Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
futureengine.org
futureengine.org
What these scooters have done for SM-Venice is, they’ve gotten people to park farther away and spend less time in cars. Especially the tourists. What does that mean for locals? Well, for one, it means that the nuisance of having to drive slow past people on these things, rather than the nightmare of sitting in standstill traffic if all of those people were in cars instead. Summer traffic in Venice was definitely helped by the scooters, as they replaced a bit of car traffic. These “short haul mobility vehicles” make it much easier for larger groups of people to engage in a large, spread-out, mostly-pedestrian area.
They’re completely dorky and I’ll never be caught dead on one... but, at the same time, there’s serious benefits to us all that these things exist. There’s definitely problems (not sure how I feel about seeing them in piles outside of public schools, such as Venice High, and there’s something very Idiocracy-esque in watching them being used by people who would benefit from walking), but I find it to be an overall net-positive.
I’m interested to see where the next form factors go, and how these things factor into future urban planning decisions. Especially within geofenced environments where you don’t have to pay for them, they just exist. There’s a lot to ponder here.
I think the scooters are riskier in some ways. My experience is with bikes you can easily take one hand off the bike to signal a turn - what your traffic intention is. But with the scooters, it's not really possible to take your hands off the handlebars (you lose control!), and there is currently no blinker control to indicate your traffic intention. I wanted to take a left-turn on a scooter recently and this was an issue. I got honked-at.
I think they should add blinker light controls to the handlebars.
Kids treat them like shit but what is there to do?
So now there’s this sort of quandary I have as a parent: do I tell my kids and or other kids to not play on these scooters? And to take care of them? Where should I draw the line?
I don’t see them in poor areas of town, so it’s like they exist in large part as an almost “parasite” on the good will of nice communities where they won’t be stolen or chopped up for parts. They’re here to make money for a private company.
In a public park or at the public library it’s easy to say: “this is here for our community, by our community, you need to take care of it because we’re all in this together.”
These scooters (despite their benefit) are ultimately taking money out of the community (if they’re profitable) and they’re budgeting for loss and damage, so why not let the kids play on them and damage them?
This is pretty much the same argument as people who litter at ball games and then say "The cleaning crew will pick it up. That's their job."
I think that's a good analogy, but it's not quite right imo. The important factor for me is that, in this specific case the distributor (or whoever is putting them out) is placing them directly in front of a school.
Potential consumers of the service are socially expected to do work to maintain something they didn't put there or ask for and it's being purposefully placed in more naturally risky location. Or they're being placed in a way that's not very nice to others (blocking sidewalks or bike racks).
In the ball game scenario the consumer has chosen to get popcorn, made a mess (either purposefully or accidentally) and then chosen to leave it for others to take care of. So the consumer is being personally irresponsible.
My interpretation is that the scooter companies are being personally irresponsible, but then sort of making it look/feel like the potential consumers are being irresponsible?
You put your backpack in the main walkway of the airport. I tripped over it. Things spilled out of the backpack. Should I feel bad and try and pick up those things? Does that answer change if I see you doing the same thing every single Wednesday when I fly out?
By the way, would you mind photographing the situation here? I think I might change my mind based on how much space these things are taking. My experience in SF is that people go out of their way to have them be in their way. But I may be judging you unfairly to be doing the same.
If there's lots of room, I feel the same about the scooter as I do about the hot dog man.
So, ultimately, it will be to the detriment of anyone who wants to use the scooters. If your kids don't know anyone who uses them or even see them getting used ever, it may not be a very compelling argument.
Any business is predicated on a win-win proposition. Lime / Bird provides the capital, maintenance and network that maintains the scooters, and the people that use them pay the cost of their usage. The money they "take out of the community" is likely outweighed by the positive externalities brought to the community:
1. Traffic is lessened.
2. Jobs are provided to community members to pick them up and charge them.
3. Businesses make more money / pay more sales taxes from higher foot traffic.
4. Community members have a pleasant scooting experience readily available to them on demand.
Of course, scooters also have negative externalities:
1. They are not useful for people with disabilities, and can actively prevent people with disabilities from participating in public spaces when people park the scooters like assholes.
2. People will hurt themselves using the scooters.
3. Piles of dead scooters are aesthetically unappealing.
But these must be weighed against the benefits.
For half a second I had this vision of Lime jet-skis piling up and blocking the canals of Venice, Italy.
Incidentally, I was in Venice Beach a few weeks ago, and I too witnessed that the scooters are very popular down there, and becoming enough of a fixture that you hear things shouted on the street like "hey, that's my Lime" when someone breaches etiquette and takes a scooter that someone else has just parked and intends to use again right away.
Sorry for asking, but are you thirteen?
I've also gotten used to not hear (or make) such comments in my adult life, contrary to the school years, where it was a norm of communication, unfortunately.
A lot of people do. Looking at something and saying "I don't think I would do that because it would be very embarrassing" is a thing adults can do.
And its exactly a moment when one should stop for a second and ask him/herself a question "why would I feel so"?
Wearing glasses, reading books, dyeing hair with some tint, preferring pieces of clothing of some fashion or other, riding a personal vehicle that is supposedly beneficial for ecology (at least at the level of common knowledge) AND evidently improving quality of urban life - all of that shouldn't be embarrassing, or "completely" "socially inept"[1]. Wearing dirty clothes when you have the means not to or not looking after your hygiene should (and I can't really recall anything else at a moment's notice).
I agree it's weird but clearly as we see for cars, choice of vehicle is also driven by style preferences. E.g most people wouldn't buy a pink car with green polka dots.
They certainly can. Calling something with a particular epithet means it bears this particular quality, which is not subjective. The opinion is, but the characterization is not.
At least for me, there was a clear before and after moment, where you suddenly saw far more people on your block in Venice riding around drunk on scooters all the time, where as before, you hardly saw anyone.
This said, I use them all the time, Venice is a bitch to find parking in, and the neighborhood is just spread out enough where you need a vehicle to get around. Before it would've been a huge pain to grab breakfast at Gusta, head into ocean park for some shopping and then head on down to Washington to spend some time near the pier all before noon.
Now that it's gotten colder, I think my range for using them will contract to something like 2-8 blocks, but I don't think I'll cut off using them entirely. I don't notice them being "piled up" anywhere (except for at a street festival, but lots of people were picking them up too), and I don't think I've ever run into a situation where my path was actively blocked by one.
Baltimore used to have a bike share, but I've heard it's being shut down and even when it was up they had a hard time keeping bikes in all the stalls.
Looks like Maryland uses a significant amount of coal to power their grid, so is this even a good thing?
It's why electric cars are viewed as being friendly; the grid they're plugged into may still be fossil fuels, but that can change at any time. A gasoline powered car won't change its reliance on fossil fuels until you replace it.
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/5764...
Coal power plants operate in the range of 34% efficiency
Not that that would be a reason not to use scooters in and off itself, since they're be posed to take advantage of grids that will hopefully become more and more renewable over time
It would be interesting to calculate the MPG of these, including the overnight recharging and repositioning done inside a van.
1. Scooters use far less energy than larger vehicles.
2. Generating energy from fossil fuels can be done more efficiently at a power plant than in a small engine.
3. When power generation is centralized, it is easier to substitute it for better, more efficient forms in the future.
Also, the argument you're making here is called "the long tailpipe" and has been debunked – it's still a win even if the grid has dirty energy because of efficiency gains.
Sorry if these are stupid questions, but isn't this a problem with Bird? I see random birds all over the place. Can someone explain why bikes can't be left around randomly like a bird can?
Also there are dockless bikes, see Jump in SF.
As for why a non-powered bike couldn’t just be left around, here are a few thoughts:
- As some people have mentioned, bikes are just bigger, and take up way more sidewalk space. If Bird and Lime have gotten unpopular, a “Bird for Bikes” would probably make people livid.
- Honestly, the fact that Birds and Limes come with Anti-theft mechanisms and GPS transponders (which run on the same battery as the motor I think) makes them a bit harder to steal (and there aren’t easily removable parts or a viable black market for selling them). Even a non-powered bike would need a charge every once in a while if it relied on power for its transponder.
- I think the “we supply’em, you pay us to ride’em, we pay people to charge’em” business model is just a straight up new thing that happened to be first successfully done by a scooter startup. I imagine it would be hard for a person in a minivan to pick up tons of bikes for charging without having to remove their minivan’s seats. Again, scooters being small is a big advantage, which is probably also why bigger “sit down” vespa-style scooter startups don’t seem to be a factor right now.
The hub idea isn't feasible unless tons of people are already riding birds and creating a mess everywhere, because people probably wouldn't sign up as hub owners unless the demand was already deemed high. They are probably just ramping up usage right now until people start complaining, at which point Bird will be big enough to start issuing out hubs.
This improves on docks in that the "dock" can just be a geofence with a few lines painted on the ground, whereas traditional docks are very sturdy and hence expensive.
This improves on dockless in that it's a more reliable place to pick up bikes, and still gives you the freedom of leaving your bike in other places.
Also, I wasn't aware South Lake Tahoe has scooters!
Will convenience ever win out for you?
This is a serious question.
I’m interested by this as every time I have tried to browse with NoScript it has indeed been completely horrific.
One recent example where I packed it in and just used Safari instead was buying a flight - I've found airline websites to be finicky at the best of times and the added layer of non-standard browsing was immediately painful. Other than that, it's been worthwhile; I recommend giving it another try!
I always wonder why these kind of folks even bother to visit sites like this at all? Isn't this a tech focused site? Why are you here if you hate advancements in technology so much?
It reminds me of all the bitter old curmudgeons on Slashdot back in the day. Every post about advancements in HDD storage or more memory had at least a few highly voted comments droning on about the dangers of bloat and why all anybody really needs is green screens. Articles on higher resolution monitors, or fancier TV's would always have a couple predictable upvoted comments wondering "why do we need all this extra resolution?"
These kinds of comments really don't add anything to a discussion. They just bring a lot of negative energy. For some reason people always seem to upvote them--probably because they sound edgy or controversial. I just roll my eyes at the old grumps and move on with my life.
The big danger is the site gets taken over by these kinds of grumpy people. Then the site starts a slow decline into irrelevance as the world passes it and all the people still using it by....
I appreciate him entertaining my questions and giving a sincere response.
A lot of the stuff here is cool open source projects and even the stuff like this thread is still worth talking about even if I wouldn't use the product myself. No point reading only posts and comments I agree with.
Also even though I would never use this product for privacy reasons, I personally benefit from other people using it when the air I breathe doesn't kill me and I don't fear for my life while crossing a road.
I'm 22 and privacy-conscious. I also love tech, but I really enjoy my personal privacy and knowing that I'm not being surveiled all the time. I am also a FSF supporter and try to run libre code wherever possible.
Convince me: why should I give up my privacy to use products that will inevitably treat my data irresponsibly?
An obvious solution is just to use bogus data: name, email, dob, address, burner phone.
Only thing you can't fake is your credit card but I'm sure a lot of companies do actually accept payments where the name of the card differs from the name on the account.
If you buy your cards in cash, they're about as private as the security cameras are in whichever convenience store you pay for them in.
Based on what we know about Target's shopper surveillance and behavioral identification efforts being capable of targeting pregnant women with pregnancy products, who didn't even know they were pregnant yet, themselves, even seemingly benign store locations can be pretty lacking in actual privacy.
Between electronic survellance of mobile device identifiers, blue tooth signatures, free wi-fi usage, versus brute force video analysis yeilding facial recognition results for targeted ads on flatscreen monitors as you pass by bus stops, the status of tracking in public spaces is weird, although you really can ditch credit card tracking.
The only problem is, the truly huge companies have assuredly been routing around that idea for years, by diversifying their information channels.
Hating the abuse of something isn't hating that thing, and
> I just roll my eyes at the old grumps and move on with my life.
going to such lengths to smear someone indirectly and calling isn't moving on with your life. Adapting to "the world" (which is people doing things, and you're one of them) isn't either.
> when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
-- Carl Sagan
Without the laughter of fools, there is no tao.
If you don't feel strongly about this then thats ok but I think we are all better off that there are people who put the effort in to make society better even if it means personal inconvenience.
If I need them, I use their web interface. If that is shitty, it makes me use them less, which is a desired outcome.
Although, I admit I read too much HN than I'd like to spend time everyday because it feels like time spent on HN is some form of learning.
My smartphone went bonkers and now only shows half of the screen, which makes it less than smart.
I replaced it with a Nokia 8110 (the 4G model) and so far it's an intersting experience.
While it might be a smidgeon less convenient it's far less attractive to immerse yourself into your phone while, for example, using public transport. The browser is fine for very basic things and you can get basic email to run. But in terms of distraction Snake can only give you so much.
In essence I seem to gain a lot of time to observe my fellow citizens, read books or just stare out of the window and think some idle thoughts. In short: It seems I'm gaining a lot of time back by not being constantly distracted by what is essentially a slot machine with never ending possibilities.
I'm sure it helps that I don't do social media. None!
The phone provides a 4G hot spot in case I really need to connect a laptop if I must. Having dual sims it seems like quite an ideal thing to take on vacation. (It does GPS and Google Maps)
How well will this work? I don't know yet. Right now I'm really not inclined to replace it, but time will tell.
Is it exhausting?
Well, no. Quite the opposite since there's no temptation for permanent distraction.
Will convenience ever win out for you?
I really don't feel too much inconvenienced. The acid test will probably checking in for flights (which should work with the minimal browser) or comparable tasks. Not being able to hire a scooter or use an Uber (which I anyway don't since I consider it a totally despicable company and there's no way I would ever trust them with my personal -, let alone location data) is pretty much a non-issue.
So yeah, I tried to give you a serious answer.
The only thing that gets tiresome is the realization that every company is trying to exhaust you. That the goal itself, is indeed, to wear you down.
Once you realize that's the name of the game, you fight it differently.
For things like this, you just need to sign up and put in a little bit of info, but now you have to install and app that may or may not be hugely bloated, require permissions you it doesn't need, push updates frequently, etc.
So all info you withhold from them is the few meters walk from where you ordered to where you got picked up.
Not just a company, the current state of things is every private company database will be hacked and leaked and available to the general public.
Treat all data you give to someone else as public data now and use fake info where ever possible.
I suppose what it comes down to is that we pour huge amounts of information into our phones and by extension, companies that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart, and any steps I can take to ameliorate that without a huge trade-off of inconvenience, I am all about doing. I don't know what my data will be worth in a few years!
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16219542/uber-location-tr...
Can you do this?? Thanks, I had no idea!
Lyft has https://ride.lyft.com
Still have to verify your account through phone
I feel like this is a bit of misleading marketing since a ton of fossil fuel is used to round them up and distribute them around town every day.
(TPU/C)(TE/CE) = Carbon Efficiency of using Lime/Bird
I’ll admit that I don’t know all the numbers to plug in here (being HN, maybe someone else does) but given that even dirty power plants have better fuel efficiency than ICEs and that chargers don’t need to drive super far to find a ton of scooters my money is on this being better than driving, carbon-wise.
Even if a vehicle is used, it is nowhere near the fuel consumed by all the scooter trips combined. It collects multiple and is only after several days per scooter.
Given that I perceive fossil fuel savings, I feel it’s worth it to check and try to lean towards this method of transport.
I personally love these scooters. I'm living in Australia now where we don't have them. But last month I took a 3 week road trip from LAX to DC and back so I could hit cities I hadn't been to before. And in many of these cities, I used a Bird to get around. These scooters opened up so much more of these cities for me than I could have seen if I just walked every where.
I think they provide real value to a city, for tourists to get around, and for citizens for the last mile and to complement other forms of transport. We just need for these scooter companies to be less like Uber and actually work with the cities to come up with reasonable regulations (in particular insisting on all riders wearing helmets)
In a lot of places in West Los Angeles, you are having to step around them constantly if you walk down the street. People literally just drop them in the middle of the sidewalk, because there is no incentive for them to not do that.
This means that everyone who doesn't use the service has to suffer.
We have NONE of this for scooters.
We need these same rules for scooters that we have for cars.
Obviously the rules are going to be different because the vehicles are different and are used differently, but the rules will still have the same basic form: you are allowed to park in these areas, for this amount of time, for this much money.
Instead the scooter companies should charge for not leaving the scooter in a proper parking spot.
If it's a shared resource like a Bird scooter then there's no moral quandary about "touching other people's stuff" that would make sense for an actual person's property.
The company doesn't care, there's no-one that even can care.
For me, extremely dangerous means high risk of death or grievous body harm. Something like 100 micromorts per exposure. I want to ensure I'm not underrating this.
Yes, I call this extremely dangerous, because death could result.
Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Yes.
A few years ago a 20 something year old girl was walking in SF and was hit by a bicycle, knocked to the ground and hit her head. She died at the scene. (She was in the crosswalk and the rider was charged with something, I forget.) So, it does happen.
If I don't want the risk for skydiving, I won't do it. I won't, btw.
Base jumping? No thanks.
Walking 1+ hour/day on sidewalks: I've told you I've had 10+ close calls. There is nothing I can do to mitigate this risk.
I see what you're trying to do, but you're coming off a little dickish.
More unsafe than walking. Is walking down the street with these vehicles around you less safe than running a marathon? Or around taking a road-trip across America? Or back-country camping?
Any meeting point here will do.
My risk of harm while walking to/from work increased orders of magnitude, through no change in my own behavior.
I'm starting to feel like I'm being trolled, because I think you know exactly what I just said.
Take two parking spots in each block. Put beacons on the corners or some kind of signaling tape around the whole thing. Only let users drop off rides inside that spot. Bonus points for having non-locking racks to help organize.
People get to litter their car on the side of my road, often in the bike lane for free and everyone walks around like it's okay. It's not. Neither are the scooters on the sidewalk. We know how to solve both problems. Parking spots for dockless transit and banning cars from transit and pedestrian rich neighborhoods.
[edit] I removed a line saying I was annoyed that people kept complaining the scooter parking situation. Those complaints point out a very real problem with scooter deployments and that we have a solution for it that is difficult to get passed doesn't make the complaint less valid.
We need the parking laws for scooters.
In fact, I would argue that part of the negotiation that cities ought to do with Bird and Lime and others like it is to make any deploy conditional on the passage of and adherence to scooter parking laws.
Cities should simply impound any scooter not properly parked and charge $200 to get it back. Since solving the parking problem is so easy, this will push Bird/Lime into finally solving it.
Fundamentally the problem is that car-owners currently receive an enormous subsidy in the form of cheap or free street parking and they jealously guard that privilege, even in supposedly progressive cities like San Francisco.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geary_Bus_Rapid_Transit [1] https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/dude-where-s-my-bi...
Whenever there is talk of changes to street parking, businesses are outraged at the removal of convenience for their customers. (In most cases, I think they're actually upset at the loss of convenience for their own parking.)
People who park cars believe in an inherent first claim to all roadside space above other users and they are extremely aggressive in their resistance to even the slightest loss.
Would you care to list any city and meeting date in which you have observed this? I'd like to pull the tape and see.
That's true, but then said cities would lose the prestige of being a part of Silicon Valley innovation.
You and I have very different definitions of "large." I'd call this "very minor."
It also depends on the comparison group. I mean, look at these astounding photos of mammoth, abandoned dockless vehicles: https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture....
Cities will, over time, reallocate a small amount of the space currently devoted to very large dockless vehicles to small dockless vehicles and thus solve the problem.
The cars are parked in designated spots on the road, with all sorts of rules about how long and how much you have to pay for the spot. In Santa Monica, pretty much every available parking spot has a meter that means you have to pay to park there, and are limited in how long you can park there.
Now, we can have all sorts of public policy debates about how much of a city's public space should be dedicated to parking spots, but at least the public had a say in the policy and at least there IS a policy.
We just need rules around where you can park the scooters and for how long, and how much you have to pay to use the public space to park your scooter.
The actual basis of your complaint is that you like parking, but you don't like scooters being put wherever.
I think it is a bit unfair to say we have democratically decided to let scooters park everywhere simply by the fact that we haven't yet passed any laws about where they can park; the law is slow to move, and the scooter parking issue is pretty new. Before Bird and Lime, there were not enough scooters around to be a big enough problem where we needed a law. Now we do, but the law is slow to change.
In the mean time, it is pretty annoying.
Dumping private property on public lands, and expecting the citizens to respect what amounts to abandoned property is absurd.
This is a level 100 class of "Tragedy of the commons". And with enough scooters, the very act of going somewhere on a scooter will be blocked by corporate trash.... Err, limes and birds.
Besides, dumping private property on public land is what parking cars is. I'm comfortable outlawing this if we outlaw all street parking as well.
This is disingenuous. It ignores all the externalities of car friendly cities that you're taking for granted. Busy streets are wider with more lanes, crosswalks are more inconvenient and take longer to cross. Half of the width of narrow streets is dominated by parking, not to mention all of the unsightly lots and parking garages.
Scooters don't cost millions/billions in real estate for parking. They can't use and don't require expensive freeway onramps. They don't cause massive congestion and the corresponding drop in local air quality. All in all I think if you want to compare externalities, scooters win by far over cars, and it's not even close.
Also: it's a fun exercise to go back in time and look at all the laws sponsored by automotive & oil companies to create today's car culture (case in point: streetcars). I assure you: there was a lot of protectionism & it wasn't always about the consumer.
It's an entirely new mode of transportation; there are lots of fun things to try as we refactor our world. That's what startups do.
Freedom is complicated when you don't live in a silo.
As for helmet laws, they have unintended consequences, such as fewer people riding bikes. Resulting in more cars/pollution and less exercise, less healthy population.
A car driver has insurance to some level--a bicyclist or scooter user probably doesn't.
The issue is that in the US, we don't have universal healthcare which would make this discussion moot.
I'm not convinced. By that logic, we should also ban unhealthy foods, limit how many calories each person can eat, and mandate them to exercise for n hours per week. I'm sure that some of those will have a higher ROI than putting on helmets.
>In death (lack of taxes)
so we should ban emigration then? it has the exact same effects from a tax perspective.
In countries where there's public healthcare, the burden of it on the public purse is a very real consideration where trade-offs must be made in varying ways. One of these ways is to tax things that contribute to higher loads on the spending of those public policies. Australia's tobacco laws are a key example of this.
To make it worse, people who don't wear a helmet aren't the best riders either and thus more likely to be involved in an accident.
Society shouldn't have to spend any money on medical bills stemming from not wearing proper protection while riding any vehicle and injuries are usually very serious. Not sure how it works in the US but here in the EU society does basically cover those bills.
Here’s an example that Santa Monica is trying: https://www.10news.com/news/santa-monica-creates-parking-spa...
The issue for me is the co-opting of public space for private enterprise in the least considerate way possible. People leave these scooters like litter in parks, sidewalks, and lakes.
You could object that this is an overly precious perspective, but I would counter that similar startups (ZipCar most notably) have solved this by contemplating the logistical implications from the get go.
I personally would not object the assigning some percentage of parking spots in neighborhoods as designated parking for shares, and would hope such a contract will emerge.
I certainly understand the dockless advantage here, but the result for those of us who don't use them is garbage some random company feels entitled to clutter up the sidewalks with.
Especially "the result for those of us who don't use them is garbage some random company(and individuals) feels entitled to clutter up the sidewalks(streets) with".
Also, what does private enterprises have to do with any of this? If anything I think there's a stronger argument the other way. Things that are owned by and only benefit a single person (e.g. driving my car and then leaving it parked on the street all day) is a worse use of space than things that are useful to many people (e.g. a Zipcar that gets frequent use, or, yes, scooters).
I hope you can recognize that your stated arguments here are not very honest, and that what you're actually saying is "I like privately owned cars so I want cities to prioritize them over other modes of transportation like scooters".
For thousands of years it was normal for children to play in the street, for people to stop and converse, etc.
Then drivers turned up, said "move or I will kill you", and weirdly we decided the streets were for cars. It grates when people say that people walking have any less right to stand in the middle of the street because they're not wearing a car.
This was the result of a concerted PR campaign. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention-jay...
Do the people look out of place here? http://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/c/c/3/a/cc3a56fafeaa6119/S...
Perhaps we should take some space from cars (really, from people who happen to be in cars) and give it back to people.
I have a lot of problems with a) companies seizing arbitrary amounts of public space for private businesses, b) venture-funded litter cluttering the streets, and c) novice scooter riders with no training turned loose on sidewalks I am trying to walk and not die on.
And I also have a lot of left-over ire for scofflaw companies. Yes, Uber got away with it. But no, would-be titans, that's not permission for you guys. It was a one-time trick.
It's pretty clear that there is a growing demand for ways to get around other than driving yourself. Lyft and Uber are great for covering distances, but have their issues. In busy metro areas it can often be quicker to walk than it is to drive if you're only going a mile and traffic is bad. On the flip side, in more suburban areas the nearest Uber or Lyft can often be 10+ minutes away.
These bikes and scooters fill that "too long to walk, too short to Lyft" gap perfectly as well as being a great for getting from a public transit stop to a destination.
I don't think they have all the kinks worked out yet. I often see them left in stupid places and there are safety issues for sure, but I really do think they are a step in the right direction.
With these scooters, you can take public transportation (keep in mind some systems don't allow bikes on their transit systems) to somewhere, then solve the last mile problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)
Not to mention $200+ to own a bike may not seem like a lot to you, but could be a lot to someone with low income. The capex cost can be prohibitive.
Compared to a car, it's very cheap.
Flat tires... hmm: I average about one a year, maybe. It's not the biggest deal.
Are flat tires really that big of a barrier to entry?
Perhaps we should differentiate here between bike ownership and these bike/scooter share approaches. Scooters also have flat tires.
Compare ownership to a shared scooter or bike service, where these costs are in effect shared amongst everyone. If your scooter breaks down, you can leave it and seek other forms of transportation.
That leaves parking, acknowledged and your risk of having the bike stolen is totally dependent upon where you are and what facilities are provided. Many work places are seeing the benefit of fit staff and are providing bike cages in the corporate carpark. Same with shower facilities so you dont stink the office out.
There are many excuses you can use against bike use, but most of them boil down to it being something you are not used to doing and to do it you need to change your habbits.
And as someone else mentioned, flat tires are a pain, checking/maintaining brakes are a pain...I can afford to have someone else do it, but that's still way more of a hassle than just booping a bike on the sidewalk.
Hang it from a hook.
And as someone else mentioned, flat tires are a pain, checking/maintaining brakes are a pain...I can afford to have someone else do it, but that's still way more of a hassle than just booping a bike on the sidewalk.
Squeeze the tire to see if it's holding air, squeeze the brake lever to see if it's stopping the wheel, then go! Not too difficult. Flat tires aren't too common these days. Wheels can be tubeless these days, even.
- I live in a 570ft studio so storage space is limited. We have bike storage in my building, but it's $15 a month.
- If I go somewhere and bring the bike with me, I have to bring it back. If it starts raining, I can't just choose to leave the bike and take an Uber home.
- If I'm on a bike and I meet up with people that aren't, coordinating travel is a huge pain in the ass.
- I travel a lot and have been in 4 major cities this week. Having a bike at home helps there, but doesn't solve any problems in the other cities. Sharing services are great for visitors.
- Living in a major city, bike theft is a huge problem. By using shared bikes, I don't have to worry about that.
- On top of it all, Lime/Bird is just cheaper. I really only use one once every week or two. I've probably spent less that $30 this year on Lime/Bird. Even if I got a bike for free and it never needed any maintenance a decent U lock would cost more than that.
So yeah, I could own a bike, but these are more convenient and cheaper, so why would I?
- I live in a 570ft studio so storage space is limited. We have bike storage in my building, but it's $15 a month.
Hang the bike up with a hook.
- If I go somewhere and bring the bike with me, I have to bring it back. If it starts raining, I can't just choose to leave the bike and take an Uber home.
They make clothes specifically to be worn in the rain. Getting a little wet won't hurt ya.
- I travel a lot and have been in 4 major cities this week. Having a bike at home helps there, but doesn't solve any problems in the other cities. Sharing services are great for visitors.
That, I agree! Goodness, that's a lot of traveling.
- Living in a major city, bike theft is a huge problem. By using shared bikes, I don't have to worry about that.
I must be lucky, because I've never had a bike stolen.
- On top of it all, Lime/Bird is just cheaper. I really only use one once every week or two. I've probably spent less that $30 this year on Lime/Bird. Even if I got a bike for free and it never needed any maintenance a decent U lock would cost more than that.
I guess I see the costs saving are from not owning a car. Haha, and I guess, not really needed a gym membership!
My original plan was a mix of walking and the bus, but now it's more walking and transportation sharing services (Uber/Lyft, Car2Go, and Lime).
Also, I'd like to give a rebuttal to a few of your answers.
> Hang the bike up with a hook.
I'm not saying I can't do that, but it would definitely be inconvenient. A mix of small elevators, an odd apartment layout (only one wall we could put a hook on), and a girlfriend who is picky about the decorations in our apartment makes that idea less than ideal.
> They make clothes specifically to be worn in the rain. Getting a little wet won't hurt ya.
You are right, but you still run into the issue of needing to plan ahead. If I leave my house on bike and it's sunny but it starts to rain later I'm going to get soaked. As you said, that won't kill me, but if I'm going from a bar to a party at a friends house, it would suck to show up soaked. Having the option to go from point A to B on bike and then B to C in a Lyft is a nice option to have.
> That, I agree! Goodness, that's a lot of traveling.
Hahaha agree with you there, I'm exhausted. This isn't my norm though, just had a friends birthday, a family event, and work travel happen to be back to back to back.
Just to kind of wrap my point up, I'm not trying to petition against people owning bikes. There are a lot of people who it makes sense for and if Bird/Lime weren't a thing, I would probably be one of them.
If I had no other options, I could definitely make it work, but for me, it's more convenient and less expensive to rent one when I need it.
I feel safer on one of these too; the acceleration can be handy in emergency situations where you'd otherwise be barely up to speed on a bike, in the wrong gear, etc.
Walking a mile or two is easy, healthy and does not take very long.
Personally, I usually wear a helmet, but if I happen to not have mine with me it won't stop me from taking a bike or scooter.
Having good situational awareness of surrounding cars, pedestrians, and other road users as well as stationary obstacles ahead of you provides much more safety than a helmet.
Here's a good look at that for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWhMEkMtLy0
I saw one pulled out of the Brisbane River the other day too.
Amusingly, they're forbidden from using all roadways including the green bicycle paths on the sides of roads. They must be ridden on the footpath, or on dedicated bikeways that aren't on roads. I don't understand why this is the case.
The helmet thing is currently tackled by having a helmet on each scooter. I haven't seen any go missing yet but I've also not ridden one myself, though I both live and work inside the proximity for using them.
People I've talked to who've used them have found them fun and convenient. Friends have used them to get to work faster than walking when running late. Others have gone out on the weekend to just sight-see and enjoy the weather, which I think is a positive change vs. sitting inside. I think they're a net positive, but there's some downsides that I think can be addressed.
edit: For additional context, we have a bike share system in Brisbane too (called CityCycle) which is tied to our transit card system. I see it getting some use, but it seems like the scooters are far more popular (at least right now). With our CityCycle system, you pay a ongoing membership fee ($5/mo) plus usage fees (after the first 30 minutes), though there's also a day pass ($2/day) rather than ongoing membership. This makes it a bit harder to start using or sporadically use compared to the scooters. Additionally, you have to return them to dedicated rack locations rather than just park them anywhere. Lastly, they're somehow more dorky than a lime-green scooter, given that they have bright yellow plastic and ads on them.
I wanted to like them when I was visiting from Europe to STL but I couldn't:
- They require a helmet. I don't have a helmet and I'm not gonna buy one for a 5 day trip. Most people do not wear helmets but if police stops me I can hardly point at other people disobeying the same rule. - They require a drivers license. I last drove a car half a decade ago or so so I tend to use my driver's license at home, especially on trips abroad. - Using the scooters on streets in STL feels a bit scary. I commute to work by bike every day but we have cycle lanes and drivers who are used to seeing cyclists everywhere so it is a rather safe environment.
Fast forward a few years and the program is a huge success here in NYC, there was some accidents but no where near what I thought there would be. People obviously love Biking and I was completely wrong.
What’s even crazier now I think with the technology and access becoming even easier this has the power to completely transform cities. Obviously people love this and politicians that don’t support it will be voted out, it’s looking more and more like there could be entire roads dedicated to bikes and scooters as this becomes more popular.
Mayor Bloomberg wanted to limit the amount of cars in the city and put a toll on any any cars going below 95th street in Manhattan, people rebelled back then but if something like this had been in place the Cabbies and Car owners would be out of luck.
Also worth noting, none of the technology is itself "new", but rather bird & lime particularly have packaged existing technologies together to make a product with all the qualities mentioned above. Innovation is usually just a twist on something that's already out there.
I love these scooters BTW, super convenient!
Disruptive pioneer is not necessarily good investment even if the base idea is solid.
In the Dot-com bubble (1995-2000) many companies with good ideas eventually failed. There were several online book retailers, web search companies and online shopping sites, even online food delivery services. They were highly valued, but most of them went bankrupt. Amazon two Google survived (It took over decade for Amazon's stock valuation to recover).
We have now transportation boom. When the boom goes bust and regression hits, most run out of money and go bankrupt.
Softbank isn't like a traditional VC. They structured their fund like private equity where they retain a percentage of returns above x% per year. In addition to this, they take a 1% management fee regardless of returns.
For most VC's, you'd expect the carry to represent the majority of incentive. But, Softbank is unique in that their fund is $100bn. They take home a hefty $1b in management fees regardless of how their portfolio performs.
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they make 'safe' bets for the sake of boosting their allocation numbers, even if they think there's a nil chance of 3x EV.
Perhaps Softbank funds the next rounds, but GV and Sequoia are still going to be looking for a much bigger exit than 1x.
I think they look kind of dorky, and some end up on the sidewalk and dumped in Lake Merritt. On the other hand, it appears that people are using these scooters a lot, possibly instead of driving. That seems like a positive outcome to me.
It would be good if more safety concerns were met though - I do think mandating helmet usage is a good thing.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/23/17882996/teens-electric-s...
I could see using them when traveling, where I wouldn't have my bike with me.
Some EU countries have already announced that scooters will soon be treated similarly to e-bikes, i.e. max 250W and 25km/h for the ones that don't need registration and plates.
While more expensive and less portable, a bike is a lot safer and more versatile.
I think only familiarity leads people to think that bikes are safer than scooters. Given a choice between an electric bicycle and an electric scooter, now that I've ridden both, give me the scooter any day.
Ive had plenty of flat tires on scooters. In fact I had two in one day resulting in me finishing my commute to work in the rain. It was great.
I think they should add blinker light controls to the handlebars.
I think many Americans have a higher expectations for safety than many people in China. No way I am packing my kid onto a scooter and driving them around downtown.
I.e. to me, the problem is the US mentality towards car-minded transportation infrastructure, not the expectation of safety in a given culture.
For example, deaths per 100k cars per year in China is 105. In Europe it is 19. In Western Europe it's about 7.
With that disclosure, was anyone else horrified that the lifespan of these scooters is only 3 months?
Are they really removing enough vehicle trips to make these a net positive from an environmental standpoint?
Where else would they drive them? On the road? They would just contribute to the thousands of cyclists that die or are seriously injured every year.
If you are suggesting that every electric vehicle be banned because sidewalks are for pedestrians only then I disagree. Streets are for cars only, don't let these fake bike lanes fool you.
And to be clear 'bike lane' != road shoulder with a bike painted on it. A bike lane should have at least some amount of separation from the road in the same way that sidewalks are separated.
I'm hopeful that the popularity of scooters speeds up the adoption of medium speed lanes.
Also 15 mph is a sub 4:20 mile, and for most people will be pretty close to a flat out sprint. Not super adviseable on sidewalks either. Most joggers will be going half that speed.
walking, 3mph
running at an 9 min mile 6.5mph
Here's an FAQ from Cornell on this: http://www.bike.cornell.edu/pdfs/Sidewalk_biking_FAQ.pdf
In every scenario listed, a minority of motorist / cyclist accidents at intersections involved a cyclist on the sidewalk. Meaning that the majority of such accidents occurred where the cyclist was not on the sidewalk.
We actually don’t have enough info from that to say which is safer. If 99% of cyclists ride in the sidewalk, but the 1% who don’t make up more than half the accidents, I’d say riding on the sidewalk is far safer.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusion. I just don’t like the use of faux data to show a conclusion that feels right.
98% of kids with autism were vaccinated in the prior three years!
Being angry about a better alternative instead of the lack of infrastructure is just crotchety.
A bicycle (or a scooter) weighs a fraction of a car, so even if I replace it frequently, it uses much less raw materials per mile, especially if you include the fossil fuels consumed.
I never rode a bird, but I was sad when I saw the cops banning them from Venice beach in August. Hopefully the city will embrace the new technology and build enough (shared) infrastructure (bike lanes / sidewalks).
Also, are there planned improvements to the lifespan? These companies have been operating for a crazy short amount of time considering their growth...so hopefully they can improve this as they bring the scooter design in-house.
You might just be thinking it used to be that way because when a new company/product becomes successful, their brand name becomes the term for the thing.
Kleenex
Xerox
Asprin
Hoover
> Looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid coined the term xerography from two Greek roots meaning "dry writing".
"Aspirin" was named for the Spiraea ulmaria plant used in its synthesis.
"Borax" is sodium borate.
"Kleenex" helps keep your nose and face and surroundings clean.
Seriously, this city has convinced me democracy doesn't work. Maybe China should regime change us.
Edit: stingrae points lack of availability may be the City's fault, rather than Skip/Scoot. No sé -- but for sure the city's intervention took a useful, environmentally friendly transit option and made it non-useful.
But last time I tried:
Scooter coverage was too sparse to be useful.
If you did try to chase down one of the sparsely scattered scooters, usually it would be missing. No way to make it play a sound to help locate it, no way to report it was missing.
Gave up and just kept skating everywhere. Whereas I found Lime and Bird to be a practical alternative mode of transport, before they got kicked out.
Looks like it launched a couple weeks ago: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/bik...
1. Consistently Well Working Bikes can be hard to find
2. I often use these to get from the residential part of Seattle to the urban parts for date night... it can be very difficult to find two of these near each other.
3. They really need some sort of limited reservation system. This would help mitigate the difficulty of getting multiple bikes.
I suspect that statement isn't true. I see multiple drops a day on my street.
This is the average revenue, I am sure there are some that generate a lot less/barely any.
It's likely that there's a few that are much more highly utilized to balance out those that are not utilized at all.
When I spent a week in Denver they were being used everywhere as well.
But riding them in the street pisses off drivers and is pretty dangerous, at least that's how it shakes out in Cincinnati.
So, like cars?
The answer to this is better bicycle infrastructure, and I'm hopeful that scooter popularity helps accelerate this.
Pain in the ass, and the company, in typical Silicon Valley fashion, didn't have any information on their website about how to contact a real person or to report an abandoned scooter. If this is going to be a regular thing, where I have to be an impromptu scooter wrangler, I want my cut :)
Disclaimer: I work for Bird.
The wheels are way too small for some of the pot holes in cities.
If you search for news on scooter accidents you will see they are more likely with Limes. Why not Bird? Because Bird throttles the speed according to the current laws (15mph) while Limes go sometimes up to 20mph.
Disclaimer: I work for Bird.
Only a matter of time before these Lime and Bird sidewalk riders kill a pedestrian.
Otherwise we are sure to end up like China in these photos: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup...
For reference, American Airlines has market cap of $18 billion and 950 jet planes.
Companies are far too complicated to compare based on single numbers. Try not to make this mistake —- it’s great for clickbait, not so much for critical thinking.
Yes they do have debt. $44B of revenue. Still Lime and Bird valuations are insane.
That is given the following assumptions are correct:
-A vegan on a bicycle has a carbon footprint of 22g/km of CO2.
-The scooters are Xiaomi Mi electric scooters with a 330Wh(approx based on specs) battery of the type with the biggest CO2 footprint(250kg/kWh).
-Electricity comes exclusively from coal(1kg/kWh of CO2).
With these assumptions the break-even point is 7500km or 4700 miles - that's approx. one charge each workday.
Why would Uber buy either of these companies? Uber already has JUMP scooters. Can't they afford to create way more scooters than either Lime or Bird?
Sure, Uber isn't one of the two companies who are part of the scooter pilot in SF. Still, I doubt that justifies spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on buying a company.
I think we'll see prices come down 80%. These scooter companies will face more competition than uber and Lyft do because people are happy grabbing the first scooter they see when walking.
My personal scooter costs a third of a cent per mile of electricity + $350 to buy it. I'm at 150 miles so far, and could easily see this thing lasting a few thousand. So ~20 cents a mile.
For a time they were $300 on amazon. And then I also bought an external battery pack for cheap somewhere else.
Anything with a 4+ rating and enough reviews seems to go for ~800+, which is why I haven't purchased one yet.
loose handle bars.
They can only be ridden for 50 minutes before they need charged, which costs $20, which comes down to $0.40 a minute.
I don't see the unit cost economics, let alone how the prices could come down by 80%.
Its 12 cents to charge, and I imagine there will be city infrastructure added to accommodate charging on the streets. Pay someone a dollar to plug it in to the nearest streetlamp at the end of their ride.
Uber is on track to run out of money in 2019, so a financial event is inmminent. I don't know if we will see an Uber 2019 IPO, but if it doesn't happen is more likely due to the current bear market and not so much because they are considering a large acquisition.
If they acquire a scooter company I presume they will do it through a mix of debt and a heavy stock component. In fact it seems that they already raised another 2 billion through private placement bonds.
I love the bike share programs in Taiwan and China. I haven’t used a car in years. Yeah some people trash the bikes but most people at least seem to give a shit.
Why this is such an issue in the West, I can’t understand...
I walk out of my apartment, and the streets are littered with them. It's annoying when walking, it's even more annoying when jogging, and riders are constantly riding them (without helmets) on sidewalks even though we have bike lanes. They're even a nuisance when driving.
I'm hoping for some legislation that will ban them -- I might set up a grassroots campaign myself. It's mostly the tourists using them, anyway.
In all seriousness, they should have dedicated docking spots but even one parking spot per block would be more than enough and would solve the problem.
I've seen it in snapshots over the last 6 months
regarding your banning campaign, outgoing Governor Brown basically enshrined them into the California fabric just now
At least realize that they aren't so ridiculously overpopulated in other places -- it's probably the tourists that make it financially worth it to put out a deluge of them.
Go down Memorial or DeKalb heading east in the morning and you'll see rows and rows of them freshly set out ready to be kicked over like dominos by some jerk.
(I drive and use street parking. There are no scooters here, but I'd love to have them as part of the city's ecosystem in the future.)
[1] https://la.curbed.com/2018/9/21/17884220/bird-lime-scooters-...
If you stretch an argument to worry about public funds lost to medical bills or lawsuits, someone might respond that the more people we encourage to leave their cars at home, the better we are off when it comes to safety, pollution, congestion, noise, etc.
I walk out of my place and there are huge lines of cars parked against the kerb, I can hear car traffic constantly even from inside the building, it can be dangerous to cross the road, and so on. I've been to Santa Monica a few times and know that the same applies there. What gives you such a strong reaction to this new option that you might not apply to an existing technology?
With anything new there is a settling period. It makes for an interesting discussion (where to park them, etc) but you sound pretty outraged: cannot stand. littered. annoying. constantly riding them without helmets! nuisance. ban.
At the very least, people should actually get licensed to ride these things. I know that it requires they have a driver's license, but that doesn't mean they're actually trained to ride these scooters around in traffic. At that rate, why even bother having licenses for motorcycle riders? A regular driver's license and training for a regular car is apparently all they need.
I can imagine that VC's won't like articles like this and that may have a knock on effect of making cities better in the long term.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/09/24/e-scooter-deaths-unde...
I say this as someone who loves them. I hope they stick around, but its only a matter of time someone in a party city like Nashville is drunk and ends up getting hit leading to a death.
Regulation hasn't caught up yet?
Let's leave the "get off my lawn" comments off HN.
These scooter companies are operating in a grey area; that's a fact. Please don't quickly dismiss discussion about this issue, especially in such an ignorant manner.
If you've ever biked as a mode of transport, even in most US 'bike-friendly' cities, you'll know how few bike racks are available.
That's not true at all where I live. Santa Monica often bans them for not following rules, makes deals with other companies, etc.. Every app is forced to implement geofencing for not allowing riding on the beach walkways, for example. On popular roads like Abbot Kinney there are small fenced off corals where the government has replaced a car parking spot with a scooter and bicycle one. So yes, scooter companies do have specific laws they have to follow. It's actually a drawback since the city favors Jump over local companies like Bird, and Jump has a lot less availability.
I mean, do you say "No no, you can't complain about all those chemicals being dumped into that river... look at all the value people are deriving from thing the factory is producing!"
Cars and drivers, in my view, push MUCH more externalities onto everyone else (and let's not limit ourselves to thinking locally, all that CO2 we emit from driving disproportionately affects those in the third world and those yet unborn).
I don't think we should be using the argument of 'well, the externalities for cars are worse' when deciding how to deal with the externalities of scooters, though. By that argument, we only have to ever make sure our externalities are better than the very worst offender in order to be beyond reproach.
I like the Bird idea, but why should people who find them a nuisance not be able to voice their opinions here? They are literally being thrown on people's lawns. I think those companies have some responsibility to develop spaced waypoints with the city which act as hubs for birds. Private businesses should be allowed to register their space as a hub for a payment by the Bird company.
The different users would be: Hub owners (colleges, cities, private homes, businesses), riders, chargers. Hub owners and chargers would get paid to host hubs and charge birds, respectively. The riders would pay for use between hubs.
Since the majority of places don't have statues for scooters, the default actually is littering, it's no different than dumping anything else on the sidewalk.
Because car owners pay extra in taxes, specifically to cover the additional costs to society.
We massively subsidize drivers in this country. It's a natural consequence of people voting for their own short-term self-interests.
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/05/debunking-the...
Also, your comment is a logical fallacy.
Scooters have markedly improved life around where I live. Fewer noisy cars and less emissions.
Is the night riding banned by the app? I though they had lights built into them?
Is it really that big of a nuisance? You literally walk around them, I don't see the issue.
You should give them a ride one day to "see what all the fuss is about." They really are an incredible idea and allowing them to be "parked" anywhere is one of its main appeals.
I’ve seen scooters literally blocking entrances and pathways, heck people even take them inside buildings up to the 5th floor; not to mention that at night they emit a high pitched disrupting sound. Some people are plain lazy and highly inconsiderate. We need some rules because some people lack common sense.
It's not an issue for most people but I live up the road from an old folks home and often see the residents heading to the shops in their mobility scooters. If there's a dumped lime scooter blocking the footpath it completely stops them from using the footpath until someone moves it out of the way for them.
Is this a fad where people just want to try something new? Or are people actually shifting regular transportation to these?
I wonder what happens to the scooter after that. Landfill? Recycle?
That said they are cool when used properly, but they're being regulated and towns are starting to charge taxes/fees to make sure they're not a nuisance and require them to leave them in low income areas.
Are there any servicing companies popping up to re-sale end of life/refurbished scooters?