Well, that's going to kill Bird.
Been interesting because in New York Bird isn't something people talk about where as here it was everywhere (didn't hurt we lived at Venice beach either).
One thing I realized is how much the ability to just leave your bird/lime anywhere and just pick it up where it is, affects your desire to use it.
We will see the same uptick in bicycles in NY I think once you are not required to park them at specific places.
It's a little bit of a mess though especially down on the beach promenae but I think there are plenty of ways to encourage good behavior.
I could theoretically rent a bicycle, but there are only four places I could park it.
It's also been fun to watch both companies experiment and revise their hardware. The original Lime scooters were slow and the Bird scooters were much stronger. With the v2 of each, it is reversed.
But from what I've heard second hand, increasing the number of units on the street isn't that expensive. I've heard that the units cost them in bulk ~$250 each and they quickly (< 3 months) earn that back. So the investment to blanket a city with scooters is way less than you'd expect and not the main barrier to entry. Of course that's second hand, so I could be totally wrong.