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Comment by imbusy111 | Hacker News Reader

That particular scooter is only $500 + tax from Amazon (or was just weeks ago, it's sold out at the moment, but you have many other options). If you like it, just buy it and it will pay off within months. It is not like a car where the upfront costs are substantial. I heard that it is even $210 at wholesale prices if you can ship it from China and there is not even an import tax.

Of course the author was just visiting SF and only needed it temporarily - in that case I understand the need for a rental option, but you should be able to rent it for a whole week for little cost.

I am an owner of an electric scooter myself, but I do not enjoy the shared scooters lying around everywhere on the streets like trash. It is understandable to me why the numbers would be limited by the city.

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this hardly seems fair, sonce everyone gets to leave their cars lying around everywhere.

also, believe me when i tell you that for SF at least, scooters are the least of your aesthetic concerns on the streets and sidewalks...

If you leave a car “laying around” in a spot not designated for parking a car then it’s likely to be towed, or at least ticketed. This works because the car usually has a registered owner who wants it back.

the point is it's silly to complain about the "eyesore" of scooters when you've already accepted insanely higher impositions from cars. cars actually kill people! they have hugely detrimental effects on air quality! they take up tons of space, way more than scooters ever could. the factr that the space has been "officially deemed ok" is irrelevent.

http://nordic.businessinsider.com/contentassets/15ba9de498c2...

"We've accepted one thing that turned out to be bad; so we must accept all future bad things".

This is a snarky but accurate restatement of your (commonly professed) belief.

"Why do we keep accepting this ridiculously bad thing if we are now conscious of bad things?"

but the scooters function in large part as as a replacement for cars. so it's replacing something with lots of problems with something with fewer problems. it's a net win.

i do agree having regs to dissuade people from blocking & riding on the sidewalk with scooters seems very reasonable.

once you have that i think scooters are basically problem free (except for maybe aesthetic concerns).

even w/o that, i still don't see how anyone reasonable could think scooters were anywhere near the top of the list of hazards of sf streets.

(perhaps they are a major inconvenience for wheelchair users?; i'd be interested in any first-hand accounts.)

This is all true, but one problem that is not widespread is cars strewn all over the sidewalk. The aesthetic problem that you mention is indeed minor; the accessibility problem for people in wheelchairs is not.

Cars have all the problems you’ve mentioned and more and I’m also dissatisfied with how much public space we’ve set aside for them, but they also mostly stay off sidewalks and wait at street crossings, so at least we’ve also set aside space for pedestrians to get from one place to another that is usable even for those in wheelchairs.

I'm sure cars parked in undesirable places before regulation. I would support taking away street parking in favor of bikes and scooters.

An issue is where/how to park your own scooter. It's a good deal larger (and dirtier) than many offices will allow to be brought in an leaned against your desk. And there is no place to lock your $700 scooter on the street.

I have never had anyone deny access to my scooter inside. It is very compact. I keep it under my desk.

I don't ride the scooters but I ride the gobikes. The main advantage is that I don't have to bring it into the office, and I don't have to worry about bringing it back home when i take it out.

If I have to do that with a bike or scooter even once! in those months you mention it takes to pay itself off, then it's not worth it.

I don't want to have to carry my scooter into a crowded Illy just to meet someone for coffee.

A scooter folds up and is very easy to carry around. It is nothing like a bike in terms of parking it.

Where are you riding your scooter? Because I ride to coffeeshops, or the ferry building to catch a boat, or street festivals around town, not just the office. You want to carry a scooter through the Haight street fair?

Electric scooters are still rather large and bulky. By no means an easy carry.

You can easily get one that slips into a backpack.

They are not that light, but still vastly more portable than a bike and you don't need to worry about them being stolen from the street.

I’ve done quite a bit of research looking for such a scooter and have not found one. Would you mind linking me to such an e-scooter that you’d recommend (with high build quality and reliability - has to be worth buying of course) that can easily slip into a backpack? I truly have not found one that is so. I’ve been looking at the new Boosted Mini X - which could at least potentially strap to the back of a backpack.

Lets see, buy a scooter for $500 or rent it for $5. Hmmmmmmm, let me think about that.

Yea, payback period of ~4 months seems like a no brainier to me.

Was about to come in here and ask what will prevent people from just testing out the scooters then buying their own for $300 if they like the experience.

I live in a smallish apartment in NYC and don't have room for a bike so city bike makes sense but I could see myself buying one of these and keeping it in the closet.

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