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Bird, Lime and Spin Receive Cease-And-desist Letters from SF City Attorney

81 points by sethbannon 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
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sgrove 9y ago
Infuriating, I'm a huge fan of these services. I initially thought they would just be toys, but they've removed any uber/lyft around the city for me - they're both faster and cheaper, they park just like bicycles, they don't cause any noise pollution, and they completely eliminate last-mile carbon output. Sometimes SF is an infuriating place.
- s17n 9y ago
  I just tried one yesterday, it managed to simultaneously feel uncomfortably dangerous and be pointlessly slow. To give context on my threshold for things "feeling dangerous", I used to be a bike messenger in NYC.
- vitno 9y ago
  On the other hand, I think this is great. These dockless systems are simply a way to move the negative externalities of the system onto the taxpayer. They clutter sidewalks, result in poor rider behavior, and generate massive amounts of e-waste. Sometimes, SF actually makes the right call.
  - s17n 9y ago
    The sidewalk cluttering is such a non-issue. The real problem is people riding them on the sidewalks, which is annoying and best and dangerous at worst. Riding them in the street, on the other hand, is scary, I'm pretty sure too scary for mass adoption - I'm pretty sure Bird knows this and is hoping that people will be able to get away with riding them on sidewalks. Edit: when I say that the sidewalk cluttering is a non-issue, I just mean that as far as I can tell there is barely any sidewalk cluttering, not that said cluttering wouldn't be an issue if it was actually happening.
    - batmansmk 9y ago
      Have kids and use a stroller? Old and use a walker? Blind and use a cane? Walk and don't look where you put your feet? Slip and fall are a major cause of death, only second in accidental deaths after motor vehicles. It brings 8M americans to the emergency room every year. In San Francisco, a whole department has been created only to litigate Slips and Falls. So yes, I'm glad the city prevented my grandmother from tripping on such a thing.
      - s17n 9y ago
        Updated my comment: what I'm saying is that there isn't actually any cluttering, not that cluttering is OK.
      - darawk 9y ago
        Going to need a source on that 8 million Americans per year going to the emergency room for a fall. That sounds absurdly high. The US population is only about 300 million. That means more ~2.5% of all people each year go to the emergency room because they fell down.
        jon_richards 9y ago
        I'm also guessing the vast majority of those falls are inside (probably inside the person's own home). There's a reason companies like lifealert exist.
        dexwiz 9y ago
        Over 10% of the US population is over 70. Falls are serious incidents for the elderly.
        dzhiurgis 9y ago
        Whats the median age in downtown San Francisco tho?
        almost_usual 9y ago
  - abcanthur 9y ago
    This has been a fascinating rapid reaction by the public. I've been both an evangelist for these and a huge critic. I love the tiniest form-factor, and think the bad parking can be solved by user-incentives. Typical ask-for-forgiveness-later that caused people to blow their tops (possibly due to the still ridiculous looking nature of tiny scooters?). What really soured me is the quality of machines that have been out of on the streets. Anecdata, but in 12 total rides for me, I've had a scooter that had 1) a hand brake with zero functioning ability 2) a throttle that stuck on as far as the user had pushed it 3) a missing bell. Unluckily, first block on that no brakes scooter was downhill and I dug a heal into the asphalt and eventually did a running dismount to avoid rolling into fast moving perpendicular traffic in Civic Center. Sticky throttle scooter caused an uncontrolled skid. Missing bell was a missing bell. But c'mon, these machines had been used for 10 days and they're having critical safety/maintenance issues. These are the worst possible mistakes, and could easily turn fatal. LimeBike shirked responsibility and their ops manager gave me a "LimeBike Saboteur Theory" over the phone. Bird took hours to disable a a scooter that i was desperately trying to tell them was dangerous to the next rider. Forget sidewalks, these are dangerous vehicles in their current state. You know how Ford bikes feel like tanks relative to a road bike? These scooters also need to be 10x more robust than what's in private use.
    - r27d 9y ago
      Scooters that are available on Alibaba for $200 are not durable for shared use.
  - girvo 9y ago
    And yet cars kill people every day. Clutter is worse though, somehow. I have no dog in this fight; I don’t live in SF. I just find it curious that dangerous, incredibly polluting and inefficient vehicles get grandfathered in, and the big gripe with these companies are “clutter”. Seems odd to me, is all.
- whyenot 9y ago
  In San Jose, people are completely irresponsible with these scooters. Since they can park them anywhere, they show up in front of stairs, in the middle of sidewalks, in front of doors, and other locations where they impede pedestrian traffic. SF might have gone too far, but it was pretty clear, at least to me that some regulation was necessary.
  - oleganza 9y ago
    I think it's only fair to compare dockless scooters/bikes with dockless cars. https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture-graveyards-of-unused-dockless-vehicles-in-american-cities.html https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  The city is just trying to ensure that the vehicles don't end up abandoned by riders all over the place. This has been a problem with bike and scooter services in many cities globally. They are giving the companies plenty of time to respond with a plan to address that issue. They're not going to be shut down. They just need to be more responsible for the impact on public places, because we humans are sadly too self-focused to b conscientious. Hell, the city will probably build more bike racks to accommodate them.
  - mike_h 9y ago
    I think it’s bigger than that. There’s a massive FUD meme around dockless technology: the only time it’s in the news is to show the random landfills a few of them end up in, ignoring the 99% that have made millions of lives easier. Dockless bikeshare went from 0 to 200 million riders in just two years, in a country where everybody already owned a bike. This is a technology that makes cities more accessible in a way you can’t imagine til you experience it. But people point to a few left out of place and tell us it’s going to kill our grannies.
    - DrScump 9y ago
      a few left out of place Dockless bikes are, by definition, all left out of place.
      - CalRobert 9y ago
        If only people could store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land. You could travel around the city, leave your bike there, and come back and continue your journey! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking
        DrScump 9y ago
        store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land Then it's no longer a sharing model; it's a "I want 24/7 control of a bike but only pay for while I'm riding it and park it anywhere without consequences" model. Which would be handy, but it wouldn't scale well from a business standpoint.
- sehugg 9y ago
  Sounds like the same problems as the dockless bike shares. I saw one of those parked next to a Goodwill collection box, probably by a befuddled or malicious resident.
- RobLach 9y ago
  Why should the city provide free storage space for their inventory? I can’t just drop a vending machine wherever I want.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Exactly! Now let's abolish all public parking.
  - dzhiurgis 9y ago
    I and you can drop my bike anywhere I want. Sharing them means less bikes left everywhere.
  - brezina 9y ago
    You mean like the 450k street car parking spaces that line almost every street in our city?
    - inferiorhuman 9y ago
      Much of the on-street parking is paid parking. If you're proposing that these scooter companies pay per hour that each scooter is left on the sidewalk, I think that's a great idea.
      - s0rce 9y ago
        Really, I think its probably only a small fraction. Most residential neighborhoods have free parking, even many commercial areas. Do we have stats on this to be sure?
        binarycrusader 9y ago
        Parking, even in “free” residential areas is time or permit restricted. So even if payment is not direct there are other indirect payments and constraints.
      - brezina 9y ago
- mike_h 9y ago
  SF made an exclusive deal with Ford GoBike, the expensive docked bikes that are never nearby when you need them. That pre-emptively barred these companies from launching their dockless bikes in SF, and so the scooters are the workaround. And as someone else points out, scooters are scary on the street, so now we have a sidewalk problem. This is 100% the city’s fault for saddling us with old bikeshare technology.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - r27d 9y ago
    $3 for a single 30 minute GoBike trip is expensive? 15 minutes on a Bird Scooter is $3.55. The GoBike stations are fairly dense you might have to walk a block or two. https://member.fordgobike.com/map/ https://member.fordgobike.com/map/
    - mike_h 9y ago
      Dockless bikes are $1 per 30 mins... having one 20 feet from you vs two blocks is a qualitative difference. And zoom out on that map – the GoBikes only cover one small part of the city.
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        Nevermind the ceaseless free ride promos, and Ofo offering an hour for a buck. I don't see how being more expensive and less convenient is competitive in the transportation sector.
    - ztratar 9y ago
      The GoBike is a joke. You have to pedal insanely hard just to go half the speed of a normal, cheap bike. The components are just awful, and the stations aren't that great either. As a user of both, the Scooter experience is 50x better. Just not even on the same level. I agree some regulation is needed to prevent massive clutter and keep the sidewalks safe, but I've had zero issues with people while a rider, or with riders while a pedestrian.
- sagichmal 9y ago
  That's wild for me to hear. The scooters are dangerously slow to ride in bike lanes, and unstable on the irregular pavement. They're strictly worse than all other forms of locomotion, including walking. They also make you look ridiculous, in a shameful way. In my experience.
  - beeskneecaps 9y ago
    You can feel the hate as you glide along. A+++++ would ride again
  - ztratar 9y ago
    Depends entirely on the scooter. The Lime scooters are awfully, stupidly slow, but the Bird ones are plenty fast for the bike lane.
    - sagichmal 9y ago
      I've only tested the Bird ones. Riding them in the bike lane is terrifying. They're less than half of the speed of bikes!
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I've tried LimeBike and Bird. LimeBike had a bit poor acceleration (felt like software throttling), but was taller and a bit bigger than Bird, had a screen. App wasn't as good as Bird's. Bird requires US licence to use (lol), although manually entering garbage data let me use for single use. Had much better acceleration, but a protruding control box felt a bit annoying. Both scooters miss hardware locking feature. As a tourist it's common to drain your phone battery to dead leaving you with no way to end your ride. Also, it would be nice to unlock multiple scooters with single phone. Lack of suspension is sometimes uncomfortable, but not too bad. Safety-wise I've felt probably just as worried as in any foreign city on a bicycle - not great, but city traffic is slow enough to make it ok. Overall I was super satisfied, can't wait for them to appear everywhere (and get better top speed).
  - dheera 9y ago
    Bird is just a Xiaomi m365 scooter with a "Bird" sticker on it.
    - dzhiurgis 9y ago
      How about control box?
      - dheera 9y ago
        Just details. Since they did not design 98% of the scooter, when talking about speed, range, riding quality, I usually refer to it as a Xiaomi scooter and not a Bird scooter. Much in the same way that if you rent a Zipcar and its acceleration is poor, blame Ford or Toyota or whoever made the car that you rented, not Zipcar.
- almost_usual 9y ago
  Regulation is required, our industry needs to realize it’s not always about the bottom line and disruption. The products we make have real world consequences and they need to be addressed before a “let’s just ship this now to make a quick buck” launch. I’m glad there were actually some companies that waited to test out their products and work with SFMTA. This unregulated ship fast theme is no different than handling personal data irresponsibly. Companies that don’t care about the public and only their bottom line should be penalized.
- baddox 9y ago
  Funny that you mention noise pollution. My most prominent “experience” with these scooters has been the one parked outside my apartment building the other day beeping incessantly and flashing a strobe light. The beeping was incredibly loud. I started hearing it when my elevator got to the first floor: from across the street and through my building’s front door, lobby, and elevator door. It was beeping like that from at least 6pm when I got home and 10pm when I last checked.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    Is there any reason you didn't call the local police non-emergency line and report the abandoned vehicle that was likely violating local noise ordinances? Doesn't matter if its a shared car, scooter, etc, if its creating loud noises late into the night and its owners are unresponsive, report it. I've done that a few times for Car2Go and ReachNow's.
    - baddox 9y ago
      I considered doing that, but decided it’s probably not worth bothering them given that the street is also filled with homeless people, piles of trash, and discarded needles. I’ve since learned that you can use the 311 app to report abandoned vehicles, so I’ll do that in the future.
- ericmcer 9y ago
  It is increasingly crazy to me that we pour so much money into government and then expect nothing of them. Any solution to real problems we face (pollution, traffic, no parking) is expected to come from the private sector. We only expect Government to do the bare minimum and not implode. Government projects efficiently solving these problems would be the ultimate vertical integration, its maddening that so little value is provided to citizens. It feels like we are totally duped into paying more and more taxes while continually lowering our expectations, although I always feel this way during tax season :p.
sethbannon 9y ago
Worth pointing out that not all electric scooter companies chose to disregard city regulations. Waybots has made the choice to work with cities to get approval before launching. Seems like a better approach, and one likely to give them a big advantage long-term. I believe they're still the only legally operating electric scooter sharing company in the US (currently live in DC where they got permission to launch).
dude3 9y ago
Was a fan too. I haven’t seen any knocked over
jonah 9y ago
Jalopnik tried to use Bird and came away with a pretty dim view of the experience: https://jalopnik.com/i-tried-san-franciscos-electric-scooter-share-and-it-wa-1825275906 https://jalopnik.com/i-tried-san-franciscos-electric-scooter...
aphextron 9y ago
I've seen these pop up all over the bay and in LA recently. More often than not they end up immediately abandoned all over public spaces as soon as they run out of batteries or the first free ride is over. Bird particularly seems the worst. The scooters are really under powered and have tiny batteries with seemingly nobody maintaining or charging them, so they just end up laying around. You also get completely inexperienced riders with zero safety equipment driving around in the streets causing issues. It's just another example of a short sighted attempt to arbitrage the public well being for private profit.
URSpider94 9y ago
I think you’re going to see cities acting much more quickly to clamp down on services like this. They have realized that Uber and Airbnb got the proverbial elephant’s nose under the tent, by the time they got around to trying to regulate them it was too late. FWIW, I think dockless bike/scooter share is a great idea, but having seen what a mess it has become in China, there do need to be some ground rules so that pedestrians aren’t having to step over piles of them to walk down the street.
- mike_h 9y ago
  Have you seen piles of them on the street yourself? I never have, in Beijing, Shanghai, or Xiamen. People are 99% considerate; the 1% who aren’t make for better photos. The frictionless utility of dockless has brought so much ease and joy to these cities that any marginal, occasional mess appears far outweighed to me, and anyone I’ve ever talked to.
  - nrser 9y ago
    I live in Beijing, and the bike and scooter shares are everywhere, including blocking sidewalks and in huge piles and it’s absoultly great. They’ve been a terrific improvement. It’s great to use them, and it’s great to see so many other people using them. Yeah, they’re kind of a pain to deal with them sometimes, but it turns out you can just move the bikes, and walk or ride around the piles. I have yet to see anyone get stuck in a pile. And somehow even people that don’t use the bikes seem to be able to lend some value to the idea that other people do (this was very strange to me at first, having grown up in the Bay Area). Beijing is pretty much the perfect city for them though... completely flat and ridiculous spacious and open (except parts of the old city). I can see it being more painful in tighter cities. But they’ll figure the piles problem out; it’s already gotten better, and the net benefit has been pretty large.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    Yes, I have, in Shenzhen, as recently as last month. Not the crazy mountains that have made the news, but certainly dozens of them at every corner of the central business district. Fortunately, Shenzhen is a new city, more like San Jose than SF, with extremely wide sidewalks, so there’s enough room. That same density of parked bikes in SF would make the sidewalks unpassable for pedestrians, much less people in wheelchairs.
lev99 9y ago
I hope Seattle follows SF's example, as unlikely as that is in the local climate. Seattle's current adoption of bike sharing is, in large part, an effort to reduce carbon emissions and too make more use of our roads. I am 100% for doing both of these things, but I think Bike Share programs are not the best path. Deals where University of Washington Medical Center provides employees (noticeable) extra pay for biking to work, and removing minimum parking laws in more areas are the best way to move away from car transport. Even the downtown toll will be more effective at reducing car rides than bike share programs. Bike shares pollute sidewalks, are too slow for any distance more than two miles, and too heavy for going up Seattle's hills. In addition I believe they encourage the dangerous (and locally illegal) practice of biking without a helmet. Finally, I think Seattle's DoT has higher expectations for bike share programs than will actually pan out. I wish data on their usage was more public.
- nraynaud 9y ago
  There is no danger to others in biking without a helmet. The helmet issue is mostly something to try to get at biking people, it is not a public health issue. That why all warning are worded along the line: “helmet prevent head injuries” (like knee pad limit knee injuries), and not “helmet improves general outcomes”. Most studies agree that head injury absent a car strike are rare and are compensated by the long term benefits over the population. The most dangerous thing in a bike is the surrounding cars.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    This, this, this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wears a helmet when cycling in the Netherlands - not five-year-olds and certainly not adults, and absolutely everyone cycles everywhere. Yes, people do die of bike injuries, but the number is surprisingly small, something like 160 people per year out of a country of 16 million.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      The UK with a much much bigger population than the Netherlands and worse cycling provision has 102 fatalities - sound's like you have a problem.
Zhenya 9y ago
This is rich coming from SF, where homeless tents, needles and human excrement are abound: “creating a public nuisance on The City’s streets and sidewalks and endangering public health and safety.”
- bezosisevil 9y ago
  Exactly. I’d also say that the broken glass from 30,000 annual vehicle break ins is a bit more of a public nuisance than some misplaced scooters.
- almost_usual 9y ago
  You’re comparing people with mental disabilities and drug problems to highly educated individuals who shipped a product to the public haphazardly to make a quick buck. They should have known better.
  - baddox 9y ago
    That’s true, but I don’t think the comparison has anything to do with the people who cause the problems. The comparison is the significance of the public nuisance and health hazard.
bezosisevil 9y ago
The companies should probably just ignore the city attorney considering the city’s dismal record at prosecuting crime. Considering that you can break into vehicles and defecate in public with impunity, I think the city has about a hundred worse things to deal with before attacking badly-parked scooters.
- almost_usual 9y ago
  People that break into cars and defecate in public have nothing to lose. These companies have millions of dollars at stake.
themark 9y ago
So they are going to allocate city resources to seize and impound them? NIMBYs win again.
philip1209 9y ago
Just landed in SF an hour ago. I had read about the controversy, but I hadn't expected to see the scooters everywhere so far. Soma, FiDi, and North Beach. Some had headlights on that made them obvious in the dark. It's a very visible phenomenon, partially because I thought that anything like that left on the sidewalk in SF got stolen. (Neither for nor against - just an observation)
eecc 9y ago
I don’t understand how these companies don’t get that a public space is meant to be used, not abused. If they want to disseminate their vehicles around public spaces so much better but they must at least coordinate with the administrators to do it in an orderly fashion. IOW, get a permit, pay rent and install sidewalk parking racks. Public free ones are for occasional individual use.
Reedx 9y ago
It's interesting, I wouldn't have thought this is a business that could work. Expensive scooters left on sidewalks. Bikes get stolen constantly and are a lot bigger, and could have a tracking device on it. What keeps them from being stolen and the GPS disabled?
- fipple 9y ago
  I think the bigger problem with the business model is that the things break down constantly. I usually have to check >5 of them to find one that works.
DogOnTheWeb 9y ago
I joined the supervisor hearing today late, but there was important context there that is missing in this article. - They mentioned several companies that were waiting for permits to launch, and applauded companies like Scoot (which is planning to launch e-bikes) and Waybots for working with them. - They mentioned that SFMTA was first contacted about these scooters to in February and immediately began working on a permit process which is due to begin next month. That's light speed for a government agency. - The only reason there was a sudden rush in deployment was that one company (Bird or Lime) decided to jump the gun and launch on St. Patrick's Day. The others that deployed didn't want to lose first mover advantage. At least one of these three hadn't even contacted SFMTA until after deployment. - Lime did not even send a representative to the meeting at all. Apparently they decided to just contact TechCrunch after the fact. The supervisors were rough on them and Aaron Peskin even had the nerve to call them "techbros", but they brought this on themselves by trying to use the old "move fast and break things" play that this city has seen before.
- mc32 9y ago
  I don't often agree with the supes, but here I do. There really needs to be planning and coordination with the government with things like these. There is only so much bandwidth for modes of transportation that cannot allow leisez-fair transit to run amok in the city. Proceed with a well developed plan with all stakeholders in mind.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    If you applied the same philosophy to Honda and Toyota, the scooters would win hands-down.
    - mc32 9y ago
      Sure, when people begin to be born, live, work and die in the same building, until then, people will also need long distance transport modes. New entrants have to cede priority to established systems and work within a framework to augment the systems -- else we end up with things like the millions of dead ebikes we see in China, for example.
dawhizkid 9y ago
I haven’t used these yet but I’m very happy with Jump electric bikes, which seems more appropriate for med-long distances and a lot cheaper ($4hr vs $9-10hr for Bird)
thurn 9y ago
Where do they source their scooters from? they seem pretty high quality, you'd think they were pretty expensive. I'd like to buy one myself.
- hug 9y ago
  They look for all the world like a Mijia scooter, with a sticker on them. https://xiaomi-mi.com/electric-scooters/xiaomi-mijia-electric-scooter-black/ https://xiaomi-mi.com/electric-scooters/xiaomi-mijia-electri...
- trevorcreech 9y ago
  Bird and Spin both use this model: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Xiaomi-MI-M365-electric-scooter-folding_60679640505.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Xiaomi-MI-M365-electr...
carapace 9y ago
These scooters are all over my neighborhood. Most of the time they are parked reasonably. Sometimes they fall over. But they suffer from the "dog shit" problem: there are enough inconsiderate riders who leave the scooters in stupid places that it's going to piss people off. You don't notice the well-parked scooters. The big issue I see with them is that the people riding them are often unsafe. They don't come with helmets. I've also seen some pretty reckless driving, both in traffic and on the sidewalk.
Animats 9y ago
So who recharges all these things? Do they credit people if they bring it to a charging station, or what?
- r27d 9y ago
  They were paying gig economy workers to collect them after 8pm, charge 10-30 at a time in their apartments, and redistribute from 5-8am. They paid some of these people to show up today and talk about how great it pays. I really wish they could talk to some Uber drivers from 2010.
  - csisvunit 9y ago
    I wouldn't call chargers gig economy workers when Bird only credits $5/per scooter. That's not an income.
rdiddly 9y ago
I don't understand the appeal of services like these. If I had billions of dollars to start companies strictly for ironic/satirical purposes, I'd start one for sunglasses sharing. For those who find it too much of an onerous burden and a logistical nightmare to maintain and store a pair of sunglasses in between uses. Seriously though, why rely on the vagaries of supply and demand on somebody's network, and their maintenance diligence and so on, for a thing that you can own so cheaply, and always have there when you need it? It just has never made sense to me. The exception of course is for tourists who didn't bring their scooters or bikes along. I have considered it in that case... though never actually did it. I just walked.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- URSpider94 9y ago
  Really? 1. No money down: a decent bike is $700+, a bike share is $3 per ride or under $100 per year 2. No maintenance: someone else keeps the tires full and the chain lubed. If something breaks, you just park the bike and get another one. 3. No theft: bikes get stolen when they are parked. When a bike share is parked, it’s not your problem. 4. No parking hassles: finding a safe place to park your bike in the city is tough. Many buildings don’t provide bike storage. Try carrying your bike up and down from a 5th floor walk-up every day. 5. One-way trip: you rode to work this morning, and now it’s raining. No problem, take the bus home. Don’t believe me, just ask New Yorkers, who are taking an average of 40,000 rides per day on the city’s 12,000 citibikes.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    Yeah I know about Citibike, Velib, Capital Bikeshare, and the Nike ones in Portland, all of which are part of how I ended up accumulating enough experience of the topic to end up baffled that they're actually popular. But from your comments I realize it's about avoiding a commitment. And I'm not trying to sound as judgmental as that probably sounds. It's to enable you to NOT own a bike. But for reference here's how I've dealt with your five issues: 1. My current bike cost $550 new, 6 years ago, so that would've been less than $100/yr, if I hadn't replaced parts and spent more. But I get unlimited rides. And it'll last another 20 years if I'm not a fad-follower and don't get reckless or unlucky. 2. I do it myself, that way I'm the one in control of when it fails to get done. 3. Always lock it. Never had a problem. Having a cheap $550 bike probably helps. 4. Yep America's like that. I carry mine up & down from the 3rd floor. If I move I'll choose not to live above the 3rd floor. Or maybe I'll live on the 5th floor after all, and become a bad-ass with huge calves and five flights of endurance. 5. I wear rain gear.
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
Major props to the SF Transport authority who is moving fast, breaking business models and generally acting like the adult in the room. Looks like SF is in good hands. NB I thought Bird, Lime and Spin in the title was a firm of lawyers or maybe PR people. Could you adjust the title to "e-scooter rental startups get cease and desist orders from SF City" or something. :-)
brezina 9y ago
The two largest complaints in cities with scooter sharing are (1) users riding on the sidewalk because they don’t feel safe on the road and (2) users parking on the sidewalk because all street space for storing personal mobility devices is allocated to 4,000 lb cars. A climate conscious city can get more people using zero emission vehicles like bikes and scooters and solve the issues above by (1) creating protected bike lanes so scooter users of all ages and abilities feel safe riding on the street and (2) converting one or two car street parking spots on every block to bike and scooter parking. However, street parking has been a 3rd rail of local politics in American cities. Demographics are pointing to change: last year SF added 8,500 residents but car registrations dropped by 1,800. More protected bike lanes, less personal cars, more ride sharing/autonomous cars and more scooters is the future - most boomer politicians running American cities today just don’t get this yet - they and their friends live in highly appreciated SFHs,have a personal car and a place to store said car, maintain a low prop13 tax rate, and reminisce of 1974 when people were moving out of cities and they could always find free parking right in front of their favorite restaurant. But the demographics are changing, our streets will transform as a result and for the sake of our planet, it couldn’t happen soon enough
- ncr100 9y ago
  The government is attempting to do its function and protect the populace. These companies have done things which violate the government's rules. Imagine a bug where you fix it incorrectly and it spawns Two more bugs. That is what is going on here, and being discussed in this post. How should technology companies work with governments when both: A- deployment of their tech is most likely to violate the law, and B- the Market Opportunity is most likely to be spoiled by a competitor deploying first What should that company do? Break things and ask for forgiveness? Budget for lawsuits and ship first? Or adhere to the law, working with the system?
raz32dust 9y ago
I definitely support the need to regulate these services. On the one hand, I have often wanted such a service in SF. That I should not have to worry about parking or racking is a key requirement. At the same time, it doesn't seem fair to allow private companies to litter the streets with junk. Partnership with government is crucial. I am quite happy with the way things are turning out - they launch first, government reacts quickly to regulate them, and now they work with the government to figure out solutions. The other alternative - them getting permits first - would never work fast enough in practice.
fosk 9y ago
SF is a city thriving with homelessness, drug abuse on the streets, dangerous needles and human shit everywhere. Glad to see they are spending time on things that matter. Among other things, on 6th street there are people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk, peeing on walls, camping in front of liquor stores and barbecuing illegally on the sidewalk (!) in broad daylight. Yet the fabulous city administration considers electrical scooters to be the topic of the day.
odammit 9y ago
I think the biggest problem is they make you look like a douchebag but feel like a hipster. That’s a wreckless combination the world isn’t ready for.

81 points by sethbannon 9y ago

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Infuriating, I'm a huge fan of these services. I initially thought they would just be toys, but they've removed any uber/lyft around the city for me - they're both faster and cheaper, they park just like bicycles, they don't cause any noise pollution, and they completely eliminate last-mile carbon output. Sometimes SF is an infuriating place.

s17n 9y ago
I just tried one yesterday, it managed to simultaneously feel uncomfortably dangerous and be pointlessly slow. To give context on my threshold for things "feeling dangerous", I used to be a bike messenger in NYC.
vitno 9y ago
On the other hand, I think this is great. These dockless systems are simply a way to move the negative externalities of the system onto the taxpayer. They clutter sidewalks, result in poor rider behavior, and generate massive amounts of e-waste. Sometimes, SF actually makes the right call.
- s17n 9y ago
  The sidewalk cluttering is such a non-issue. The real problem is people riding them on the sidewalks, which is annoying and best and dangerous at worst. Riding them in the street, on the other hand, is scary, I'm pretty sure too scary for mass adoption - I'm pretty sure Bird knows this and is hoping that people will be able to get away with riding them on sidewalks. Edit: when I say that the sidewalk cluttering is a non-issue, I just mean that as far as I can tell there is barely any sidewalk cluttering, not that said cluttering wouldn't be an issue if it was actually happening.
  - batmansmk 9y ago
    Have kids and use a stroller? Old and use a walker? Blind and use a cane? Walk and don't look where you put your feet? Slip and fall are a major cause of death, only second in accidental deaths after motor vehicles. It brings 8M americans to the emergency room every year. In San Francisco, a whole department has been created only to litigate Slips and Falls. So yes, I'm glad the city prevented my grandmother from tripping on such a thing.
    - s17n 9y ago
      Updated my comment: what I'm saying is that there isn't actually any cluttering, not that cluttering is OK.
    - darawk 9y ago
      Going to need a source on that 8 million Americans per year going to the emergency room for a fall. That sounds absurdly high. The US population is only about 300 million. That means more ~2.5% of all people each year go to the emergency room because they fell down.
      - jon_richards 9y ago
        I'm also guessing the vast majority of those falls are inside (probably inside the person's own home). There's a reason companies like lifealert exist.
      - dexwiz 9y ago
        Over 10% of the US population is over 70. Falls are serious incidents for the elderly.
        dzhiurgis 9y ago
        Whats the median age in downtown San Francisco tho?
        almost_usual 9y ago
- abcanthur 9y ago
  This has been a fascinating rapid reaction by the public. I've been both an evangelist for these and a huge critic. I love the tiniest form-factor, and think the bad parking can be solved by user-incentives. Typical ask-for-forgiveness-later that caused people to blow their tops (possibly due to the still ridiculous looking nature of tiny scooters?). What really soured me is the quality of machines that have been out of on the streets. Anecdata, but in 12 total rides for me, I've had a scooter that had 1) a hand brake with zero functioning ability 2) a throttle that stuck on as far as the user had pushed it 3) a missing bell. Unluckily, first block on that no brakes scooter was downhill and I dug a heal into the asphalt and eventually did a running dismount to avoid rolling into fast moving perpendicular traffic in Civic Center. Sticky throttle scooter caused an uncontrolled skid. Missing bell was a missing bell. But c'mon, these machines had been used for 10 days and they're having critical safety/maintenance issues. These are the worst possible mistakes, and could easily turn fatal. LimeBike shirked responsibility and their ops manager gave me a "LimeBike Saboteur Theory" over the phone. Bird took hours to disable a a scooter that i was desperately trying to tell them was dangerous to the next rider. Forget sidewalks, these are dangerous vehicles in their current state. You know how Ford bikes feel like tanks relative to a road bike? These scooters also need to be 10x more robust than what's in private use.
  - r27d 9y ago
    Scooters that are available on Alibaba for $200 are not durable for shared use.
- girvo 9y ago
  And yet cars kill people every day. Clutter is worse though, somehow. I have no dog in this fight; I don’t live in SF. I just find it curious that dangerous, incredibly polluting and inefficient vehicles get grandfathered in, and the big gripe with these companies are “clutter”. Seems odd to me, is all.
whyenot 9y ago
In San Jose, people are completely irresponsible with these scooters. Since they can park them anywhere, they show up in front of stairs, in the middle of sidewalks, in front of doors, and other locations where they impede pedestrian traffic. SF might have gone too far, but it was pretty clear, at least to me that some regulation was necessary.
- oleganza 9y ago
  I think it's only fair to compare dockless scooters/bikes with dockless cars. https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture-graveyards-of-unused-dockless-vehicles-in-american-cities.html https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...
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apotheothesomai 9y ago
The city is just trying to ensure that the vehicles don't end up abandoned by riders all over the place. This has been a problem with bike and scooter services in many cities globally. They are giving the companies plenty of time to respond with a plan to address that issue. They're not going to be shut down. They just need to be more responsible for the impact on public places, because we humans are sadly too self-focused to b conscientious. Hell, the city will probably build more bike racks to accommodate them.
- mike_h 9y ago
  I think it’s bigger than that. There’s a massive FUD meme around dockless technology: the only time it’s in the news is to show the random landfills a few of them end up in, ignoring the 99% that have made millions of lives easier. Dockless bikeshare went from 0 to 200 million riders in just two years, in a country where everybody already owned a bike. This is a technology that makes cities more accessible in a way you can’t imagine til you experience it. But people point to a few left out of place and tell us it’s going to kill our grannies.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    a few left out of place Dockless bikes are, by definition, all left out of place.
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      If only people could store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land. You could travel around the city, leave your bike there, and come back and continue your journey! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking
      - DrScump 9y ago
        store them with ease at the side of the street; perhaps paying a fee while they use the land Then it's no longer a sharing model; it's a "I want 24/7 control of a bike but only pay for while I'm riding it and park it anywhere without consequences" model. Which would be handy, but it wouldn't scale well from a business standpoint.
sehugg 9y ago
Sounds like the same problems as the dockless bike shares. I saw one of those parked next to a Goodwill collection box, probably by a befuddled or malicious resident.
RobLach 9y ago
Why should the city provide free storage space for their inventory? I can’t just drop a vending machine wherever I want.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Exactly! Now let's abolish all public parking.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I and you can drop my bike anywhere I want. Sharing them means less bikes left everywhere.
- brezina 9y ago
  You mean like the 450k street car parking spaces that line almost every street in our city?
  - inferiorhuman 9y ago
    Much of the on-street parking is paid parking. If you're proposing that these scooter companies pay per hour that each scooter is left on the sidewalk, I think that's a great idea.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      Really, I think its probably only a small fraction. Most residential neighborhoods have free parking, even many commercial areas. Do we have stats on this to be sure?
      - binarycrusader 9y ago
        Parking, even in “free” residential areas is time or permit restricted. So even if payment is not direct there are other indirect payments and constraints.
    - brezina 9y ago
mike_h 9y ago
SF made an exclusive deal with Ford GoBike, the expensive docked bikes that are never nearby when you need them. That pre-emptively barred these companies from launching their dockless bikes in SF, and so the scooters are the workaround. And as someone else points out, scooters are scary on the street, so now we have a sidewalk problem. This is 100% the city’s fault for saddling us with old bikeshare technology.
- deleted 9y ago
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- r27d 9y ago
  $3 for a single 30 minute GoBike trip is expensive? 15 minutes on a Bird Scooter is $3.55. The GoBike stations are fairly dense you might have to walk a block or two. https://member.fordgobike.com/map/ https://member.fordgobike.com/map/
  - mike_h 9y ago
    Dockless bikes are $1 per 30 mins... having one 20 feet from you vs two blocks is a qualitative difference. And zoom out on that map – the GoBikes only cover one small part of the city.
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      Nevermind the ceaseless free ride promos, and Ofo offering an hour for a buck. I don't see how being more expensive and less convenient is competitive in the transportation sector.
  - ztratar 9y ago
    The GoBike is a joke. You have to pedal insanely hard just to go half the speed of a normal, cheap bike. The components are just awful, and the stations aren't that great either. As a user of both, the Scooter experience is 50x better. Just not even on the same level. I agree some regulation is needed to prevent massive clutter and keep the sidewalks safe, but I've had zero issues with people while a rider, or with riders while a pedestrian.
sagichmal 9y ago
That's wild for me to hear. The scooters are dangerously slow to ride in bike lanes, and unstable on the irregular pavement. They're strictly worse than all other forms of locomotion, including walking. They also make you look ridiculous, in a shameful way. In my experience.
- beeskneecaps 9y ago
  You can feel the hate as you glide along. A+++++ would ride again
- ztratar 9y ago
  Depends entirely on the scooter. The Lime scooters are awfully, stupidly slow, but the Bird ones are plenty fast for the bike lane.
  - sagichmal 9y ago
    I've only tested the Bird ones. Riding them in the bike lane is terrifying. They're less than half of the speed of bikes!
dzhiurgis 9y ago
I've tried LimeBike and Bird. LimeBike had a bit poor acceleration (felt like software throttling), but was taller and a bit bigger than Bird, had a screen. App wasn't as good as Bird's. Bird requires US licence to use (lol), although manually entering garbage data let me use for single use. Had much better acceleration, but a protruding control box felt a bit annoying. Both scooters miss hardware locking feature. As a tourist it's common to drain your phone battery to dead leaving you with no way to end your ride. Also, it would be nice to unlock multiple scooters with single phone. Lack of suspension is sometimes uncomfortable, but not too bad. Safety-wise I've felt probably just as worried as in any foreign city on a bicycle - not great, but city traffic is slow enough to make it ok. Overall I was super satisfied, can't wait for them to appear everywhere (and get better top speed).
- dheera 9y ago
  Bird is just a Xiaomi m365 scooter with a "Bird" sticker on it.
  - dzhiurgis 9y ago
    How about control box?
    - dheera 9y ago
      Just details. Since they did not design 98% of the scooter, when talking about speed, range, riding quality, I usually refer to it as a Xiaomi scooter and not a Bird scooter. Much in the same way that if you rent a Zipcar and its acceleration is poor, blame Ford or Toyota or whoever made the car that you rented, not Zipcar.
almost_usual 9y ago
Regulation is required, our industry needs to realize it’s not always about the bottom line and disruption. The products we make have real world consequences and they need to be addressed before a “let’s just ship this now to make a quick buck” launch. I’m glad there were actually some companies that waited to test out their products and work with SFMTA. This unregulated ship fast theme is no different than handling personal data irresponsibly. Companies that don’t care about the public and only their bottom line should be penalized.
baddox 9y ago
Funny that you mention noise pollution. My most prominent “experience” with these scooters has been the one parked outside my apartment building the other day beeping incessantly and flashing a strobe light. The beeping was incredibly loud. I started hearing it when my elevator got to the first floor: from across the street and through my building’s front door, lobby, and elevator door. It was beeping like that from at least 6pm when I got home and 10pm when I last checked.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Is there any reason you didn't call the local police non-emergency line and report the abandoned vehicle that was likely violating local noise ordinances? Doesn't matter if its a shared car, scooter, etc, if its creating loud noises late into the night and its owners are unresponsive, report it. I've done that a few times for Car2Go and ReachNow's.
  - baddox 9y ago
    I considered doing that, but decided it’s probably not worth bothering them given that the street is also filled with homeless people, piles of trash, and discarded needles. I’ve since learned that you can use the 311 app to report abandoned vehicles, so I’ll do that in the future.
ericmcer 9y ago
It is increasingly crazy to me that we pour so much money into government and then expect nothing of them. Any solution to real problems we face (pollution, traffic, no parking) is expected to come from the private sector. We only expect Government to do the bare minimum and not implode. Government projects efficiently solving these problems would be the ultimate vertical integration, its maddening that so little value is provided to citizens. It feels like we are totally duped into paying more and more taxes while continually lowering our expectations, although I always feel this way during tax season :p.

sethbannon 9y ago

Worth pointing out that not all electric scooter companies chose to disregard city regulations. Waybots has made the choice to work with cities to get approval before launching. Seems like a better approach, and one likely to give them a big advantage long-term. I believe they're still the only legally operating electric scooter sharing company in the US (currently live in DC where they got permission to launch).

dude3 9y ago

Was a fan too. I haven’t seen any knocked over

jonah 9y ago

Jalopnik tried to use Bird and came away with a pretty dim view of the experience: https://jalopnik.com/i-tried-san-franciscos-electric-scooter-share-and-it-wa-1825275906 https://jalopnik.com/i-tried-san-franciscos-electric-scooter...

aphextron 9y ago

I've seen these pop up all over the bay and in LA recently. More often than not they end up immediately abandoned all over public spaces as soon as they run out of batteries or the first free ride is over. Bird particularly seems the worst. The scooters are really under powered and have tiny batteries with seemingly nobody maintaining or charging them, so they just end up laying around. You also get completely inexperienced riders with zero safety equipment driving around in the streets causing issues. It's just another example of a short sighted attempt to arbitrage the public well being for private profit.

URSpider94 9y ago

I think you’re going to see cities acting much more quickly to clamp down on services like this. They have realized that Uber and Airbnb got the proverbial elephant’s nose under the tent, by the time they got around to trying to regulate them it was too late. FWIW, I think dockless bike/scooter share is a great idea, but having seen what a mess it has become in China, there do need to be some ground rules so that pedestrians aren’t having to step over piles of them to walk down the street.

mike_h 9y ago
Have you seen piles of them on the street yourself? I never have, in Beijing, Shanghai, or Xiamen. People are 99% considerate; the 1% who aren’t make for better photos. The frictionless utility of dockless has brought so much ease and joy to these cities that any marginal, occasional mess appears far outweighed to me, and anyone I’ve ever talked to.
- nrser 9y ago
  I live in Beijing, and the bike and scooter shares are everywhere, including blocking sidewalks and in huge piles and it’s absoultly great. They’ve been a terrific improvement. It’s great to use them, and it’s great to see so many other people using them. Yeah, they’re kind of a pain to deal with them sometimes, but it turns out you can just move the bikes, and walk or ride around the piles. I have yet to see anyone get stuck in a pile. And somehow even people that don’t use the bikes seem to be able to lend some value to the idea that other people do (this was very strange to me at first, having grown up in the Bay Area). Beijing is pretty much the perfect city for them though... completely flat and ridiculous spacious and open (except parts of the old city). I can see it being more painful in tighter cities. But they’ll figure the piles problem out; it’s already gotten better, and the net benefit has been pretty large.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  Yes, I have, in Shenzhen, as recently as last month. Not the crazy mountains that have made the news, but certainly dozens of them at every corner of the central business district. Fortunately, Shenzhen is a new city, more like San Jose than SF, with extremely wide sidewalks, so there’s enough room. That same density of parked bikes in SF would make the sidewalks unpassable for pedestrians, much less people in wheelchairs.

lev99 9y ago

I hope Seattle follows SF's example, as unlikely as that is in the local climate. Seattle's current adoption of bike sharing is, in large part, an effort to reduce carbon emissions and too make more use of our roads. I am 100% for doing both of these things, but I think Bike Share programs are not the best path. Deals where University of Washington Medical Center provides employees (noticeable) extra pay for biking to work, and removing minimum parking laws in more areas are the best way to move away from car transport. Even the downtown toll will be more effective at reducing car rides than bike share programs. Bike shares pollute sidewalks, are too slow for any distance more than two miles, and too heavy for going up Seattle's hills. In addition I believe they encourage the dangerous (and locally illegal) practice of biking without a helmet. Finally, I think Seattle's DoT has higher expectations for bike share programs than will actually pan out. I wish data on their usage was more public.

nraynaud 9y ago
There is no danger to others in biking without a helmet. The helmet issue is mostly something to try to get at biking people, it is not a public health issue. That why all warning are worded along the line: “helmet prevent head injuries” (like knee pad limit knee injuries), and not “helmet improves general outcomes”. Most studies agree that head injury absent a car strike are rare and are compensated by the long term benefits over the population. The most dangerous thing in a bike is the surrounding cars.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  This, this, this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wears a helmet when cycling in the Netherlands - not five-year-olds and certainly not adults, and absolutely everyone cycles everywhere. Yes, people do die of bike injuries, but the number is surprisingly small, something like 160 people per year out of a country of 16 million.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    The UK with a much much bigger population than the Netherlands and worse cycling provision has 102 fatalities - sound's like you have a problem.

Zhenya 9y ago

This is rich coming from SF, where homeless tents, needles and human excrement are abound: “creating a public nuisance on The City’s streets and sidewalks and endangering public health and safety.”

bezosisevil 9y ago
Exactly. I’d also say that the broken glass from 30,000 annual vehicle break ins is a bit more of a public nuisance than some misplaced scooters.
almost_usual 9y ago
You’re comparing people with mental disabilities and drug problems to highly educated individuals who shipped a product to the public haphazardly to make a quick buck. They should have known better.
- baddox 9y ago
  That’s true, but I don’t think the comparison has anything to do with the people who cause the problems. The comparison is the significance of the public nuisance and health hazard.

bezosisevil 9y ago

The companies should probably just ignore the city attorney considering the city’s dismal record at prosecuting crime. Considering that you can break into vehicles and defecate in public with impunity, I think the city has about a hundred worse things to deal with before attacking badly-parked scooters.

almost_usual 9y ago
People that break into cars and defecate in public have nothing to lose. These companies have millions of dollars at stake.

themark 9y ago

So they are going to allocate city resources to seize and impound them? NIMBYs win again.

philip1209 9y ago

Just landed in SF an hour ago. I had read about the controversy, but I hadn't expected to see the scooters everywhere so far. Soma, FiDi, and North Beach. Some had headlights on that made them obvious in the dark. It's a very visible phenomenon, partially because I thought that anything like that left on the sidewalk in SF got stolen. (Neither for nor against - just an observation)

eecc 9y ago

I don’t understand how these companies don’t get that a public space is meant to be used, not abused. If they want to disseminate their vehicles around public spaces so much better but they must at least coordinate with the administrators to do it in an orderly fashion. IOW, get a permit, pay rent and install sidewalk parking racks. Public free ones are for occasional individual use.

Reedx 9y ago

It's interesting, I wouldn't have thought this is a business that could work. Expensive scooters left on sidewalks. Bikes get stolen constantly and are a lot bigger, and could have a tracking device on it. What keeps them from being stolen and the GPS disabled?

fipple 9y ago
I think the bigger problem with the business model is that the things break down constantly. I usually have to check >5 of them to find one that works.

DogOnTheWeb 9y ago

I joined the supervisor hearing today late, but there was important context there that is missing in this article. - They mentioned several companies that were waiting for permits to launch, and applauded companies like Scoot (which is planning to launch e-bikes) and Waybots for working with them. - They mentioned that SFMTA was first contacted about these scooters to in February and immediately began working on a permit process which is due to begin next month. That's light speed for a government agency. - The only reason there was a sudden rush in deployment was that one company (Bird or Lime) decided to jump the gun and launch on St. Patrick's Day. The others that deployed didn't want to lose first mover advantage. At least one of these three hadn't even contacted SFMTA until after deployment. - Lime did not even send a representative to the meeting at all. Apparently they decided to just contact TechCrunch after the fact. The supervisors were rough on them and Aaron Peskin even had the nerve to call them "techbros", but they brought this on themselves by trying to use the old "move fast and break things" play that this city has seen before.

mc32 9y ago
I don't often agree with the supes, but here I do. There really needs to be planning and coordination with the government with things like these. There is only so much bandwidth for modes of transportation that cannot allow leisez-fair transit to run amok in the city. Proceed with a well developed plan with all stakeholders in mind.
- closeparen 9y ago
  If you applied the same philosophy to Honda and Toyota, the scooters would win hands-down.
  - mc32 9y ago
    Sure, when people begin to be born, live, work and die in the same building, until then, people will also need long distance transport modes. New entrants have to cede priority to established systems and work within a framework to augment the systems -- else we end up with things like the millions of dead ebikes we see in China, for example.

dawhizkid 9y ago

I haven’t used these yet but I’m very happy with Jump electric bikes, which seems more appropriate for med-long distances and a lot cheaper ($4hr vs $9-10hr for Bird)

thurn 9y ago

Where do they source their scooters from? they seem pretty high quality, you'd think they were pretty expensive. I'd like to buy one myself.

hug 9y ago
They look for all the world like a Mijia scooter, with a sticker on them. https://xiaomi-mi.com/electric-scooters/xiaomi-mijia-electric-scooter-black/ https://xiaomi-mi.com/electric-scooters/xiaomi-mijia-electri...
trevorcreech 9y ago
Bird and Spin both use this model: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Xiaomi-MI-M365-electric-scooter-folding_60679640505.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Xiaomi-MI-M365-electr...

carapace 9y ago

These scooters are all over my neighborhood. Most of the time they are parked reasonably. Sometimes they fall over. But they suffer from the "dog shit" problem: there are enough inconsiderate riders who leave the scooters in stupid places that it's going to piss people off. You don't notice the well-parked scooters. The big issue I see with them is that the people riding them are often unsafe. They don't come with helmets. I've also seen some pretty reckless driving, both in traffic and on the sidewalk.

Animats 9y ago

So who recharges all these things? Do they credit people if they bring it to a charging station, or what?

r27d 9y ago
They were paying gig economy workers to collect them after 8pm, charge 10-30 at a time in their apartments, and redistribute from 5-8am. They paid some of these people to show up today and talk about how great it pays. I really wish they could talk to some Uber drivers from 2010.
- csisvunit 9y ago
  I wouldn't call chargers gig economy workers when Bird only credits $5/per scooter. That's not an income.

rdiddly 9y ago

I don't understand the appeal of services like these. If I had billions of dollars to start companies strictly for ironic/satirical purposes, I'd start one for sunglasses sharing. For those who find it too much of an onerous burden and a logistical nightmare to maintain and store a pair of sunglasses in between uses. Seriously though, why rely on the vagaries of supply and demand on somebody's network, and their maintenance diligence and so on, for a thing that you can own so cheaply, and always have there when you need it? It just has never made sense to me. The exception of course is for tourists who didn't bring their scooters or bikes along. I have considered it in that case... though never actually did it. I just walked.

deleted 9y ago
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URSpider94 9y ago
Really? 1. No money down: a decent bike is $700+, a bike share is $3 per ride or under $100 per year 2. No maintenance: someone else keeps the tires full and the chain lubed. If something breaks, you just park the bike and get another one. 3. No theft: bikes get stolen when they are parked. When a bike share is parked, it’s not your problem. 4. No parking hassles: finding a safe place to park your bike in the city is tough. Many buildings don’t provide bike storage. Try carrying your bike up and down from a 5th floor walk-up every day. 5. One-way trip: you rode to work this morning, and now it’s raining. No problem, take the bus home. Don’t believe me, just ask New Yorkers, who are taking an average of 40,000 rides per day on the city’s 12,000 citibikes.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Yeah I know about Citibike, Velib, Capital Bikeshare, and the Nike ones in Portland, all of which are part of how I ended up accumulating enough experience of the topic to end up baffled that they're actually popular. But from your comments I realize it's about avoiding a commitment. And I'm not trying to sound as judgmental as that probably sounds. It's to enable you to NOT own a bike. But for reference here's how I've dealt with your five issues: 1. My current bike cost $550 new, 6 years ago, so that would've been less than $100/yr, if I hadn't replaced parts and spent more. But I get unlimited rides. And it'll last another 20 years if I'm not a fad-follower and don't get reckless or unlucky. 2. I do it myself, that way I'm the one in control of when it fails to get done. 3. Always lock it. Never had a problem. Having a cheap $550 bike probably helps. 4. Yep America's like that. I carry mine up & down from the 3rd floor. If I move I'll choose not to live above the 3rd floor. Or maybe I'll live on the 5th floor after all, and become a bad-ass with huge calves and five flights of endurance. 5. I wear rain gear.

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

Major props to the SF Transport authority who is moving fast, breaking business models and generally acting like the adult in the room. Looks like SF is in good hands. NB I thought Bird, Lime and Spin in the title was a firm of lawyers or maybe PR people. Could you adjust the title to "e-scooter rental startups get cease and desist orders from SF City" or something. :-)

brezina 9y ago

The two largest complaints in cities with scooter sharing are (1) users riding on the sidewalk because they don’t feel safe on the road and (2) users parking on the sidewalk because all street space for storing personal mobility devices is allocated to 4,000 lb cars. A climate conscious city can get more people using zero emission vehicles like bikes and scooters and solve the issues above by (1) creating protected bike lanes so scooter users of all ages and abilities feel safe riding on the street and (2) converting one or two car street parking spots on every block to bike and scooter parking. However, street parking has been a 3rd rail of local politics in American cities. Demographics are pointing to change: last year SF added 8,500 residents but car registrations dropped by 1,800. More protected bike lanes, less personal cars, more ride sharing/autonomous cars and more scooters is the future - most boomer politicians running American cities today just don’t get this yet - they and their friends live in highly appreciated SFHs,have a personal car and a place to store said car, maintain a low prop13 tax rate, and reminisce of 1974 when people were moving out of cities and they could always find free parking right in front of their favorite restaurant. But the demographics are changing, our streets will transform as a result and for the sake of our planet, it couldn’t happen soon enough

ncr100 9y ago
The government is attempting to do its function and protect the populace. These companies have done things which violate the government's rules. Imagine a bug where you fix it incorrectly and it spawns Two more bugs. That is what is going on here, and being discussed in this post. How should technology companies work with governments when both: A- deployment of their tech is most likely to violate the law, and B- the Market Opportunity is most likely to be spoiled by a competitor deploying first What should that company do? Break things and ask for forgiveness? Budget for lawsuits and ship first? Or adhere to the law, working with the system?

raz32dust 9y ago

I definitely support the need to regulate these services. On the one hand, I have often wanted such a service in SF. That I should not have to worry about parking or racking is a key requirement. At the same time, it doesn't seem fair to allow private companies to litter the streets with junk. Partnership with government is crucial. I am quite happy with the way things are turning out - they launch first, government reacts quickly to regulate them, and now they work with the government to figure out solutions. The other alternative - them getting permits first - would never work fast enough in practice.

fosk 9y ago

SF is a city thriving with homelessness, drug abuse on the streets, dangerous needles and human shit everywhere. Glad to see they are spending time on things that matter. Among other things, on 6th street there are people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk, peeing on walls, camping in front of liquor stores and barbecuing illegally on the sidewalk (!) in broad daylight. Yet the fabulous city administration considers electrical scooters to be the topic of the day.

odammit 9y ago

I think the biggest problem is they make you look like a douchebag but feel like a hipster. That’s a wreckless combination the world isn’t ready for.