Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
Obviously there's a threshold problem in most of urban USA. There's sufficient pedestrian concientousness maybe in Salt Lake City or some small New England city. Definitely in Japan. Probably most Swiss communities, but beyond that there's just too many sketchy people. It only takes 1 in 100.
just pushing through and providing enough value to the demographics who make the laws until people accept your negative externalities as "normal" or "acceptable" is totally a viable business strategy, and holding companies accountable for the costs of their business is definitely not the norm. i don't necessarily like it, but you can't say bird has more negative externalities than any other private transport option in the city. they're just new and different.
I'm nyc, citibikes don't have this problem; because you have to park them in a dock, thus releasing the bike back into the care (and liability) of the citibikes program (which isn't a problem, because now the bike is in a dock and not strewn about like trash).
These scooter companies are a menace, and the model they operate on is "take it as far as we can get away with at lowest possible dollar wherever will allow us to get away with it".
Makes me wonder how much they paid the chronicle for this piece, frankly.
Docks make the business model unrealistic too.
I've lived in Paris, La Rochelle, Rennes, Lille, Nantes. I do not remember one city I've lived in without docked bikes. And La Rochelle is quite small, with a population of 80k.
I do not note this. My city has docked bikes, and has for a decade. They’ve been in NYC for the same period, Portland has them as well, and I seem to recall seeing them in New Orleans, too. I believe Boston also has a system. Hell, even Riverside had one, last time I was there. Come to think of it, I’m struggling to think of a city I’ve been to recently that Didn’t have a docked bike share.
For me this reads like sensible government policy at work. If the fines of cleanup eat into profits and are not just a minuscule cost of doing business, they set it just right instead of plain forbid it outright.
The details aren't perfect, but the idea is generally good.
In most cities where I’ve seen them, they’re usually just abandoned by people with reckless abandon. Granted, some of that was probably not the users but other people…
I’d see them in the Bay, thrown into peoples hedges, cluttering up sidewalks.
While I know they serve a use for many people, they also were indistinguishable from garbage.
If their business model depends on other people (not just their customers) taking care of their product and the cities/individuals to clean up after them, then their business model is clearly flawed to begin with.
I wonder how much of that is a change in regulations, and how much is the end of early price competition that was never sustainable.
The scooters are super convenient when you can park it anywhere, the whole idea of micro-mobility actually works and is more convenient than taking an Uber or a Lyft. It’s also the most fun you can have with $3 in a city.
In theory it cuts down on unnecessary car traffic, and you don’t have to get sweaty on a bicycle. The problem is, cities started forcing by the scooters to add arcane geofencing rules requiring you to park it or pick it up far from your origin or destination. That sort of ruins the whole point of the scooters.
Had to drop it on the sidewalk next to said park.
Oh please; scooters don't get people out of their cars and they're essentially treated like short-life disposable goods. They're a convenient alternative for short-distance trips, like zipping through a busy downtown core, probably on a sidewalk, through pedestrians at too high a speed and with no signaling or safetly equipment. I don't like much about SF, but would love to import whatever brought about forcing out Bird to my city.
> They're a convenient alternative for short-distance trips
(I still maintain that a movement to enshrine the idea that these scooters left around where someone lives fall under the legal category of "mislaid property" and anyone finding one as such gets to keep it and modify as they wish.)
The positive spin on these companies is they've been pretty solid VC-funded programs for providing transportation to the homeless population and spare parts to hobby hackers.
Electric scooters are still outright banned on public roads/pavements in the UK, outside of limited government trials (which appear to have been set up to fail, to keep them banned)
I think of it like skiing- sure there’s a lot of potential risk but it’s a super enjoyable of getting around. Bird was the first scooter I ever rented when they launched in SF and I loved it. It was so much fun waiting at stoplights with other scooter riders next to you chatting and racing together to make the next light. Then the city threw all the birds in trucks one night and took away the fun.
For a website that often complains about how mundane modern life has become, it’s ironic to see so much hate directed at a fun, novel way of moving around the city.
I think e-bikes that dock in specific places will eventually be the end state. Everyone can ride a bike and people don’t seem to care about bike racks on the sidewalk.
The issue is no one not even Bird or apparently their investors care about the hard ware at all. In a rush for market dominance the scooters are disposable and riders treat them a such.
I live in a major European city. Cars don't make sense for most trips because parking is limited both naturally by population density and artificially by policy. Public transit is crowded, and there are several airborne viruses of concern going around. I got a quote to insure my bike against theft when locked up in public and concluded it is very likely to be stolen. Bike rentals with parking stations are inconvenient because the stations often aren't where I want to go, and the bikes are very heavy/slow with airless tires.
So I use scooters somewhat often. I used them more when there were subscription plans that were effectively unlimited use for a month for a flat fee.
But I live outside the USA and in a city where we have literal cargo trains that roll down the street in places where there are pedestrians, so the idea scooters are dangerous in comparison seems silly.
The on-demand scooter rentals model needs more thought. The scooters are often broken, not charged, under powered or unsafe (unless you bring your own helmet) to get around. Ppl leave them blocking sidewalks and etc.
Best thing I ever did was buy my own ebike. Battery powered personal vehicles are the answer, and ownership pays off quickly compared to Ubers and parking and rentals.
I hope the city bike rollout keeps going. Keep adding bikes and hubs everywhere and lower the price of rentals. Having stations to park and charge and pick up bikes everywhere is better than the free for all of Bird imho.
I have the best lock I could find and glued an Apple AirTag to the inside, but still whenever I go to dinner on my scooter I spend 5 minutes trying to find a place to park it and convince the restaurant staff to give me a seat where I can see it (although some very nice people will sometimes let me fold it up and store it inside the restaurant behind the front desk or something), then spend the entire time worried about it getting jacked while I'm eating. I tend to visit only restaurants with sidewalk dining as a result, and I often take a car instead for anything like shopping where monitoring it isn't possible.
Wide availability of secure parking infrastructure (or maybe even law enforcement attempting to do something about theft in the first place) would go a long way toward making private e-vehicles viable transport IMO.
When you rent a car, the driver/renter pays all fines during the rent period, except maybe those related to the car itself not being fit for street use.
Why is this different for these scooters?
No idea how it would be achievable it is entirely possible that the user parked the thing correctly but a kid passing by moved it later.
Many years ago in Paris (France) there were normal (actually terribly heavy) bikes for rent that had dedicated stands, you unlocked them with a card or similar, and you had to return them and lock them to another stand, otherwise you kept paying the rent (it was far from perfect, but at least created not this kind of problem).
But I was talking more about the US$ 500 one for driving on the sidewalk:
>And scooting on a San Francisco sidewalk instead of in a bike lane or road can earn a fine of $500, even if there’s no bike lane available. That fine is split between the scooter company and the scooter rider.
That one should be all on the rider, shouldn't it?
Unlike cars, it's very easy for vandals to move a scooter without renting it, e.g. by picking it up. I've seen scooters thrown into bodies of water and inside fenced areas. Most jurisdictions require the owners to remove them from such locations in a timely manner.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34848478
I was thinking not so much of the parking fines, but rather of the driving ones that reportedly are "split".
The scooters don't have a registration plate, so the Police (or whomever issues the fine) has to stop the rider (or not?) then:
1) if the rider is stopped and fined, how/why is the fine split with the company?
2) if the rider is not stopped and the fine goes generically to the company, same question, if the rider can be identified in order to split the fine, why can he/she not be made to pay the whole fine?
If it doesn’t have schools, sports, and recreation for kids, it’s a dystopia.
Nowhere did I say it's a cut and paste solution. I said invest in the trains they have already instead of dumping money on scooter startups.
When they do get used it is often on the sidewalk.
If the owners and users respected these things it would be a different story but at the rush for market dominance noone cares a lick about the hardware or where it ends up.
In my opinion they are a plague and I'm glad I dont have to deal with the accumulating detritus. Someone does though and I dont envy the people who have to fish these things out of the canal.
I have to imagine one leaking in the river undoes any environmental gain from the rest combined.