RantWoman's real name and contact info input. What else? Oh, there's a way to upload a photo. Eureka. The photo comes with a location stamp which loads nicely into the location field. 

Next problem category: lovely category for Bike Share and Scooter. Fields for brand and scooter id. Scooter ID is a required field. Uh-oh. Remember, Ambassador Thwack is not really good at reading labels and neither is RantWoman. Another grumpy tweet.

And while RantWoman is at it, #FindItFixIt needs some kind of general category for for other or for crappy sidewalk. Seattle DOT knows where LOTS of crappy sidewalk is; the point of having space in #FindItFixIt would be just to collect data about which pieces of crappy sidewalk people use a lot.

RantWoman has tagged this post #NDEAM partly just to note that LOTS of people depend on sidewalks as part of all their non-commute #ActiveMobility everyday lives. There. Enough

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