The hovercraft's time might have arrived

I take it you were as well? I graduated PS class 0204.

Having the wheels far below the center of mass of the whole system (rider + scooter) makes them MORE stable, a bit similar to reversing a car with a long trailer instead of a short one. Compare to something like a racing recumbent bicycle, where the center of mass is really low. Those are very hard to balance at lower speeds.

You're so high above the wheels on en e-scooter (or just a regular kick scooter) that you can easily swerve (i.e. laterally displace the wheels, but not your torso) around a pothole or a puddle without changing the direction of travel. That's the opposite of instability.

This is a "once a week" situation. As time goes on it will become increasingly hard to justify the cost of something you use once a week, especially when other options (groceries delivery) are cheaper and more convenient.

P.S. Scooters are popular because they don't need skill to ride, despite being worse in other respects. As time goes on this, too, will change; learning to ride some sort of PEV will be normal.

What was replaced were dense cities and compact towns, along with more distributed rural living, though the traditional form of that, still found in some places in Europe and elsewhere, is of small towns from which farmers travel to their (nearby, but not immediately proximate) fields.

In the city/town example, where the total urbanisation rarely extended more than a few kilometers or miles (as in low single digits), one would walk to shops or the market square, and purchases were carried, occasionally pulled in carts or wagons, or later delivery by the merchant was arranged.

Some goods, particularly fresh / readily spoiling ones (milk, eggs, ice) were delivered by cart door-to-door.

I'm not saying that we necessarily are returning to a similar circumstance, though it's a possibility you and others on this thread seem not to even consider. I'd suggest that this is an error. What a post-carbon world will entail is much more expensive private vehicle costs, where EVs seem to runs 2--4x the cost of an equivalent ICE vehicle, which would make ownership more challenging and various alternatives, including smaller transport options (bicycles, electric bikes and scooters, "city cars", and the like) more viable. I'm going to suggest that the Uber/Lyft ride-hailing revolution has proved a failure with many of the purported benefits (less traffic & congestion, universal availability, lower cost, less demand for parking) falling well short of advertised potential.

And I'm not claiming that the transformation will be instantaneous. Mass-market automobiles first appeared in 1901 (Ford's Model T and equivalent General Motors offerings), whilst tract suburban development didn't gain significant momentum until the late 1940s (Levittown, PA), and weren't fully mature until the 1970s, a lag of a half to three quarters of a century. De-suburbanisation may well follow a similar timescale. And yes, it's worth noting that there were a few minor road-bumps on the path to suburbanisation (the Great Depression, World War II).

Scooters can be quite convenient due to smaller size.

In general, banning things that are too risky for an individual's taste seems wrong. Individuals should be allowed to take risks with their own bodies as long as they are fully informed of those risks. Skiing or having children might be too risky for me but imposing that preference on others isn't showing empathy.

Many single people exist who shop using a backpack, in the peer comments there is an example of a Japanese small car of the year that suits people of a different country.

Big cars are a US lifestyle choice.

We use our car to travel longer distances, like soccer tournaments over 5 miles away, or on the very rare case I need to haul something really big (which is such a rare need it’s worth just renting a truck).

Cars are a massive waste of energy and resources compared to other transport options we have now.

Societis/cultures who ignore efficiency will be eventually forced to adapt against their will. It's just market economics.

(E.g., you can be obstinate and waste a significant chunk of your income just for the perceived comfort of a car, but over a few generations these people will lose in economic competition to people who act rationally.)

The low rung was the scooter/bicycle and the expense and convenience went up from there.

The streets are absolutely clogged with every level of transportation and everyone was busy and going fast.

Quite a contrast to rural New England but obviously the future. I see a college professor riding a one wheel about 2 miles from campus going up an incline that stretches for 2 miles. The road turns to dirt as it crosses state lines to Vermont. I dislike the ride on my bicycle. I stopped him once and I think he said he had 40 mile range!?

I think you mean car traffic. Cars create most of the dangerous traffic conditions that exist in our cities and neighborhoods.

While the GP’s post is idealistic, so many places are working to make non-car travel safer, it’s not hard to imagine a future where people choose more convenient modes of transportation as they feel safer doing so. Bikes as an example, tend to be easier to park, avoid most traffic issues (never really get stuck in traffic) and generally don’t have to look for parking at your destination. The only downside is their utility is generally mostly for local travel (last mile) of about 2 miles.

My guess is that for people that live within 2 miles of their work, school, and other needs, you’ll start seeing most households drop to a single car, with electric bikes making up most of the utility needs. It’s hard to predict a timeline here, and is highly dependent on a communities attention to making roads safer for non-car users. But for communities that do make those safety improvements you see big upticks in bike usage for things like taking kids to school, daily food shopping, and travel to work.

There's a simple test - can you put it on your porch or in a hallway?