E-Scooters roll into New York
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Pros:
* Fast to start up
* Cheaper than uber
* Doesn’t depend on stations, so way more convenient
* No worry about keeping an eye on your scooter when you arrive; they were abundant enough that if yours gets taken you can grab another
* Genuinely super fun
Cons:
* Ugly; an eyesore
* Often in the way— a nightmare for accessibility
* So many companies meant you needed 5 different apps
* Vandalized/battery theft often an issue
* Not good for carrying goods
* Kinda dangerous, but then ones that topped out at 12 mph were less worth it
* Creeping up in price towards the end to help profitability, which made them also less worth it
The overall attitude was pretty split, but most of the people I know who disliked them had never ridden them. They really were INCREDIBLE for convenience. If your trip was 0.5-2 miles, they were amazing. I used them for running to shops, cafes, meeting at restaurants, etc.
I think there is a right way to do it, and that way has to include the convenience of leaving them near your destination. Bike shares that use stations are simply too annoying (if you haven’t got the map of stations memorized) to get the general public to catch on. However, they also have to be managed way better than they were at first.
Scooters were getting all types of people out of their cars, and they were good at it! Personally I really want the concept to stick around.
The quicker we can get our cities redesigned to meet the needs of all the people who need to get around, rather than just car drivers, the better. The problems with scooters are the same problems bikes or skateboards have, but just more visible because so many people use the scooters. The only way we are ever going to find the political will to adapt cities for non-car uses is if enough people use alternate transportation to make it worthwhile, and that's going to make things messy for a while.
Imagine how awesome scooters would be if a city had as many scooter parking spaces as it did car parking spaces, and as many scooter lanes as it did car lanes...
Right, exactly. Parking would take up a fraction of the space of car parking, emissions would be lower, etc. (They don't necessarily need to be dedicated scooter lanes either; bikes are moving at similar speeds and with similar risk, so protected bike lanes would work well for both.)
I could bike to just about anywhere I might want to go in the city I live in within about 35 minutes. I'm sure I'd be healthier, I'd be lowering my emissions vs. driving, and in many cases I'd get there faster than via public transport: the routes don't cover everything and bus/train service is infrequent enough that you often have to wait. I don't, because I don't feel safe enough on the streets here; they're designed with cars in mind, for high speeds. I wish we had infrastructure designed for bikes and scooters alongside the car infrastructure, because I would absolutely use them.
EDIT: And if you want to see what the alternative could look like, take a look at this video and think about how many cars you would need to move all those people: https://youtu.be/ynwMN3Z9Og8
I don't "like" it but compared to everything that is wrong in most cities (dog poops, filth, pollution) .. a few devices here and there are nothing worth yelling.. and yet.
I'm not so sure about this. I've never seen people leave their personal bike or skateboard in the middle of the sidewalk. At worst you may find some bike attached to a lamppost or something that will take up half a small sidewalk.
Scooters, however, are often left literally in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking the passage. This also applies to shared bikes without stations, but for some reason it seems to happen somewhat less often.
On a personal note, I've tried them a few times, and to me there are two main issues which made me stop using them:
1. We have many streets with cobblestones, and scooters are absolutely awful on those. Bikes are a pain, but somewhat bearable. It also doesn't help that most paths away from traffic have mainly cobblestones.
2. I feel really, really unsafe riding them. They have terrible acceleration, basically no brakes and don't feel stable at all. (I do ride a motorcycle though, so I may be biased). I don't feel these issues on bicycles. And I think this may explain at least some of the risky behaviour we notice around here: people loathe having to stop, accelerate or delicately manoeuvre around something.
They're also freaking expensive here compared to the shared bikes, so I much prefer the latter.
Personal bikes/skateboards get locked up and put out of the way because people have an active interest to keep them from getting scuffed or damaged, but that factor isn't present for a rented scooter.
I wholly agree. I think it's just like trash on the ground, it mostly doesn't get itself there on its own.
But maybe companies should take the habits of local people into account. If you know people won't bother to leave them out of the way, maybe don't deploy your service there? Just as if you know people are going to trash your scooters, steal batteries or anything else, you won't enter that market because it will be too expensive. But I guess the latter affects the company's bottom line, whereas the former is, at worst, just bad press.
I don't see anybody suggesting car ownership should be forbidden from cities where there isn't enough parking. Why is providing parking only the responsibility of scooter companies, and not car companies?
Cities adapt to meet the needs of the residents, and the needs of the residents can change. That change shouldn't be forbidden because of the current structure of our cities
I’ve seen devoted scooter parking in a few places including Stockholm and I’ve never seen any effect on the users’ habits of throwing them down wherever.
You'd think so. Take a stroll through the streets of Paris and then see if you still stand by this statement.
Even when the sidewalk is narrow, you can leave your scooter against a wall, not across the sidewalk. You can maybe leave it 50 meters further, where the sidewalk is wider, etc. You know, try to be considerate of other people who probably don't want to have to push your scooter out of the way just because you didn't feel like taking 10 seconds to park it properly.
When the infrastructure is lacking, you can either be a nuisance and argue that it's the city's fault for not providing wider sidewalks or whatever, or try to adapt to the situation while the city does something about it.
Of course the cities have to adapt to the needs of their residents. But they usually are slow to do that. Now, even if I personally dislike those scooters, I won't argue for outright banning them. But at some point, I can understand people being frustrated with other people being an outright nuisance.
And guess what? Paris actually has laws on the books prohibiting this (randomly blocking sidewalks, or riding a bike or motorised vehicle on them). But they are rarely enforced. So people get angry. And I figure that just as cities have to change to suit the needs of their scooter-riding residents, they also have to adapt to those of their non-scooter-riding residents, too.
Now of course, the best solution would be the one which would content both parties, but politics being what they are, it's easier to ask to outright ban things. But, again, I don't think that's always the best approach and don't personally advocate for it. I actually think that it would be better to replace cars with electric scooters, and that they do need infrastructure which the city should build (and they're actually doing it).
But I can't condone antisocial behaviour by scooter-riders while the city builds said infrastructure. And yes, if people apparently can't be trusted to ride them in a way which doesn't endanger or incommode others, maybe outright banning is a solution. I think "this is why we can't have nice things" applies perfectly here.
Also, just because cars are a nuisance it shouldn't mean that we should accept any new nuisance. We should fight back against this, and the first step is to not worsen an already bad situation.
This shouldn't be technically impossible with scooters, and would happen if people owned them and brought them into the transportation mix gradually. But it doesn't fit into the "startup bubble" business model that seems to drive their rapid ascent and equally rapid disappearance in most cities.
Most of the things that one can reasonably chain a bike to are generally located on the side of the street to begin with; they may just out into the public right of way because of their size, but it doesn't usually block the whole street.
Dockless scooters have no such requirement and so it's not that surprising that people went with the path of least resistance and just dumped them in the middle.
The car-centric view has such a stranglehold on modern culture. Even in places like NYC you'll find pedestrians and public transport users dumping on cyclists or electric scooter riders, as if they're doing even a fraction to destroy the livability of the city as much as cabs and other large vehicles.
While we should indeed think more that reducing the space used by cars is just giving better alternatives a way to prosper without bothering pedestrians.
But really, it's not easy. Last night I was listening a guy on TV (a journalist who consider himself a progessist) who was complaining about bike lanes and that he's against the implementation they're doing in Rome because it's just at the service of the scooters, like if people driving them were 2nd class citizens. Fuck this people!
Bike sharing democratizes the city, being cheap enough that even the poorest people can achieve transport independence. It should be a public service. The freedom that comes with being able to affordably pick up transport anywhere, and go anywhere, it's unparalleled in an urban context. All the dreams of self-driving cars, and in particular self-driving taxis, we already had that future and it was dockless bike share!
I agree with you that there are still issues of transporting large objects, and difficulty catering to people with physical disabilities, but let's not have perfect be the enemy of good.
They belong on the road (<=30mph) and cycling infrastructure.
Regarding the eyesore and clutter, just designate one parking space every 500m or so to be scooter space and the problem is solved.
Not quite, when people say they use them for 0.5 mile rides.
I was on roller skates a while back, someone left a scooter in the middle of the park. I picked it up to move it, it started beeping, startled me, i fell and it fell on my hand. Took me five weeks to heal.
More bike sharing please. People tend to leave the bikes in appropriate spots. I agree the station-based bikes are awful (we have Villo here which is ridiculously bad). But JUMP and our local alternative Billy are cheaper and better ways to get through the city.
Plus those scooters fail hard on cobblestone. It took Lime almost two years to realize their scooters were not appropriate for half the city, and to replace them with a beefier model.
I’m not sure this is true everywhere. CitiBike is so dense in NYC that you can almost always walk about 3 blocks and see a station.
If the startup/company puts up all the capital, has marginal costs and competition, there is never any potential for "takeoff." Impossible trifecta. That's why he thinks waymo is doomed. Uber showed that even a handful of competitors can discipline prices enough to make profiting hard. uber can at least scale without buying cars, but competition means tight margins.
It's ironic that SV-Startup world accidentally created a Perfectly Normal Business Sector and found it bemusing. It's emblemagic of current private sector conundrums. Inasmuch as price competition exists, the value of the S&P 500 approaches zero. That's chalkboard extremism, obviously... OTOH, while "Monopoly Requirement" is too strong a descriptor but "moat" is not strong enough.
The other cons (ugly/dangerous/etc.) are emblematic of current public sector conundrums. To scale scooters/biking, we need a proficient public sector. Regulation for basic safety that isn't regulating to death, or regulating badly. Also, how are we an advanced global civilization but can't adapt our cityscapes any better than literal iron age brutes. As we advance in some fields, the fields that do not advance become blatant. Our forebears dug canals with sticks, and often did a very impressive job. We can't 100X digging with sticks?
If I'm hitting the grocery store, I need a scooter near my house. The problem is that this isn't a volume point, so nobody puts more than one at a convenient point and its always gone.
Once I get to the grocery store, I need one to come home. This IS a volume point, but quite a few people walk to the store and then ride home. This drains the volume point so I can't count on having one when I need it.
However, I will be tripping over scooters generally at the halfway point (there's a very popular hipster coffee shop) when I walk to that grocery store--a point where the cost isn't worth it anymore so now the scooters just piss me off.
The problem to be solved wasn't scooters--it was roads. We need dedicated low-speed infrastructure--walking, biking, scootering, whatever, that doesn't allow cars. However, fixing that is slow, not profitable for just you, and requires that you move the political apparatus.
Regulation can't be true, because escooter rentals boomed and busted in hundreds of cities around the world. All different regulatory angles tried.
The other points (infrasture, convenience, etc.) are not relevant. Scooter rentals didn't fail because they were unpopular. They were popular, whatever the shortcomings. Demand exists.
The problem is the business model. Maybe it can be run sustainably, but it can't be run very profitably. It's not going to generate enough cash to fund exponential growth and profit margins are disciplined by a market.
There's no shortage of desire to bring tech's business models, funding models, norms and mentality to other areas. Why not bus companies? Why not wework? There has been a lot of this recently.
Inevitably, these companies encounter some difficult realities. The localized monopolies, zero marginal cost and zero capital of software businesses are requirements for many of those industries' norms. Those norms often don't work, once standard elements of "perfect markets" are brought in.
I don't think the fact that these are extremely dangerous to their rider is a reason to ban them, though. Let fools fuck themselves up on these death traps if they like. The danger to uninvolved pedestrians is a great reason to ban them from sidewalk use, however.
There is no justification for vehicle use on the sidewalk.
there’s a stigma to just riding a scooter. it’s not cool. during the rent a scooter craze the lamest thing you could do was buy your own scooter for $500. i don’t know why but they have to get over that barrier before people will accept it without using it. bikes appear to have crossed that barrier, sometimes
southern california still has a lot of scooters and it is a bit more organized than it was in the past but not remarkably different, people still buy their own scooters and the major e-scooter providers have plans for you to buy your own dedicated scooter of their brand, this article is also talking in the present tense and referring to existing californian markets too
I bought my own scooter on a whim; it can toggle between 500w and 1000w of power, and I rarely need the 1000w except for the craziest Seattle hills.
Basically what I'm trying to say here is: totally solvable problem, just comes down to the unit cost of the rental scooters
Last time I flew, I thought it'd be fun to take a scooter home from the airport. I would've had to walk about a mile to the nearest scooter which based on my experience with Bird would have maybe a one in three chance of being broken. I ended up getting an Uber for $6. I guesstimated that the scooter rental (assuming nothing went wrong) would've been around $8
That said, when the prices were lower and the density was high enough that you could count on one being nearby, they were a fun way to get around
They should be banned, there is no question.
Vespa-like electric scooter company operating in NYC for the last few years.
Solves a ton of problems:
1) faster snd operates in traffic (so less issue with their 25mph speed vs bikes, not operated on sidewalks so fewer peds to mow over, etc)
2) requires full-face helmet use and cursory safety training
3) street parks, and user is liable for tickets, which keeps them off the sidewalk and brings the city revenue
4) they’ve been good citizens, responsive to issues their riders cause
5) I don’t want to die from embarrassment being seen on one.
1. The Revel scooters feel somewhat sketchy to ride 2. Prices have crept up significantly. A 14 minute ride I just took was 10+ bucks, which isn't too much different than being chauffeured in an Uber/Lyft. I'd guess Revel is still operating at a loss, there is just less VC capital funding the rides now.
I mean a Vespa here and not those tiny wheel abominations
The biggest benefit of e-scooters (and e-skateboards for that matter) is that you can fold them and take them into buildings. You can't do that with a bicycle - ok you can with a folding bike, but if you need to lug them for more than a few minutes they're quite heavy and cumbersome.
It's quite noticeable that the cities cited are all relatively warm places. I bet that as scooters expand to colder areas, they'll have a harder time with adoption.
Edit: the article does acknowledge it!
> If nothing else, the day would prove conclusively that scootering is not the best mode of travel in the dead of a New York winter. You can’t put your hands in your pockets while driving or lean into the wind. In a lot of ways, walking that last mile works better, and it’s free.
...they just have safe paths to ride on, and those paths get maintained. (So: not a painted bike lane that all the snow gets shoveled into.)
Not to mention in New York, there's already significant risks that come with biking/scootering. You always always have to share the road for at least some part of the trip and are constantly at risk of car doors, pedestrians and ironically, really fast e-bikes. I know that during the summer the benefits outweigh the risks, at least during pandemic. During the winter with ice and snow? Hell no.
The thing is, culture influences infrastructure, but the reverse is also true. Bikes in the Netherlands are a way of life partly because it's very safe to bike to your destination there! You don't need Dutch culture to get to that point, look at Vancouver: https://youtu.be/N9JHfFutvik
You're right that at the moment, bikes in the US are mostly considered to be recreational, and as a result they're not treated seriously as transportation. But I think people will get to where they're going however is most convenient, and as a result we can get more people cycling by making it more convenient.
(You can count me as one of those people; I have little interest in cycling for recreation, but I would absolutely bike around the city if it were safer. Given the limited reach of our public transit, it would honestly be the quickest way to get where I need to go most of the time.)
https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/electric-scooters-and-bicycl...
Link scooters just started showing up in Seattle and I decided to take one a couple miles to meet up with a friend for dinner. It would have been faster to walk there.
After bout 6 or 7 minutes of riding and only making it half a mile (and one harrowing experience with a yellow light), I stopped at a Jump bike. I opened the Uber app to book it and couldn't figure out how so I opened the Jump app. I wasn't signed in and my Uber password wasn't stored in my password manager so I had to reset my password. After doing that I finally made it into the Jump app only to have a single button that says "Launch Uber" and I was back to where I started. Of course I now had to sign in to the Uber app again since I just reset my password.
I still couldn't figure out how to book the thing so I just called a Lyft and finally made it to the restaurant. (I did finally figure out how to book it once I was in the car. I think my problem was that maybe the bike I was standing near wasn't showing up on the map.)
It was a bit of a comedy of errors last night but all my other experiences with electric scooters have been pretty inconvenient.
I've used a whole range of bike and scooter systems, some docked and some dockless, and mostly the apps worked fine. Scan a QR code, unlock and off you go. It can definitely work seamlessly.
The problem, to me at least, is that they're quite expensive to use. I get why. Servicing them is expensive, the scooters often get vandalized and people don't take care of them.
https://developer.apple.com/app-clips/ https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18618336/apple-pay-bird-e...
It's supposed to be one tap with no app installed when you walk up to one.
Simpler? Eh, maybe. But easier? Nah. Contact just about anyone from just about anywhere. Never need to carry a paper map (or several). Be able to look up just about any information you could need. Etc etc
Speaking as someone who lived in NYC for 10 years I am absolutely against the scooters that plague other cities coming to NYC. Why? Several reasons:
1. There are too many people on the sidewalks. At least cyclists almost always ride on the road. In my experience, amateur scooter riders think it's fine to ride an electrified vehicle (often poorly) on the sidewalk. It's not;
2. The sidewalks are too narrow already in most places. This is exacerbated by all the permits given for various news stands, outdoor seating and whatnot that create a ton of choke points on the sidewalks as is;
3. People are already really bad at effectively sharing the sidewalks as pedestrians. The three biggest categories here are tourists (this is probably the first time in their lives they've had the option of walking anywhere and it shows), phone zombies (just stop and send that text rather than walk oblivious to your surroundings at 1mph) and people who walk in groups and want to walk slowly 4 abreast.
Oh and as with cyclists, the problem isn't the delivery people. They have an economic interest in getting where they're going safely and quickly. The only time I see them (on vehicles) on the sidewalks is when they're picking up or dropping off.
It's all the shared bike and scooter people that are the problem.
At least previously the only scooter riders had their own scooter and were thus far fewer in number.
In other cities (eg Miami, even SF), the pedestrian density is far lower so it's less of a problem.
Oh and of course people just dump the shared scooters in the middle of the sidewalk. Honestly, they're a menace.
Here's a compromise: get rid of 1 lane of parking on each street and widen both sidewalks by the space saved. Then there might be room.
More to the point, the article discusses the strict geofencing scooter makers are putting in place to prevent sidewalk use and parking in a non-designated spot. In SF, for example, if you try to end your ride in the wrong spot, you can’t, and would keep racking up charges. Their scooters also contain electronic bike chains, so you have to actually lock the scooter to a rack to properly end it. Seemed to work okay and encouraged me to place it in the right spot.
I agree dedicated lanes are the best way forward. Once you have that, go all in on scooters and other e-* technology and avoid the short cab / Uber rides completely.
I hate the scooters. I do not live in SV. People ride them like jackasses and cause problems for both drivers and pedestrians.