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Ya can't ride ya scooter in Hahvahd Yahd
By adamg on Fri, 04/14/2023 - 9:38am
Harvard is following BC's lead and banning students from riding or even just storing scooters and bikes inside its buildings and warning them to de-bike on certain hallowed ground, such as Harvard Yard. The Crimson interviews one of its own sports editors, who is simply aghast, and another student who had her scooter stolen when she was forced to leave it, unlocked, outside.
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Comments
Backwards
Profoundly backwards and foolish decision. People are incredibly good at avoiding each other at low speeds, including on bikes and scooters. Banning them from pedestrianized areas forces riders to travel in more dangerous conditions along with cars and worsens last mile problems.
Here's the problem:
far too many people are not riding at low speed when they take these things on sidewalks.
Student-athletes
There seems to be a steady stream of these things going from the athletic area back and forth to campus, often on sidewalks. Everyone one of these people could use a bicycle or just their own two feet, and as athletes you'd think that might be good for them.
Let me introduce you to a bicycle, which has the added benefit that it doesn't have to be brought inside to recharge and potentially catch fire.
And don't @ me and say "but these are replacing trips that would have been made by car!" Nonsense. They're replacing bike and walk trips, but are far more dangerous for everyone and just show how lazy the students are.
Eff scooters.
bike, yes; walk? maybe not
Given how spread out the Harvard campus is between Cambridge and Allston (where the athletic facilities are), it really may not be feasible for many of these students to have time to walk to the facilities in between classes and other activities.
And the new engineering
And the new engineering campus is almost a half mile further into Allston than the North Harvard Street/Soldiers Field Road entrance to the athletic complex. Which itself is a haul from the dorms, especially the Radcliffe Quad. I sympathize with students who have to trek down there, and don't begrudge them any means of transport that they find convenient.
Scooters have a lot of
Scooters have a lot of advantages over bikes. You can't assume that everyone's using them because they're too lazy to pedal a bike.
Nobody at Harvard has a car
In my day, we walked or took the shuttle bus. We didn't ride scooters, and most of us didn't even have bicycles. But a car? There's no place to park one. The one fellow student I knew who had one had to park it across the river near the Business School.
MIT had unicycles
Don't know if it's still true, but in my day we had unicyclists riding through the Infinite Corridor.
In your day
Half the campus wasn't on the other side of the river.
Students also head over to Longwood for certain classes, too. The Shuttles are not very reliable.