Comment by DogOnTheWeb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DogOnTheWeb | Hacker News Reader

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I joined the supervisor hearing today late, but there was important context there that is missing in this article.

- They mentioned several companies that were waiting for permits to launch, and applauded companies like Scoot (which is planning to launch e-bikes) and Waybots for working with them.

- They mentioned that SFMTA was first contacted about these scooters to in February and immediately began working on a permit process which is due to begin next month. That's light speed for a government agency.

- The only reason there was a sudden rush in deployment was that one company (Bird or Lime) decided to jump the gun and launch on St. Patrick's Day. The others that deployed didn't want to lose first mover advantage. At least one of these three hadn't even contacted SFMTA until after deployment.

- Lime did not even send a representative to the meeting at all. Apparently they decided to just contact TechCrunch after the fact.

The supervisors were rough on them and Aaron Peskin even had the nerve to call them "techbros", but they brought this on themselves by trying to use the old "move fast and break things" play that this city has seen before.

I'm confused on why a launch with proper permits and communication with the city would change the situation. All the same complaints about clutter, bad riders, and sidewalk/road disruption would still be valid.

The idea of an "ownernless" vehicle is flawed. They seem cheap, and so they are a treated like trash. Only if the companies picked them everyday to charge, repair, and redistributed would this work. That maygive them some intrinsic value, and people might respect them enough to not properly park and care for them. However, this is not the case. No one wants a business whose model is to litter the city with trash.

> I'm confused on why a launch with proper permits and communication with the city would change the situation.

Level playing field? It sounds like several companies did the right thing and worked with the authorities to make sure they didn't cause trouble, and then the three in TFA jumped the gun and launched anyway.

As a governing body, you can't allow that precedent to stand. If "ignore regulations and do it anyway" becomes an optimal strategy then everyone will do it and your commons will be tragic.

Everyone already does it. It is the optimal strategy.

Bird picks up all of their scooters every night: https://www.bird.co/sos-pledge-mar272018

They "pledged" that but relied on independent contractors to do all the collection and redistribution. They were not being picked up every night.

What evidence do you have that people tend to treat them as trash? While I'm not sure how often Jump services/replaces their fleet, the few I've used and the many I've seen around SF have all worked great/looked to be in good condition over the past few months. Also, I've definitely seen vans redistributing Jump bikes around town. I fully expect Bird/Spin/Lime does/will do the same with the scooters.

Anecdotally, the dockless bike-share bikes in DC get treated a bit like trash. Friends wake up and find them ditched in their yards, and in their driveways and alleys. They're randomly left in the middle of sidewalks. Etc. Maybe no literally treated like trash, but not treated thoughtfully either.

> I'm confused on why a launch with proper permits and communication with the city would change the situation.

If you have a permit for an activity, it's harder for the agency issuing the permit to argue you are acting without legal permission by doing the activity which the permit permits.

Hence, the name “permit”.

> I'm confused on why a launch with proper permits and communication with the city would change the situation.

Because then the city council would be receiving the tax revenue (permit fees) it feels it is due for /authorizing/ the launch to occur.

I don't often agree with the supes, but here I do. There really needs to be planning and coordination with the government with things like these.

There is only so much bandwidth for modes of transportation that cannot allow leisez-fair transit to run amok in the city. Proceed with a well developed plan with all stakeholders in mind.

On the other hand, we're talking about motor scooters as a hazard and nuisance while there is human excrement on the sidewalks.

One is supplied by a corporation that can be negotiated with and for whom well-established regulations exist. The other is a very, very difficult problem.

Is your argument that, until the homeless problem is dealt with, we should stop doing _anything_ else? I'm not sure that helps.

I'm arguing that fecal matter and used needles are biohazards that are vectors for fatal disease while the scooters are mostly annoying and perhaps unfair.

Do we give a pass to local government to get very sober about scooters being bad for sidewalks while the elephant in the room smells like stale urine and can give you hepatitis?

Yes, we give them “a pass” to do their jobs. We elect them to manage all the affairs of government, including the easy ones.

If you applied the same philosophy to Honda and Toyota, the scooters would win hands-down.

Sure, when people begin to be born, live, work and die in the same building, until then, people will also need long distance transport modes.

New entrants have to cede priority to established systems and work within a framework to augment the systems -- else we end up with things like the millions of dead ebikes we see in China, for example.

>else we end up with things like the millions of dead ebikes we see in China

We end up with things like this in America too: https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...

None of those bikes we saw piled up in China were ebikes and they were all going to be recycled. The VW cars are awaiting regulatory approval for export or resale. The scooters on the other hand are difficult to recycle and weren't even designed for shared use.

What we are saying is, that for every scooter someone is using, thats one less uber trip being taken.

Would you rather those people in the scooters drive?

SF is 7mi across, no one is suggesting you take the scooter to Tahoe.

Electric scooters can do 25km, which is a pretty decent distance.

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