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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm coming into this with low expectations; the best we have in NYC is the CitiBikes (by Motivate) that are strictly human powered, dock-based, and not cheap. But I love these scooters and would vote for any candidate for mayor that made it a priority to remove the blocks preventing these things from being issued.

When I was in Venice on business, I used all of these scooters (except the 'Wheels', which to me looked silly; I could pick up an electric bike, which were also everywhere, if I wanted to sit down). All of the scooters I used (the same ones in the article) worked fantastically well, I never hit a geofence or had a problem finding one when I needed one, and they are all amazingly cheap.

I never got in or witnessed a crash; the scooters don't go fast enough that falling off is a big deal anyway, based on my experience having to hop off one when I got myself into a pickle.

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The larger wheels on the Wheels bikes (and electric bikes in general) seem like a big pro to me, after some injuries from small cracks in the road while riding a scooter. I think the advantage of Wheels over other electric bikes is the smaller parking footprint.

Given that it's battery-powered, not dock-based (but bikes eventually get returned to hubs to avoid clutter), and cheaper than the scooters, what makes you still prefer scooters?

To be honest, the Wheels in particular I thought were just kind of silly looking. I also didn't want to sign up and give my credit card to another random company, when I could use most of the vehicles around through other apps. I didn't know that they were cheaper than scooters -- I don't think I ever paid more than $2 for a scooter ride, and most were less than that. Next time I'll try the Wheels.

If I was going longer haul, I tended to use one of the electric pedal assist bikes instead of the scooters, but they were slightly harder to find than the scooters, which were everywhere.

I've started to see quite a few electric moped/scooters by Revel [1,2] parked around Brooklyn.

[1] https://gorevel.com/ [2] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/05/29/shared-mini-motorcycl...

Yes! I've already signed up, but have yet to take one out. The only thing is that it's not a bike -- it's an actual motor vehicle that you drive on roads at normal traffic speeds, which seems vaguely terrifying to me, as I've never really driven a motorcycle of any sort.

I visited D.C. recently and the National Mall is a decent 'padded room' for tourists to ride scooters, but even with large open areas and wide paths there were still numerous instances where scooters disrupted flow of pedestrians. I think Manhattan lacks the space necessary for tourists to ride the scooters, and everyone to store them, and introducing the scooters with existing strategies would quickly become a large safety and traffic congestion problem.

If they could do the following, then it may be possible: Restrict to residents and possibly allow visitors who have ridden a certain amount in other cities. Restrict availability in large parts of the city to certain hours. Strong enforcement of no riding on sidewalks. Scooters must be stored in docks or racks, may not be left on streets (providers must rent storefronts or space in/near bodegas with penalties for scooters left on streets).

Even with all of this, I still think the scooters would become burden.

To summarise -- people shouldn't be idiots.

Storing them and riding them on sidewalks are the biggest common complaints that people have; next to that it's mostly on people to operate them safely, and I'm okay with that. People are always going to ride them on sidewalks, but NYC is an east coast city, people will have no problem yelling at people to stop so I'm comfortable with social enforcement. There aren't enough police officers in the country to monitor every sidewalk that people use for two minutes. Improving bike lanes is a general issue that NYC is working on, and the first step to having any sort of electric scooter is to make them legal _at all_, since they are currently illegal to ride on the sidewalk, bike lanes, and streets.

As for storage, I think we can live with it -- people park bikes on sidewalks and most places there's room to put stuff that won't get in anyone's way. I'm not worried about tourists -- for a tourist a scooter/bike is a horrible way to get around the city (except in the big parks). And in the boroughs, tourists are not really an issue the way they are in Manhattan.

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