Electric Scooters in New York City? They Just Might Work
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
These blow scooters right out of the water. I can get exercise and extra speed by pedaling along with the motor. Their app passed the ride data to my iPhone's health app for activity tracking.
Other bonuses come to mind. If it should run out of charge, it would be a heavy bike. People don't look as dorky on bikes.
I don't get why people are angry about scooters, but these E-bikes are awesome and I'd much rather use them given the choice. I'd love to see E-bikes take over as the dominant way of getting around.
P.S. Almost forgot to mention: that thing was fun! (No, I'm not affiliated with Jump/Uber).
I'm based in London, where scooters are still banned, but tried Lime in Austin when it first launched. I found the digital experience incredible and I had a great time. But the small wheels on anything other than silky smooth surfaces makes trips uncomfortable and I did almost wipe out. Plus the brakes are not great and the battery performance deteriorates noticeably on longer trips.
There is a place for scooters (small downtown areas) but I think that E-bikes make more sense and can use existing cycling infrastructure more easily. Excited by all these changes...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/e-scoot...
Re: cost and taking up space... sure ok. But all these things still compare favorably to cars in that regard.
I checked the price of Bird (idk what the prices of Lime/Spin are), and it's $1 per ride plus $.15/min. For 2x20min commutes per day, that's $8/day to ride a scooter. A roundtrip on the subway would be 2x$2.75, so $5.50/day.
Taken monthly, it's $160/mo to ride a scooter vs. $110/mo to ride the subway.
A Xiaomi scooter is about $500 on Amazon, so the cost would be recouped in less than 5 months. Seems reasonable for those who would be "frequent riders" to just buy their own collapsible scooters and carry it with them into work.
Typically the shims come in packs of three, depending on how much gap is present in your folding mechanism.
Although I’d be more afraid in New York. People lack situational awareness there
The scooters in the article are talking about the little folding things that you stand on, right? Like Razor scooters from the 90’s but electric. These are basically non-existent in Chinese cities. The main form of transport here is electric motorbikes, which people sometimes call scooters.
We have dockless Electric Scooters[3] ("Vespa" style motorcycles that require a driving permit) here in Switzerland and we have Lime Trottinettes so it can get confusing if not using the right term.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_scooter [3] https://www.mobility.ch/en/how-it-works/rent-a-scooter/
Language as actually practiced is messy, and has large regional variation. It’s generally the right marketing move to name something the way your customers will understand it, not the way a taxonomist would prefer.
But I agree Lime/Bird should do a good job localizing, and not be lazy about naming in other markets!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Holleeder
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=holleeder+scooter&t=fpas&iax=image...
I'm sure we could find some, if we wanted to: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/22/new-york-has-81875-me...
- Cyclists riding on sidewalks. Apart from delivery people, a cyclist should never ride on the sidewalk in Manhattan. Ever. If you find yourself riding on the sidewalk, just don't take the bike out. Bikes are for roads. The article even mentions how sidewalks are narrow.
- Bike lanes (IMHO) have made traffic significantly worse because they're thoroughly underutilized and basically kill a lane of traffic (on the avenues at least).
- The article also mentions how pedestrians spill over to the streets and bike lanes. Yep, that'll happen. Particularly if the city fills the sidewalk with more newsstands and allows businesses to spill out onto the sidewalk. There should be a rule that there can be no obstruction on an avenue of major street (think 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 59th, etc) that reduces the clear space to anything less than ten feet. On other streets? 6-8 feet.
- I generally find the delivery cyclists are fine. It's the commuters and tourists who need to be removed from the road. Why? Well tourists are just oblivious and will ride down a bike lane 3 abreast at 6 miles an hour. But the commuters are just plain assholes, as a whole group.
Go see this for yourself on the Brooklyn Bridge. This is a place that at any reasonable time is going to be packed with tourists. And just count (it won't take long) how often you see a cyclist knock a pedestrian who has "dared" to spill over into the bike lane. Honestly, bikes should just be banned completely from the Brooklyn Bridge.
- Cyclists will ride down bike lanes and streets the wrong way (yes bike lanes have directions) and run red lights and give you attitude if you're in the way as a pedestrian even though you have right of way.
So am I excited about the prospect of scooters? Hell, no. I've been to SF and seen these littered all over the place. The sidewalks in Manhattan (in particular) are congested enough that we don't need scooters littered on them.
At least Citibikes have to go into bays.
But above all of this the biggest problems in NYC are the continued subsidization of car ownership. If it were up to me I would:
- Eliminate all street parking
- Loading zones only
- Tax private car ownership for anyone living below 125th street.
- Have congestion pricing (the article mentions this too).
- Get rid of the stupid turn lanes (where pedestrians have to take turns with cars turning crossing the street so as a pedestrian you only get to cross 1/4 of the time instead of 1/2).
But please just say no to scooters.
Posts that amount to, "sure, we've spent at least 1000x as much on cars as biking, but why won't cyclists respect their janky ass hodgepodge road system as much as drivers do?" feel pretty silly to me.
What do you think happens when Dutch people come over to the US, or vice versa? People adapt to their environment, and the US bike environment encourages reckless behavior.
>Cyclists riding on sidewalks. Apart from delivery people, a cyclist should never ride on the sidewalk in Manhattan. Ever. If you find yourself riding on the sidewalk, just don't take the bike out. Bikes are for roads. The article even mentions how sidewalks are narrow.
People ride on the sidewalk usually because there is no other safe alternative. Depending on the time of the day and the street, it might be extremely intimidating to drive in regular traffic. There are so many drivers who aren't aware of cyclists/hate cyclists that it's better to get on the sidewalk. Of course it should go without saying that you don't do this on Times Square or somewhere equally crowded.
>Bike lanes (IMHO) have made traffic significantly worse because they're thoroughly underutilized and basically kill a lane of traffic (on the avenues at least).
Isn't this kind of a "chicken and egg" type of a problem? They're underutilized because cycling isn't taken seriously and the infra is lacking. Also you can keep adding lanes and lanes for cars but it's not going to help with congestion, eventually there will just be more cars.
>I generally find the delivery cyclists are fine. It's the commuters and tourists who need to be removed from the road. Why? Well tourists are just oblivious and will ride down a bike lane 3 abreast at 6 miles an hour. But the commuters are just plain assholes, as a whole group.
What makes you say that about commuters? Also tourists are tourists everywhere, even in Helsinki. You just gotta live with it.
>Eliminate all street parking I agree but I think a more realistic goal would be world peace.
I think that a huge part of making cycling and e-biking/scootering work in a major city is creating a good biking culture with adequate infrastructure. Maybe because biking isn't enforced like driving is many riders just selfishly do what they want and seem to lack a certain awareness to situational speed and other users. If they hopped behind the wheel and applied the same driving style, we'd have bodies. Then again, if the infra covers only small parts of the city and is inconsistent, you can't blame riders for breaking the rules.
- Drivers will park in the bike lane. They'll try to excuse it by saying, "it'll just be a few minutes", as if that makes it okay.
- Drivers will change lanes without signaling.
- Drivers will speed up at yellows and run red lights.
- Drivers will consistently go 5-10 mph over the speed limit on the freeway.
- Drivers will intrude into the crosswalk at intersections.
- Drivers will tailgate each other as well as cyclists.
- Drivers will pass cyclists with only a foot or so of passing space so they can save a few seconds of time.
- Drivers will be looking at their phone half the time when driving around. Like goddamn, your text can wait!
- Drivers will complain endlessly about cyclist behavior, even though they see much more dangerous driver behavior every hour of every day.
- Drivers will expect cyclists to obey the law perfectly even though the bike lane network is a hodge podge assortment of randomly starting and ending bike paths covering a tiny percentage of streets, most of which are dangerous to ride in anyway.
I did a mix of biking and driving when I was in the US; my commute was either biking or biking + transit, and other trips were mostly driving. It always amazes me how much Americans nitpick cyclist behavior that at most endangers the cyclists themselves or inconveniences others -- and that while using a road network that either makes no consideration for them or is often actively hostile -- while being muted on driver behavior that is vastly more dangerous and common.
Oh sure, people will sometimes complain about the bad drivers in their state or city, but nobody reflexively responds to infrastructure discussion with "okay, but before we talk about fixing that intersection/widening that highway, lemme get all my driver complaints off my chest" with the implication that no money should be spent on car infrastructure until every driver is fastidiously obeying the law.
The last year before I moved to Germany, I got hit by drivers twice on my bike. The first time I had my son on my bike, we were fine but my bike was messed up. An officer came out, but did the driver get a ticket for t-boning us at an intersection, since they were clearly at fault? Ha ha no, of course not, this is America.
Go talk to some local government in a town that has a lake and they'll tell you it's exactly the same with all the different things people want to use the lake for (sailing, kayaking, jet skis, water skiing, fishing, etc). I don't know what it is about public resources (like roads and lakes) that turns people into idiots incapable of seeing the other side's point of view but it is damn good at it.
In this case there's a vocal minority of the population that thinks their way of doing things (in this case it's means of transit that we're arguing over) is best and wanting government to prioritize it (at the expense of others, resources are not infinite). It's the same tired old "the way I want is right and everyone else is wrong or less right and should be forced to do things differently" bunch of whining that is found in HOAs and local governments across the country. I and most people don't really care what kind of transportation modes we optimize for as long as it's low cost in both time and money and no less flexible than the existing set of options.
To play devils advocate here (is it really devils advocate if you don't really have a horse in the race?):
>Drivers will change lanes without signaling.
cyclists have hand signals and use them with enough regularity to make BMW drivers look good.
>Drivers will speed up at yellows and run red lights.
When it comes to traffic signals cyclists calling drivers bad is a clear cut case of the pot calling the kettle black. Both groups violate the letter of the law here and both mostly do it in the same predictable ways. I don't see this as a problem for either group, it's just how things are and will be.
>Drivers will consistently go 5-10 mph over the speed limit on the freeway.
Because speed limits are unrealistically slower than reasonable for good conditions on most limited access roads. Why does it matter what they do on limited access roads anyway?
>Drivers will intrude into the crosswalk at intersections.
As if the pedestrians used the crosswalks.
>Drivers will tailgate each other as well as cyclists.
If you're going slower than everyone else wants to go expect to be tailgated (whether there's someone in front of you does not matter). It happens on bike paths with just bike traffic, in hallways, stairwells and even with boats and people operating industrial machinery. People need to take tailgating less personally.
> Drivers will pass cyclists with only a foot or so of passing space so they can save a few seconds of time.
Cyclists will roll stops with near zero regard to the traffic flow (car and pedestrian) at intersections just to save themselves the mild inconvenience of starting from a stop.
>Drivers will be looking at their phone half the time when driving around. Like goddamn, your text can wait!
Cyclists will have headphones in while they ride then have the gall to complain about the situational awareness of drivers. ;)
>but nobody reflexively responds to infrastructure discussion with "okay, but before we talk about fixing that intersection/widening that highway, lemme get all my driver complaints off my chest"
Back in the early 1900s when cars were gaining market share this is exactly what happened.
Yes, this is exactly my point.
Nobody fully obeys the law, but cyclists get called out as "scofflaws" far more than pedestrians or motorists, even though they're also operating in the worst conditions by far.
Like, pedestrians in the US are clearly second-class citizens compared to cars, but at least they get protected walk lanes (aka sidewalks) on most streets, and walk signals where there are stoplights. Bikes generally don't get those things, so they're more like third-class citizens.
> In this case there's a vocal minority of the population that thinks their way of doing things (in this case it's means of transit that we're arguing over) is best and wanting government to prioritize it (at the expense of others, resources are not infinite).
Actually that's not what is happening. In America, what is usually is happening is the vocal majority (people who drive, and only drive) insisting that driving stay hyper-dominant -- that it continue to receive the vast majority of land and money. You're right that they don't care about other modes, though.
On the other side, people with more urbanist leanings like myself usually want a more balanced set of options: for walking, biking, driving, and transit to each be viable. This is often considered "social engineering" by the "cars cars cars, everywhere all the time" crowd.
There are a lot of parallels between cars and being white or male in terms of privilege. Driving is the default, and those who only drive don't really have to think about people who are reliant on walking or biking or transit, and the issues they face. That the system is oriented to support them in particular seems to them to just be The Natural State of Things, such that they don't even notice how much advantage they have. And those who are treated as second or third class are generally much better informed on the issues for that domain, because they have to be.
Example: sometimes, in the bay area, I would be biking along, and a painted bike lane would suddenly end by turning into the sidewalk. And then maybe a few hundred feet later, it might pop up again. It's like if you were driving along, and suddenly the road just ended with no warning and you were expected to drive on train tracks for a little while until it started again. Nobody who drives would find this acceptable, but it's par for the course for biking.
Underutilized bike lanes is mostly an illusion. If a bicycle lane would be 100% utilized that would mean tens of thousands of people traveling each day. Probably equal to capacity of multiple car lanes.
Probably not that bad in NY but in the places i have lived i could go months without seeing someone on a particular bike lane that hugged the road for a few KMs
You can't make good bike infrastructure by simply painting a few bike lanes here and there that "hug the road for a few KMs". You need to look at a bigger picture and make bike-friendly connections between popular hotspots.
On top of this, there's apparently still a perception in the US that bikes are either for kids or purely for exercise, they're not really thought of as everyday transportation. Everyone with an interest in improving city traffic should come visit Amsterdam or Copenhagen. See how infrastructure with a primary focus on bicycles and public transit works, and which design decisions have helped shape city traffic.
An issue further compounding this is the insistence that bikes are completely the same as cars, and should follow the exact same rules. This leads to extremely dangerous lane changes and left turns, because cyclists are expected to use the car's left turn lanes. This danger can be easily mitigated by requiring cyclists to make hook turns[¤] instead. We do this in most European countries, and it's significantly safer for everyone involved.
a) the bike lanes/street design make it still dangerous to bike there ("door zone" bike lanes are particularly notorious for this), and
b) usually the overall bike lane network is heavily fragmented, with bike lanes suddenly ending and starting with no apparent rhyme or reason. "It's safe to bike for a good 50% of this trip" doesn't exactly fill people with confidence.
It is difficult to state just how bad bike infrastructure is in the US; really, it's quite bad in almost all countries.
/sarcasm> actually, I guess the scooters are fine, it's just the people paying $/15min feel entitled to do whatever, and there are no consequences. I've got more respect for those modding them into free rides and I don't live in Manhattan.
As a frequent pedestrian (no bike, no scooter, just a pair of sneakers and an overweight gut) in a decent-sized city, I have this exact same sentiment about vehicle drivers. I'd even write the sentence:
"It's just the people paying $/month/car payment feel entitled to do whatever, and there are no consequences."
I'm almost run over crossing at legal crosswalks with the light indicating I can go, all across the city at least twice per week. "Dockless cars" are left in crosswalks, across sidewalks, in intersections when they don't have the light, and drivers disregard stop signs and red lights and yield signs on an almost daily basis.
I think the problem is less the mode of transportation than the mentality of the person operating that equipment.
Regardless, I've noticed a lot more hostility towards people who are riding bicycles and electric scooters than I ever hear against people who are piloting two ton bricks of smash-me-into-anchovy-paste steel in an unsafe manner.