Revel’s Bronx exit proves tech can’t save cities — but public safety will

[Kamaji]

Revel’s Bronx exit proves tech can’t save cities — but public safety will

By Nicole Gelinas
January 16, 2022

It’s been a long time since a company, let alone a woke tech firm, openly said that street crime had pushed it out of The Bronx. But that’s exactly what Revel, the blue-moped company, cited this month in announcing a “pause” in its service there.

Don’t blame Revel, which is bizarrely honest for our techspeak times — it’s yet another sign that property crime is not victimless and the poor, as always, will bear the brunt of rising crime.

Revel operates in two tech “spaces.” In the parlance of Silicon Valley, it is a “sharing” company: It rents mopeds to anyone 21 or over with a driver’s license. You just go on the app, find a moped on the street, unlock it and return it somewhere else on the street.

It’s also a “micromobility” company. It’s supposed to provide an urban-transportation solution different from an old-fashioned subway or bus and keep you out of a car: “When I think about our competition, I think about Uber and Lyft,” co-founder Frank Reig said three years ago.

For the umpteenth time, though, the noble transformational goal of urban tech is colliding — often literally — with reality on the mean streets.

*  *  *

Now, though, we have something old-school: “We are pausing service in The Bronx due to a significant spike in thefts, which have left mopeds unusable,” the company told the Bronx Times just after Christmas.

Revel said the part you’re not supposed to say. Yet it’s not wrong: Grand larcenies in The Bronx, up 21 percent in the last two years, are just barely behind the 1993 level of 7,511 and only 21 percent lower than their 1990 peak.

*  *  *

Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/01/16/revels-bronx-exit-proves-tech-cant-save-cities/

[Kamaji]

NYC still has a ways to go before it hits bottom, and public safety once again becomes an actual concern for City Hall.

[Fishrrman]

Kamaji:
"NYC still has a ways to go before it hits bottom, and public safety once again becomes an actual concern for City Hall."

If they aren't concerned now, what will it take to GET them concerned?
Before he's done, Adams may make folks wish deBlasio was back...   ;-)

[Kamaji]

Kamaji:
"NYC still has a ways to go before it hits bottom, and public safety once again becomes an actual concern for City Hall."

If they aren't concerned now, what will it take to GET them concerned?
Before he's done, Adams may make folks wish deBlasio was back...   ;-)

For reference, see the 1970s.

[Smokin Joe]

Kamaji:
"NYC still has a ways to go before it hits bottom, and public safety once again becomes an actual concern for City Hall."

If they aren't concerned now, what will it take to GET them concerned?
Before he's done, Adams may make folks wish deBlasio was back...   ;-)

Maniacs in the stairwells and hooligans in the elevators.