Shared e-scooters aren’t always as green as other transport options
news.ncsu.edu
news.ncsu.edu
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599127
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20597711
I think we’ve found a winning theme that resonates on HN.
Scooters aren't perfect, just like everything else, but there's some interesting innovations happening in micromobility that encourage more walkable cities and greener commutes. I'm excited to see where the trends head, even if the immediate scooter to car eco comparison is muddy.
I was out with my stepson for a ride today and the UK is failing poorly on this one.
I think the point raised in here is that taking the bus or biking is generally more environmentally friendly. Existing solutions are already better for this particular metric.
The one thing this article hints at is that riders may have taken a more wasteful option had the scooters not been there. But it's only one survey.
People using a bike that lasts 20 year is much greener than a shared scooter that dies after 100 days of use.
Having more walkable communities start with removing cars from the streets, adding density, by planning our cities. There is no magic tech that will fix the status quo.
There is nothing inherently wasteful or prone to rapid breakdown in scooters; the fact that there is economic reason to dump them after 100 days only points out how inefficient is everything else and how improperly we tax environmental damage.
Scooters can last for years if kept inside and well cared for.
Bikesharing in China resulted in many times more bikes being produced than ones owned privately. Even insurance and license demanding schemes like LiuBike (they rent electric 50cc equivalents) ran into that, despite their vehicles not being as "disposable" as flopped Mobike.
I am all for shared micromobility everywhere. Would love to see a healthy mix of scooters, bikes, and mopeds on nearly every corner (in dedicated converted car parking spaces)
100 miles is just two weeks of a 5 mile commute =/
Everyone should be like you, but the infrastructure doesn't support it yet in most cities. Safety in a fully A -> B network is required. Driving more micromobility traffic will cause infrastructure changes in the long run
People like new, shiny bikes more and companies who bet on making "unkillable" bicycles lost out as nobody wanted to ride grimey, dirty, squeaky, and generally worn out bicycles.
Ones who gained a lot were ones who bet on flimsy, but more frequently and cheaply replaceable bikes.
To be precise, as an individual making a choice how to get somewhere, taking the bus on a route with low ridership is also environmentally friendly.
The decision to run the low-ridership bus on that route in the first place was not too environmentally friendly (unless it's a long-term play to build up the bus system), but that decision has already been made and the emissions are a sunk cost. If you get on a bus that's running anyway, the additional emissions are basically negligible.
Obviously what they're trying to analyze is averages across a population, and they're right about that. But don't let it make you feel bad about riding a low-ridership bus.
Low ridership buses can form part of a wider network where the busy parts of the network depend on the feeder services. Those feeder services also have to offer round the clock service if people are to be bothered using them.
In the UK we got rid of the minor branch lines of the railway network thinking people would drive to their nearest station and complete their journey by rail. It never happened, people stayed in their cars and rail passenger numbers declined.
You are never going to have a network with all seats filled at all times. Seen that way then a transport service is getting it wrong if it is always at 100% utilisation.
I don't know the right math, but I would assume this averages out to something near 1-to-1. That is, if, in the steady state, 1000 people take extra seats on airplanes, presumably it averages out to about 1000 seats of extra capacity being added.
And I suppose the concept must apply to low-ridership bus lines. If you ride it, you could tip the balance toward keeping it going rather than canceling it or consolidating it together with other routes. Maybe this is a bit less than 1-to-1, though, because transit agencies aren't just following rider behavior but also trying to fulfill a mission to have good coverage of an area.
TLDR, maybe it does matter if you're near a utilization threshold that someone is really paying attention to.
Why are so many "urbanists" dunking on scooters? Article after article basically saying scooters are worse than cars, when the study doesn't say that and fails to account for the many negative car externalities, like all of the asphalt used to pave roads and parking spots, and the environmental opportunity cost of those spaces, as just one example.
Cars are the enemy here, and scooters are on our side. Yes, we need to make them last longer, and yes scooter companies should not be advertising as "carbon free", but that doesn't mean we should stymie their momentum and push the public back towards cars.
Most of the articles stemming from this study are horrible clickbait trash. It's unbelievable.
I think the first point can be drastically improved using city-wide electric docking for scooters and encouraging users, via pricing, to leave them in such points. Large vehicles will then be used to reshuffle scooters only to compensate for assymetric demand, much less important than charging.
The materials point can be improved by increasing reliability of the platform and mass recycling. Price competition and proper carbon and pollution taxing can optimize this automatically.
But instead of that we have 10 different companies flooding cities with thousands of vehicles knowing very well they will never ever be profitable until there is only 1 left and they can finally increase their price.
Cities could even offer proper employment status and salary to the people taking care of the fleet instead of the current less than ideal reward system.
No race to the bottom, no barely legal practices (through loopholes), stable prices, cheaper (or included in existing subscriptions), proper docks respecting the public space, local money not going to foreign companies which have a tendency to do everything to avoid paying their taxes, &c.
> For example, it could push providers to increase the range, safety and reliability
It's a scooter, 2 wheels, brakes, a few lights, boom done. Let the scooter manufacturers do the """innovation""", the company operating them doesn't have to create them. If they cared about safety they would have found a system to attach an helmet on the damn thing, which would probably take care of the majority of major injuries.
> we could have self driving scooters that slowly go to the charging locations by themselves.
I don't see that happening for so many reasons that I honestly fail to understand how someone could come up with that idea.
Instead of dropping your bike randomly, the city is covered with connection points where you leave the machine. Like docks, where it locks and charges. Since you can't let every company build their own hubs everywhere randomly, it's city ran business.
Where I currently live it's covered if you have a monthly card for public transportation but you can buy or pay separately too, just more expensive.
I'm in Berlin and it's complete chaos, even more than usual since they introduced scooters a few months ago. We have at least 5 bicycle companies and 4 scooter ones.
I think we need to acknowledge that mobility is valuable and the answer to urban transport isn't staying put.
I witness an accident a week and I do not spend much time around areas where there are scooters.
People don't obey the laws, too many ride doubled up and many ride on the sidewalk.
They ones affected most are blind and disabled people who get hit on the side walk.
You are comparing something that has laws and rules, a dedicated place to 'drive' and have billions of miles driven.
Right now in most places these scooters follow whatever laws they want (if faster in middle of street, it is there, if faster on sidewalk, it is there). People aren't accountable (no driver license, hard to track) and idiots.
(Which was annoying for me as I don’t have one because I always lived in cyclable cities in Europe)
I do often see people scooting without a helmet on streets with no protected bike lane which makes me cringe, knowing how reckless with other’s lives many car drivers are. In these situations, I think it’s better for people to ride on the sidewalk. Nobody should have to sacrifice their lives for poor urban planning, and the bruises from a pedestrian/scooter collision are much less serious than the death or brain injury from a car/scooter collision.
I was in San Diego last month, which has many times more scooters than San Francisco, and I saw several people fall (though not hurt) off scooters.
I’ve been concerned by the number of children on them, and a huge number of adults with children who appear to be between 4 and 7 years old. Also I’ve seen a number of people riding on streets at night, sometimes against traffic.
In regards to specific dangers. You have small hard wheels and if the scooter hits a pothole at speed there just isn’t many ways out of a negative outcome on that.
Admittedly, that's the only 3 people I know who bike but it's not very encouraging when you here about all of these thefts.
Depends on the place. In Munich, it's rare - Berlin however, commonplace. My personal advice, get a decent lock and a GPS tracer embedded in the frame if it's an expensive bike.