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Comment by sgrove | Hacker News Reader

Infuriating, I'm a huge fan of these services. I initially thought they would just be toys, but they've removed any uber/lyft around the city for me - they're both faster and cheaper, they park just like bicycles, they don't cause any noise pollution, and they completely eliminate last-mile carbon output.

Sometimes SF is an infuriating place.

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The city is just trying to ensure that the vehicles don't end up abandoned by riders all over the place. This has been a problem with bike and scooter services in many cities globally.

They are giving the companies plenty of time to respond with a plan to address that issue. They're not going to be shut down. They just need to be more responsible for the impact on public places, because we humans are sadly too self-focused to b conscientious.

Hell, the city will probably build more bike racks to accommodate them.

I think it’s bigger than that. There’s a massive FUD meme around dockless technology: the only time it’s in the news is to show the random landfills a few of them end up in, ignoring the 99% that have made millions of lives easier. Dockless bikeshare went from 0 to 200 million riders in just two years, in a country where everybody already owned a bike. This is a technology that makes cities more accessible in a way you can’t imagine til you experience it. But people point to a few left out of place and tell us it’s going to kill our grannies.

  a few left out of place

Dockless bikes are, by definition, all left out of place.

If only people could store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land.

You could travel around the city, leave your bike there, and come back and continue your journey!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking

  store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land

Then it's no longer a sharing model; it's a "I want 24/7 control of a bike but only pay for while I'm riding it and park it anywhere without consequences" model.

Which would be handy, but it wouldn't scale well from a business standpoint.

For what it's worth that is exactly how car sharing works in my city and it's doing well, and growing.

> This has been a problem with bike and scooter services in many cities globally.

This is hilarious. People are mowed down by cars every day, but somehow scooters being left in annoying areas is the issue?

This isn't a case of a small and occasional nuisance. This _Atlantic_ piece has already been cited in-thread, but it deserves a re-airing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2018/03/b...

An image search turns up more instances:

https://www.google.com/search?tbs=imgo%3A1&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=...

And: for the record, I bike, and have done so for decades. It's fair to recognise real problems, however, and not trivialise or dismiss them uncharitably.

Case in point: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...

Dockless cars take much more space and even hit people every day. https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...

On the other hand, I think this is great.

These dockless systems are simply a way to move the negative externalities of the system onto the taxpayer. They clutter sidewalks, result in poor rider behavior, and generate massive amounts of e-waste.

Sometimes, SF actually makes the right call.

This has been a fascinating rapid reaction by the public. I've been both an evangelist for these and a huge critic. I love the tiniest form-factor, and think the bad parking can be solved by user-incentives. Typical ask-for-forgiveness-later that caused people to blow their tops (possibly due to the still ridiculous looking nature of tiny scooters?).

What really soured me is the quality of machines that have been out of on the streets. Anecdata, but in 12 total rides for me, I've had a scooter that had 1) a hand brake with zero functioning ability 2) a throttle that stuck on as far as the user had pushed it 3) a missing bell. Unluckily, first block on that no brakes scooter was downhill and I dug a heal into the asphalt and eventually did a running dismount to avoid rolling into fast moving perpendicular traffic in Civic Center. Sticky throttle scooter caused an uncontrolled skid. Missing bell was a missing bell. But c'mon, these machines had been used for 10 days and they're having critical safety/maintenance issues. These are the worst possible mistakes, and could easily turn fatal.

LimeBike shirked responsibility and their ops manager gave me a "LimeBike Saboteur Theory" over the phone. Bird took hours to disable a a scooter that i was desperately trying to tell them was dangerous to the next rider. Forget sidewalks, these are dangerous vehicles in their current state. You know how Ford bikes feel like tanks relative to a road bike? These scooters also need to be 10x more robust than what's in private use.

Scooters that are available on Alibaba for $200 are not durable for shared use.

The sidewalk cluttering is such a non-issue. The real problem is people riding them on the sidewalks, which is annoying and best and dangerous at worst. Riding them in the street, on the other hand, is scary, I'm pretty sure too scary for mass adoption - I'm pretty sure Bird knows this and is hoping that people will be able to get away with riding them on sidewalks.

Edit: when I say that the sidewalk cluttering is a non-issue, I just mean that as far as I can tell there is barely any sidewalk cluttering, not that said cluttering wouldn't be an issue if it was actually happening.

Have kids and use a stroller? Old and use a walker? Blind and use a cane? Walk and don't look where you put your feet?

Slip and fall are a major cause of death, only second in accidental deaths after motor vehicles. It brings 8M americans to the emergency room every year. In San Francisco, a whole department has been created only to litigate Slips and Falls.

So yes, I'm glad the city prevented my grandmother from tripping on such a thing.

Going to need a source on that 8 million Americans per year going to the emergency room for a fall. That sounds absurdly high. The US population is only about 300 million. That means more ~2.5% of all people each year go to the emergency room because they fell down.

https://nfsi.org/nfsi-research/quick-facts/ - the 8 million #

https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for-reporters/get-the-fa... - quotes almost 3 million older adults per year.

I'm also guessing the vast majority of those falls are inside (probably inside the person's own home). There's a reason companies like lifealert exist.

Over 10% of the US population is over 70. Falls are serious incidents for the elderly.

Whats the median age in downtown San Francisco tho?

If you want to avoid strict regulations move to a red state and go cowboy on your scooter. San Francisco is a conservative place when it comes to the community.

Bay area have one of the healthiest people in the world. It’s an insult they can’t step over or move a 10 pound scooter.

I'm guessing you don't know many people over the age of 65.

Updated my comment: what I'm saying is that there isn't actually any cluttering, not that cluttering is OK.

I have a kid and don't use a stroller - in fact, strollers are kinda one of my pet peeves. They consume tons of space on sidewalks and in restaurants. I'd much rather have sidewalks full of parked scooters that I might at least occasionally use.

But you know what? I'm pretty tolerant, and I'm willing to put up with a little mild inconvenience that allows other people to make their lives significantly easier. I wish everyone else felt likewise.

Strollers don’t typically move 15mph and have 100+ lb people riding in them.

Electric scooters also don't typically move at 15mph, at least not on the sidewalks. Despite the occasional jerk (which also happens with bicycles and for that matter runners), this is not a real problem.

yet! ...

Having tripped over one already, I'd argue the sidewalk cluttering is an issue.

It indeed seems like the companies are playing dumb w.r.t. sidewalk riding and helmets. Are they really assuming people will be walking around with helmets just to ride a scooter for .5 mi? And it's definitely scarier to ride in the street compared to a bicycle.

There's plenty of evidence that helmets don't make you safer, they just make you less likely to ride.

Regardless of efficacy, it's the law in SF to wear a helmet on those things

Sensible riders do it at a speed of a brisk walk.

It's as much of a danger as a grandma (not to say there aren't badass grandmas) riding a bicycle.

In other words, it's a bit of a danger, and also really annoying.

Streets are full of danger then.

Danger that has existed for a long time and is familiar. It’s much harder to take away a dangerous freedom than introduce a new one.

You obviously haven't almost been mown down by an OAP one of those massive 4 wheeled mobility scooters coming round a blind corner - luckily they came on my good side.

Most people don't leave their grandmothers out on the sidewalk overnight. Even in S.F.

A 63 year old man tripped over one on his birthday and ended up in the emergency room with injuries.

People riding them on sidewalks is emphatically not the fault of these companies. Period, paragraph.

I'm shocked to be reading this argument over and over today. That's about enforcing the law against stupid riders. Not companies trying to create a business model for shared bikes.

Yeah, but scooter companies won't have a business without people riding them on the sidewalk, because riding them on the street is terrifying, and it's not possible that the companies don't know it.

They are not at all safe on a road, and if people aren't assholes, they are fine on the sidewalk. The problem is, people are assholes.

The only way to not be an asshole riding one on the sidewalk is to essentially not go faster than walking, at which point why bother?

I actually ride one, and have for about 2 years before this sharing became a mainstream thing. I expected this would happen and always tried to be super cautious when with pedestrians to avoid eventual regulation. I don't have a bell (although maybe I should for safety), but I think it is rude to ding people when essentially I'm on their turf. The advantage they offer if you travel at walking speeds around pedestrians is that there are often significant stretched with no pedestrians on a commute. Also there are parts where you can share a bike lane. In the CBD you are at general fast paced walking speed, but the percent of the journey is pretty low such that it is very efficient for me. Perhaps pedestrians see me as an a-hole though.

A human powered scooter is perfectly fine on the sidewalk. Luxe used them for their staff to get around. I'd love to see a non-motorized docked scooter startup.

Not as bad as a motorized scooter but still not "perfectly fine".

And yet cars kill people every day. Clutter is worse though, somehow.

I have no dog in this fight; I don’t live in SF. I just find it curious that dangerous, incredibly polluting and inefficient vehicles get grandfathered in, and the big gripe with these companies are “clutter”. Seems odd to me, is all.

I just tried one yesterday, it managed to simultaneously feel uncomfortably dangerous and be pointlessly slow.

To give context on my threshold for things "feeling dangerous", I used to be a bike messenger in NYC.

In San Jose, people are completely irresponsible with these scooters. Since they can park them anywhere, they show up in front of stairs, in the middle of sidewalks, in front of doors, and other locations where they impede pedestrian traffic. SF might have gone too far, but it was pretty clear, at least to me that some regulation was necessary.

I think it's only fair to compare dockless scooters/bikes with dockless cars. https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...

Regulation is required, our industry needs to realize it’s not always about the bottom line and disruption. The products we make have real world consequences and they need to be addressed before a “let’s just ship this now to make a quick buck” launch.

I’m glad there were actually some companies that waited to test out their products and work with SFMTA.

This unregulated ship fast theme is no different than handling personal data irresponsibly. Companies that don’t care about the public and only their bottom line should be penalized.

That's wild for me to hear. The scooters are dangerously slow to ride in bike lanes, and unstable on the irregular pavement. They're strictly worse than all other forms of locomotion, including walking. They also make you look ridiculous, in a shameful way. In my experience.

You can feel the hate as you glide along. A+++++ would ride again

Depends entirely on the scooter. The Lime scooters are awfully, stupidly slow, but the Bird ones are plenty fast for the bike lane.

I've only tested the Bird ones. Riding them in the bike lane is terrifying. They're less than half of the speed of bikes!

I've tried LimeBike and Bird. LimeBike had a bit poor acceleration (felt like software throttling), but was taller and a bit bigger than Bird, had a screen. App wasn't as good as Bird's.

Bird requires US licence to use (lol), although manually entering garbage data let me use for single use. Had much better acceleration, but a protruding control box felt a bit annoying.

Both scooters miss hardware locking feature. As a tourist it's common to drain your phone battery to dead leaving you with no way to end your ride. Also, it would be nice to unlock multiple scooters with single phone. Lack of suspension is sometimes uncomfortable, but not too bad.

Safety-wise I've felt probably just as worried as in any foreign city on a bicycle - not great, but city traffic is slow enough to make it ok.

Overall I was super satisfied, can't wait for them to appear everywhere (and get better top speed).

Bird is just a Xiaomi m365 scooter with a "Bird" sticker on it.

How about control box?

Just details. Since they did not design 98% of the scooter, when talking about speed, range, riding quality, I usually refer to it as a Xiaomi scooter and not a Bird scooter.

Much in the same way that if you rent a Zipcar and its acceleration is poor, blame Ford or Toyota or whoever made the car that you rented, not Zipcar.

Funny that you mention noise pollution. My most prominent “experience” with these scooters has been the one parked outside my apartment building the other day beeping incessantly and flashing a strobe light. The beeping was incredibly loud. I started hearing it when my elevator got to the first floor: from across the street and through my building’s front door, lobby, and elevator door. It was beeping like that from at least 6pm when I got home and 10pm when I last checked.

Is there any reason you didn't call the local police non-emergency line and report the abandoned vehicle that was likely violating local noise ordinances?

Doesn't matter if its a shared car, scooter, etc, if its creating loud noises late into the night and its owners are unresponsive, report it. I've done that a few times for Car2Go and ReachNow's.

I considered doing that, but decided it’s probably not worth bothering them given that the street is also filled with homeless people, piles of trash, and discarded needles. I’ve since learned that you can use the 311 app to report abandoned vehicles, so I’ll do that in the future.

It is increasingly crazy to me that we pour so much money into government and then expect nothing of them. Any solution to real problems we face (pollution, traffic, no parking) is expected to come from the private sector. We only expect Government to do the bare minimum and not implode. Government projects efficiently solving these problems would be the ultimate vertical integration, its maddening that so little value is provided to citizens.

It feels like we are totally duped into paying more and more taxes while continually lowering our expectations, although I always feel this way during tax season :p.

Sounds like the same problems as the dockless bike shares. I saw one of those parked next to a Goodwill collection box, probably by a befuddled or malicious resident.

Why should the city provide free storage space for their inventory? I can’t just drop a vending machine wherever I want.

Exactly! Now let's abolish all public parking.

You mean like the 450k street car parking spaces that line almost every street in our city?

Much of the on-street parking is paid parking. If you're proposing that these scooter companies pay per hour that each scooter is left on the sidewalk, I think that's a great idea.

Really, I think its probably only a small fraction. Most residential neighborhoods have free parking, even many commercial areas. Do we have stats on this to be sure?

Parking, even in “free” residential areas is time or permit restricted. So even if payment is not direct there are other indirect payments and constraints.

Not left on the sidewalk, the scooter should be left on the street - a dozen scooters in the space formerly occupied by one car. And they should absolutely pay to use that space! Residential permits in SF are $150/yr. 50c/day per spot. Less than 5c per day per scooter. I think scooter and bike share companies would eat this opportunity up

I and you can drop my bike anywhere I want.

Sharing them means less bikes left everywhere.

SF made an exclusive deal with Ford GoBike, the expensive docked bikes that are never nearby when you need them. That pre-emptively barred these companies from launching their dockless bikes in SF, and so the scooters are the workaround. And as someone else points out, scooters are scary on the street, so now we have a sidewalk problem. This is 100% the city’s fault for saddling us with old bikeshare technology.

$3 for a single 30 minute GoBike trip is expensive? 15 minutes on a Bird Scooter is $3.55. The GoBike stations are fairly dense you might have to walk a block or two. https://member.fordgobike.com/map/

The GoBike is a joke. You have to pedal insanely hard just to go half the speed of a normal, cheap bike. The components are just awful, and the stations aren't that great either.

As a user of both, the Scooter experience is 50x better. Just not even on the same level. I agree some regulation is needed to prevent massive clutter and keep the sidewalks safe, but I've had zero issues with people while a rider, or with riders while a pedestrian.

Dockless bikes are $1 per 30 mins... having one 20 feet from you vs two blocks is a qualitative difference. And zoom out on that map – the GoBikes only cover one small part of the city.

Nevermind the ceaseless free ride promos, and Ofo offering an hour for a buck. I don't see how being more expensive and less convenient is competitive in the transportation sector.

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