6 ms·
Electric scooter companies will require permits in San Francisco
- ztratar 9y agoAs a selfish consumer, I LOVE these scooters & want the city to "figure it out" to make them viable ASAP. Shut up and take my money, ok? ;)
- smaili 9y agoFor those wondering why the permits: > “This is a basic permitting scheme to allow the professional staff at SFMTA to permit these with sensible, regulatory frameworks and to be able to confiscate unpermitted vehicles or devices,” Sheehy said.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoThat doesn't really explain the permits except to say they want to be able to take scooters away from people.
- djrogers 9y agoThat doesn't answer the 'why'. I have read the article, and still have no idea what specifically the city wans to regulate. What types of rules and requirements are the councilmembers and SFMTA expecting to put in place? Are there specific restrictions that are in the interest of the city's residents, or is this just a money-grab?
- DogOnTheWeb 9y agoPresumably permitting will allow the city to control the amount of scooters on the streets to control public space congestion and ensure that those who operate in the city are following rules regarding placement, education and safety.
- CyberDildonics 9y agoIs there an actual problem being solved or is it just a solution in search of a problem?
- 0x00000000 9y agoTitle is kind of misleading. They are talking about permits for companies to deploy them for scooter-sharing services, not for a person to operate one.
- dang 9y agoOk, we've rephrased it to reflect that.
- chairmanwow 9y ago> Yee, noted how he’s heard from seniors and people in wheelchairs who are “being imperiled and inconvenienced because they are having to navigate around scooters and bikes.” This is one of the more unconvincing statements in this article. The massive convenience win that shared bicycles, scooters, cars etc bring to cities is well worth the "inconvenience" of them being parked on the sidewalk. I think SF needs to go the route of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen etc and designate MANY, MANY bicycle parking zones on the city's sidewalks. As long as the companies are decentized to allow their machines to be a public nuisance (fines), they will pass on the cost of poor parking behavior to whomever actually place the scooter in a dangerous / rude / thoughtless place. See the "Mobike Score" [0]. I hate the rhetoric that the streets are being vitiated by shared transportation. There are simple fixes to these problems. [0] https://mobike.com/us/faq https://mobike.com/us/faq (Mobike Score)
- Mizza 9y agoAre you being sarcastic? You really think that Shanghai is a good model for this? Did you not see this photo set?: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/ https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversup... The sidewalk is a public resource. Companies shouldn't be able to use it without paying the public for its usage. A restaurant needs a paid permit just to put chairs and tables in front of their building, why should it be any different for a scooter company?
- wskinner 9y agoPerhaps charging companies to put chairs on the sidewalk is not necessary, either.
- ibeckermayer 9y agoWell there's an idea...
- moorhosj 9y agoThe public owns the right-of-way, why shouldn’t they be compensated for renting it out for private use?
- michaelt 9y agoI suspect regulators have learned from Uber and AirBnB that if you take a "wait and see" approach to regulating startups, by the time you decide to regulate they're already big enough they think they can thumb their nose at regulators with impunity. And while some people might cheer regulators losing power, the regulators themselves are seldom among them.
- swang 9y agoi am generally in favor of alternative modes of transportation but these scooters annoy the hell out of me. everyday i walk down 2nd street there are scooters randomly strewn around. some are upright, some are to the "side" of the sidewalk, but there is also a group of them that look like they're just randomly thrown to the ground. also sadly sf is just not very friendly to non-car transportation in the first place. so the alternative is people riding these things ride them on the sidewalks, which is annoying for pedestrians. also a safety issue: i've seen maybe only 3-4 people ride one with a helmet. maybe that's on the user of the scooter, but then again none of the scooter companies seem to address it since that'll probably mean less rides for them. i support the idea, but they make the city aesthetically more unpleasing than it needs to be and makes my morning walk to work and back more annoying.
- s0rce 9y agoCars are ugly, litter the streets and are exceptionally dangerous.
- randyrand 9y agoSimple solution: There should be painted areas on the sidewalk to put them, and regulators should be able to fine companies if they're found outside of it, which will then pass that fine onto the user that left it there.
- tylerhou 9y agoWhat stops people from going around and moving scooters outside of painted areas such that the last user gets a fine?
- ibeckermayer 9y agoEverybody complaining about these scooters will get used to it. They're not very inconvenient, they're literally just objects on the sidewalk that you need to walk around. I use them all the time, they're a quick, efficient way to get around. Also fun to ride.
- randyrand 9y agoSimple solution: There should be painted areas on the sidewalk to put them, and regulators should be able to fine companies if they're found outside of it, which will then pass that fine onto the user that left it there.
- blhack 9y agoI can physically pick one of these up and move it outside of the box. Who gets fined now? Where do the boxes get painted? Your solution is not simple.
- chrischen 9y agoActually Bird just implemented a feature after the cease and desist that requires you to take a picture of your parking job.
- DrScump 9y agoAre there unique identifiers that are visible in a photo panned out far enough to show the context in which the bike was parked? (Leaving aside the fact that you could take the photo at any favorable location within minutes of your destination... or just change the photo metadata.)
- randyrand 9y agoIt's easy to tell when they are moved, and whether it was moved after the user parked it. The scooters have gyros and accelerometers and clocks in them.
- 9y ago
- johnnyOnTheSpot 9y agoUndocumented scooters are a problem. They take the work away from us cyclist who haul tourists everywhere.
- fluxsauce 9y agoThere's also a need for better hardware security on the scooters themselves; I saw at least two in SOMA this morning missing their batteries.
- MrGando 9y agoI live in San Francisco. These things are everywhere, the people who ride them leave them anywhere as well. Sometimes just laying flat on the ground even. I hate that they take sidewalk space. Hopefully they'll figure it out... but I'm all in for designated parking areas for these things or taking them off the sidewalk.
- gkoberger 9y agoWe clearly live in a different San Francisco. I see them all over, but have only seen maybe 1-2 (out of hundreds) that are blocking anything or knocked over. And the ones that are laying flat are likely knocked down by someone who dislikes them.
- chrischen 9y agoI've found the problem that there aren't enough of them (if you're trying to use them for a practical purpose). If they're a problem it'll be if someone rides on the sidewalk, but I've personally yet to see that. Frankly SF has dozens of other nuisance problems such as literal human feces on the street, tents, crack smokers in broad daylight, various types of property crime, before one tipped-over scooter in a 3 block radius would be considered a legitimate nuisance. I think the main reason why the city is going after these startups is because the startups have money.
- notyourday 9y agoSolution is simple: a few big trash trucks going through, picking them up and squishing them like little bugs. As soon as the companies that provide them start losing those multi-hundred to multi-thousand dollar bikes in quantify of hundreds or thousands they ( the companies ) will figure out how to deal with it. MTA a few years ago dealt with bicyclists ignoring "Dont chain your bikes to X" signs by sending its workers to cut the bikes in addition to cutting the lock chains. This quickly solved the problem.
- joshe 9y agoSF is doing a reasonable job, they should be commended for not coming down hard on the scooters. The "tech companies are privatizing the streets" meme doesn't make sense. Any scooters are less objectionable than the private cars that killed 14 pedestrians last year. Delivery vans are corporations taking up space on the street. The street has benches, planters, parked bikes, phone boxes, mail boxes, and 20 other "private" things. The public street is for shared use by everyone, not a commercial free zone of only charming activities. The whole thing is pretty wild. For example the scooters are all unlocked, the app just turns on the electric motor. That seems crazy to me, every kid in the city is going to borrow them. And I've seen a bunch of homeless people kick pushing them down the street. So maybe they all end up in backyards, and the companies go out of business. But maybe I'm wrong and it's a minor problem. They make enough to pay for the loses, and become a nice transportation option. Long term there's certainly a place for permitting, but it's much better to do permissive experiments than to guess every possible downside. As a counterexample, NY is still confiscating electric bikes. What a waste. https://www.outsideonline.com/2298141/are-we-living-golden-age-cycling https://www.outsideonline.com/2298141/are-we-living-golden-a... Kudos to SF for experimenting.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoNY is ticketing motor vehicles operating on bike paths and without the legally required lighting or registration. Comply with the law and ebikes are perfectly fine.
- Graziano_M 9y agoWell the scooters (that I've seen) have GPS, lock the wheels, and audibly threaten you if you try to move them around.
- tt 9y agoSF has learned its lessons from Uber (and presumably read up on the bike sharing problems in China). My take on these scooter startups is that they won't make it very far: https://www.inc.com/alex-moazed/electric-scooter-startups-in-battle-with-san-francisco.html https://www.inc.com/alex-moazed/electric-scooter-startups-in...
- kjgkjhfkjf 9y agoCarelessly placed scooters are a mild irritation, around the same level of annoyance as over-enthusiastic tree-planting requiring me to duck and weave almost constantly as I walk along the sidewalk. But the real problem that needs to be addressed is the idiots riding the scooters on the sidewalk, expecting pedestrians to dive out of their way.