Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewrv | Hacker News Reader

> Public space isn't storage ground for private property.

Except cars, for some reason.

Cities regulate the use of public parking spaces, including what can park (e.g. RVs often can't), how long a car can stay, and charge fees for use (via meters and such). In Seattle car share companies like Car2Go are paying about $1700 per year per car [1] for the right to "store them" in public spaces. Cities historically haven't regulated sidewalks as elaborately because it wasn't common for anybody to leave large numbers of valuable things lying around on them. Cities are now trying to catch up, but I'll guess what regulations do exist mostly forbid leaving your business property on them without proper permitting. (For bikes Seattle's implementing a flat annual fee of $250,000 per company, scooters haven't really shown up here yet.)

[1] https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/permits-and-services/...

Scooters aren't yet permitted here in Seattle FYI, though recent rule changes make it possible tto request authorisation to deploy scooters under a bikeshare permit iirc. Same for cargo bikes and other bike variants, which opens up interesting possibilities in Seattle.

> Except cars, for some reason.

Alright, let's treat them like cars then :-)

Scooter riders should be licensed. They need to take an exam, including a road and written test.

Need to pay city parking fees. Respect parking zones. Only park in designated areas. Areas change in a complicated pattern depending on weather, time of day, day of the week or scooter type and color.

If they violate that they get confiscated and need to pay a fee to get it back.

They also need to be insured in case they hit a pedestrian.

Riders who speed get mailed speeding tickets from speed cameras

Getting caught inebriated on a scooter on a sidewalk should be a serious offense, with points taken off and a corresponding insurance fee hike. Possibly court appearance as well.

> Scooter riders should be licensed. They need to take an exam, including a road and written test.

Only if they want to ride them in roadways next to cars and trucks, because not knowing how to drive can get a lot of people killed.

Otherwise, if they are riding on bike lanes then they are only a danger to themselves, and mostly risk getting bruised knees.

Two lanes reserved for driving, plus two for storage, on every road?

I’d actually take that deal.

So... a bike lane?

Cars are treated like this because of theirs needs. At the beginning, they weren't and all theses requirements came later on.

If we did the same as we do with the scooters right now, we simply wouldn't have cars. Instead we made the right decision and added all theses requirements one by one when it was needed.

Sure scooters have needs to and we need to define theses needs and regulate them, but can we actually discover theses needs first? China has shown that we need designated space, so let's start with that. They also shown that we should have ways for carriers to quickly move some, so let's add that too.

Massive bans are stupid and just stop innovations.

Most people already have suitable licenses.

Parking zones being provided sounds good, and based on size they'd be very cheap. All these scooters are the same type too.

I'm sure a ticket is fine for most offences, just like cars.

Liability insurance for such a low power device is very cheap.

The most common devices can't speed, so whatever.

You can already get a DUI on a horse so screw it, won't make the law any dumber.

So overall you're suggesting extremely small new burdens, and you're promising parking spaces. No need to imply it would be a bad thing!

I suspect if you scattered 400 cars around the city, randomly parked in the middle of streets and sidewalks, the city would have some unkind words for you, too.

Except this is exactly what happens. Cars double park or park in bike lanes all the time. Cars drive on sidewalks or park in driveways blocking sidewalks (heck I was just honked at by an angry motorist driving his car down a sidewalk near downtown because I wouldn't move out the way). Cars park in private lots without paying. There's a reason why there are private tow operators, meter maids and cops out to enforce traffic violations.

> There's a reason why there are private tow operators, meter maids and cops out to enforce traffic violations.

Right, so just dumping cars wherever isn't tolerated either.

The thing is so many people store their cars incorrectly nothing is usually done, so poorly parked cars and scooters are about the same problem -- except that a poorly parked car is potentially life threatening whereas a poorly parked scooters is annoying.

I assume from this comment you don’t live in SF? Because they do very quickly ticket and/or tow.

They also frequently sweep up any tents put up by homeless people.

San Francisco is an outlier.

I used to frequently see a meter maid waiting by a car parked right outside the office, until the hour turned and he could ticket the whole row.

> The thing is so many people store their cars incorrectly nothing is usually done

This is patently false, as not only public entities (i.e., law enforcement and local governments) but also private companies (private tow operators) create and invest in specific services to address the problem.

So,once a whole industry emerges to tackle a problem then obviously something is being done.

> The thing is so many people store their cars incorrectly nothing is usually done, so poorly parked cars and scooters are about the same problem

In both cases, it's part of your civic duty to report cases like these. There must be a phone number in your city that you can call when you see someone parked a car (or a scooter) in a place where it's a) illegal, and b) is causing troubles.

Yes, except cities have 100,000 of cars randomly parked. So not sure what you are talking about. I mean, yes, there are generally accepted places to put a car, but only because they have been around so long. Yes, new things don't currently have that luxury, They are also a 100 times smaller, and easy to move, unlike a car.

> Except cars, for some reason.

There's fairly strict rules on what public space can be used for that, and by whom, and in what manner; it's not a free for all.

Those rules are incredibly generous with how they allocate incredibly valuable real estate to cars, often for the price of free.

If every other block has enough room on the curb, for 30 cars to be parked for free, then surely, there should be room for one or two scooters to do the same.

Tragedy of the commons is a significant issue. So, if land owners allocate space for them that’s fine. But it’s not legal to leave random junk in public spaces because there is simply not enough space for everyone to be doing this with anything.

Further, public parking is rarely free, it’s being payed for somone and often that’s not the city.

public Parking is free almost anywhere but in in city centers, and it occupies one third of a typical, residential street.

It’s the travesty of the commons.

> public Parking is free almost anywhere but in in city centers, and it occupies one third of a typical, residential street.

And is still regulated, though enforcement tends often to be complaint based, rather than active patrol. Leave a vehicle a few days with moving it and someone complains and it gets tagged and, if left a little while longer, towed as abandoned.

Yes, there should be. But currently, there isn't.

I can't just throw my bicycle on the sidewalk in front of my office when I get there, either, right?

Hmm? Its not uncommon for there to be freely usable bike racks on most city streets. I see them all over Seattle, predating bikeshares by years in most cases.

Right, so when Bird funds some scooter racks and starts ensuring their scooter are stored there, cities will stop impounding them. In the meantime it's like if I left my bike in the middle of the sidewalk somewhere - if it doesn't get stolen, I can expect it to get cleaned up by some other means.

Edit: While writing another comment it occurred to me that these scooters are exactly like the shopping carts you see abandoned around stores. Either the stores collect them or the city does - but either way they're basically large bits of litter for anyone not in need of a shopping cart at the moment.

I'm sure Bird wouldn't appreciate this analogy, because it's deeply unsexy.

I'm surprised by how brazen they are. Why Bird doesn't get fined for that?

> Its not uncommon for there to be freely usable bike racks on most city streets

Exactly. Specific places to put your bike. Not just a random spot on the sidewalk.

This is one method of getting laws changed.

Donating scooters to the city under the current laws isn't particularly effect give method of getting the laws changed.

Paying the city through impounded scooters would probably be close to the top least cost-effective lobbying method ever.

I think cities have wised up since AinBnB and Uber that saying “we’ll wait and see” while the corporation gets strong is not a winning strategy for regulators.

If getting hundreds of scooters impounded and auctioned off is a good strategy for Bird, their business strategy is too subtle for me to follow.

Civil disobedience is one thing, corporate disobedience is another.

> If every other block has enough room on the curb, for 30 cars to be parked for free, then surely, there should be room for one or two scooters to do the same.

Then...lobby your city for scooter parking. Car parking is supported because people very much want it, and politicians no there is a cost to not having it.

> If every other block has enough room on the curb, for 30 cars to be parked for free, then surely, there should be room for one or two scooters to do the same.

That's pretty much irrelevant as the business model of these scooter services is based on the concept of riders dropping them off wherever they feel like it.

A’right! Give me two lanes o& reserved storag3 space on every road and I’ll never leave them on the sidewalk again.

Cars are licensed, and substantial taxes are paid for the privilege of using the public roads, including city streets.

Unlike the nuisance bikes and scooters now littering sidewalks and parks which are typically designed for pedestrians anyway.

> substantial taxes are paid for the privilege of using the public roads, including city streets.

We all pay theses taxes, cars or not, are you talking about license plate? Here it's a few hundreds buck a year, if that's all what's needed, I'm sure they would gladly pay it.

We already pay for the privilege of using the side walks, we are already able to lock our bike outside.

In designated spots...

Not all cities have street parking; in those places you park in private lots/structures or not at all.

That's interesting, I'd love to see some pictures of a city without street parking, do you have the name of any?

Well, Venice, but it also doesn’t have street driving.

Tokyo has no street parking. You will occasionally have someone idling their car at the side of the road for long amounts of time, but they have to be inside the vehicle.

Tokyo and other cities in Japan require an off-street parking space as a condition of car ownership. In the course of a day, cars are very seldom abandoned on the street and drivers would be punished if caught doing so.

Chino Hills is the largest city around here that I know of that does not have street parking on public streets. Technically, Tustin and Tustin Ranch are mostly private developed by Irvine CA so both of those as well.

The one thing they all have in common is that they are all wealthy suburbs.

Disneyland ?

> That's interesting, I'd love to see some pictures of a city without street parking

You can check pretty much all cities which designate no-traffic neighborhoods.

IIRC while ago there was a HN submission on how the city of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain) had banned all cars from its city center.

Probably it was Pontavedra.

> Except cars, for some reason.

The reason, in the UK at least, is the tax (and additional parking fees for some spaces) that motorists pay that covers this. Also when and where cars can be parked is highly regulated and enforced.

What tax do motorists in the UK pay to cover parking?

Loosely speaking - in UK - off-street parking has standard rate VAT, on-street is VAT exempt. But it's very much a rule of thumb, not a strict regulation.

I don't know of any other tax on parking per se?

Maybe they were talking about VED which is sort of about using the public highway in that you can declare the vehicle as off the road and stop paying it. But the complicated emissions/price/age based charge means it doesn't really make sense to think of it that way anymore. E.g. A zero-rated vehicle still has the same impact when parked on the road.

What tax does a car driver pay?

Lets see VED: £0. Fuel:15p per 100 miles. Consumables (tyres etc), maybe £20 a year in VAT?

Land cost in say Ealing is £30m a hectre, or £3k per sqm. A parking space that's about 3m by 2m of the road is worth about £20k, and thus costs about £1k a year to provide.

Because the space is specifically designated as available for cars to park. If you park your car on the sidewalk, or at the entrance to a park, your car will not be there when you get back(or, you'll have a ticket).

...and bicycles! Cities even build bike racks on sidewalks so that people can park their privately owned bicycles. At least the scooters are a public good.

It's chaos vs. order. A bike rack is a place that a bike get put if the owner doesn't want it to be stolen or cleaned up. Bird scooters get left all over the fucking place. The closest analog is areas around big box stores where people often abandon shopping carts. Sure they're theoretically useful and private property. They're also basically random garbage for anyone who doesn't need a shopping cart at that moment. And, like Bird scooters, cities usually respond by either forcing the owner (store) to clean the things up[1] or by cleaning them up themselves[2].

[1] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-el-cajon-aims-clea...

[2] https://www.mississauga.ca/portal/services/reportabandonedsh...

> At least the scooters are a public good.

They're not! They're private goods meant for private profit.

Not public goods in the literal economic definition, true, but there's some flexibility in common usage of this term.

Irrespective of who owns it, I can walk up to a scooter and use it. I cannot do this to your bicycle tied up to a post. From the general public's perspective, the scooter has vastly more utility than your bicycle.

A bicycle is also a public good, because it’s not a car taking up 8x the space, poisoning you, potentially running you over, changing the climate, making your president a docile sub to murderers, and annoying you wit noise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com