At the risk of pissing off my employers… fuck curbside EV charging.
It’s not great how we always find new and exciting ways to put car shit in the pedestrian realm
@bikepedantic Curbside ev-charging is great! However, its not necessary to install the infrastructure needed for charging at the curb: they should rather be installed at the side of the street, between parking spots. The pedestrian space should remain as it was.
@meraord @bikepedantic why should this be anywhere but private property? How is it great? Should we also have gasoline pumps here and there on the street? How is it that the only new public infrastructure we can afford is for cars, while bathrooms and even bike racks are so hard to find?
@stevenbodzin @bikepedantic personally, I don't see why offering roadside charging would mean there would be less bathrooms or bike racks. We can build all of them.
Second, roadside charging, like near apartment buildings, is a good way to level out our electricity use. If we can charge cars during the night when the use of electricity is lower, it benefits the grid as a whole. They don't take up much space either, why they easily could be located between car parks instead of at the curb.
@meraord @bikepedantic All good points. But counterpoints: Cities are building charging stations everywhere with govt and utility money. In the US, there's no money for bathrooms
In my neighborhood, chargers are mostly used by cabs, which use them in the evening. The very worst time for the grid.
And they do take up much space, given how small sidewalks are (having been narrowed for "parking" lanes.
Put these in parking lots. Not on the curb.
@stevenbodzin @meraord here's a recent streetsblogNYC article that does a good job asking some of the questions specific to cities. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/02/22/power-play-city-moves-to-put-thousands-more-e-car-chargers-on-the-sidewalk
I posted a longer note on my (blech) LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/darren-buck-17a78_i-know-that-im-swimming-against-the-tide-activity-7167917060260356096-lz-l?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
