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I live in Paris with an arguably good public transport system in place and Lime scooters were quite popular this summer. This is only anecdotally ofc, but you see a lot of people using them. There are not as many Bird scooters yet though.

Where I see the niche is medium distances were the metro is not a fast solution but if scooters are ubiquitously available for these situations, I see value in them.

And yeah, Tourists seem to love them.

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I know they are popular in a variety of places, but I think transit options that are disproportionately popular with tourists compared to the locals are a glaring indicator of being long-term inefficient (and potentially harmful to the development of the better options already present in the city). To me SF's tendency to celebrate random experimental transit is the main reason public transit is so underdeveloped here. Do you think there are potentially better solutions for the niche filled by scooters in Paris that could integrate more fluidly with existing transit or are scooters the global maxima with existing tech?

I tried a Lime in Paris last fall and it was terrifying. Being 3 feet away from cars going 25 kph, one slight mistake and you're dead. Never again. Bikes feel a lot safer.

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