18 ms·

What Dockless Bikes and Scooters Are Exposing

194 points by andrewfromx 9y ago

hapless 9y ago
If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public space without permission.
- gkoberger 9y ago
  You mean... like Getaround and Zipcar already do? The streets are filled with companies using public spaces: Fedex deliveries blocking the road, sidewalk signs for bars, Getaround rentals, food carts, mailboxes, ATMs, parking meters, Scoot scooters, taxi lines, Lyft/Ubers, Redbox DVD rentals, annoying Greenpeace petition people, construction, billboards, etc. I don't think it's a cost-saving measure for scooter/bike companies, but rather convenience for users. I wouldn't use scooters if I had to walk 4 blocks to a "designated pickup zone". Yes, these scooters/bikes are making money. But they also really improve cities, by cutting down on traffic congestion and car emissions. As long as they're regulated via permits (meaning the government makes a bit of money to pay for maintenance), they should be allowed... and if people dislike them, they'll go out of business, and it'll solve itself.
  - terenig 9y ago
    Yep! And even rental car companies do take advantage of public parking: when cars are actually in use, customers are free to park them in any public parking spot.
  - extra88 9y ago
    Zipcar pays for the parking spots they use. Obviously, while they’re being rented the drivers may use public spots the same as car owners do.
    - gkoberger 9y ago
      And Bird is paying (or offering to, at least) $1/scooter/day to SF. That's $365/scooter/year. I've heard Zipcar pays SF $1000-ish/year, so inch-for-inch it's certainly a good deal.
      - extra88 9y ago
        In the greater Boston area, I think I've only seen Zipcar spots on private property (though I'm not sure what the ownership is of the MBTA parking spaces) and I would expect the rate to be somewhat negotiable, based on supply & demand for the neighborhood.
        kingbirdy 9y ago
        Same in Philadelphia
        jarvuschris 9y ago
        There are some zipcar spots on streets in Philly
        mentalpiracy 9y ago
        Enterprise has a few streetside too. Almost assuredly, these companies pay Philly for the rights to that those marked spots.
        jonknee 9y ago
        There are car sharing services in Seattle that operate much like the scooters and bikes (park them in any city space, pay just for when you use, etc). The city charges a flat rate per car per month. Like dockless bike share it ends up being way more useful.
        badwolf 9y ago
        I love Car2Go here in Austin. They pay the city some flatrate per year, and so car2go can park anywhere in public street parking without paying meters.
  - jjoske 9y ago
    Well where I live (Melbourne, Aus) what a assume are the equivalent to Zipcar actually buy/rent car spaces to leave for their cars.
  - dwighttk 9y ago
    >Yes, these scooters/bikes are making money. Are they? Are any of the companies public? It seems like a burn through cash to get a user base sort of thing but maybe these companies are older and more established than it seems to me.
    - F_r_k 9y ago
      Are you required to be public in order to make money ?
      - d_k_f 9y ago
        No, but it would make it possible to actually check whether they do or not, which I guess is why parent is asking.
        dwighttk 9y ago
        yeah, just gives you numbers you can look at vs. just guessing.
  - bunderbunder 9y ago
    Fedex deliveries blocking the road for a short time are generally considered preferable to removing a whack of on-street parking from every block in order to have an excess of loading zones, or not being able to have deliveries at all. sidewalk signs for bars are regulated, at least in my city. They have to leave (IIRC) 6' of clearance on the sidewalk so they don't obstruct pedestrian traffic. Whether those rules are being followed is perhaps another issue, but I haven't generally found them to be a nuisance. Getaround rentals are private cars that you rent from the owner. If the city requires a fee to be paid for overnight on-street parking, that fee will be paid by the owner. If the street is meter parking, that fee will be paid by whoever is using the car. food carts typically pay the city a fee in exchange for use of public space. mailboxes are either owned by the government or installed on private property. ATMs are installed on private property. parking meters are government property. Scoot scooters (don't know what those are) taxi lines are a government designated thing. Note that most cities that have them also make money from taxi licensing. Lyft/Ubers are a minor menace, I agree with you on that one. Redbox DVD rentals are installed on private property. annoying Greenpeace petition people are required to get permits, at least in my city. construction also requires permits. billboards are installed on private property. Long story short, I think you're being hyperbolic here.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      "Fedex deliveries blocking the road" Preferable to cars, maybe, since it frees up parking, however, around here they simply park in the bike lane. I go by a UPS store daily and there are often 1-2 trucks both parked in the bike lane.
      - icantdrive55 9y ago
        I kinda get the need for commercial drivers to not obey laws most of us are scared of. They are being overworked because of us, and our convient buying patterns. That said, I would love to see fees/fines for mini code violations tied to a person's/company's Income. I get a $50 parking ticket. Why--because I'm poor. (My biggest fear is getting a ticket. These high priced tickets are a real concern for people like myself.) FedEx would get a $10,000 ticket. I would do like to see fees/fines tied to income. And "we don't have the technology" is no an excuse anymore.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Certainly, where I live in London, Zipcar has arranged with the council to have special bays marked, reserved for them. The council like car-sharing, so are happy - but it is done in a manageable way.
    - onion2k 9y ago
      I would how risky that is for Zipcar. What incentive would there be for the council to say no to a competitor offering more money for the spaces?
      - gcb0 9y ago
        uk gov might not work like a greed corporation as its usa counterparts. usually when a deal is stabilished with one company, others can jump in for the same price/share. the worst that would happen for zip car is to have to share the spaces.
    - obel1x 9y ago
      There is also Zipcar Flex in London. You can park the cars in on-street parking, even paid or residents bays. But they have only agreed it with some councils so far. Map: https://www.zipcar.co.uk/takethebluepin#zipzone-map https://www.zipcar.co.uk/takethebluepin#zipzone-map
  - erdojo 9y ago
    Yet another clueless astroturfer who alters the facts to fit your own narrative. Go back to your PR boss and tell them we're not buying your "messaging".
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Hertz and Avis have spots near downtown hotels in my city. It’s an easy problem for cities to regulate.
- burlesona 9y ago
  Cities also force all property owners to provide many “private” parking spaces for the use of whoever’s car may need a place to sit. The space they take up generally makes life worse for all other users of the street. The nuisance of these little scooters is trivial in comparison.
- blang 9y ago
  Car2Go does this, well sort of. In Seattle the company pays about $1300 [1] per car per year for parking, which includes skipping metered parking, which could come to a pretty large subsidy [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/car2go-a-handy-option-but-it-doesnrsquot-come-cheap/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/car2go-a-handy-option-...
- dcosson 9y ago
  > Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large This is the point under contention. I strongy disagree, I would very happily give up public parking for other uses of that space - more bike/scooter lanes that can be further offset from fast-moving cars, dedicated space for Uber/Lyft dropoffs that don't block the roads, 5-minute loading/unloading parking for Fedex trucks and Postmates delivery people to idle for a few minutes. Free (or heavily subsidized) parking for private cars is at the bottom of this list for me. It's also much more expensive to provide than these other things, because there's only one person benefitting from each parking space per few hours while all the others can benefit many more people. And even for the very drivers that street parking is intended to benefit - in lots of situations there are too few spaces on the street at all, so we're blocking this valuable space and most people won't find a spot anyway and will be forced to use a private garage. And it's not that I never drive, I sometimes do, I still think it's a much better use of public space if I had to find a private lot or garage on the occasions when I drive so that these other things can be available to everyone.
  - paulgb 9y ago
    Exactly. I'd add to this that benefiting the public at large vs. a company isn't exactly clear-cut. If I don't own a car, free parking doesn't benefit me directly, but having that space used for bikeshare docks does (even if this also benefits the bikeshare company). You could just as easily argue that free parking benefits Ford since it makes driving more feasible.
- Zigurd 9y ago
  Uber? You may say "Uber is just a platform" but they use public facilities as well as private cars. That User car takes up as much space as 20+ dockless ebikes.
- astura 9y ago
  Hertz and Avis don't park their fleet in public spaces because it would be bad for business. You want to rent a car? Gotta walk four blocks to pick it up.
- jonemo 9y ago
  > If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. I don't have a counter-example for your very specific statement, but these are close: * The car rental company "Rent a Wreck" in San Francisco drives between 5 and 20 of their camper vehicles off the lot and parks them in public parking spaces every morning around 7am and brings them back in in the evening. Reported to 311, "not enforceable". * The Enterprise car rental branch at the Amtrak station in Emeryville, CA, routinely blocks a bike lane and public parking spots with rental vehicles. They also perform vehicle inspections and handovers there. No outrage, in fact Emeryville doesn't enforce parking in bike lanes or at red curbs, period. * "Global Gourmet Catering" in San Francisco backs rental trucks into their loading bay such that the entire sidewalk, the entire bike lane, and up to half a traffic lane is blocked approximately every second day. In the evenings the same trucks are parked in public diagonal parking spots sized for passenger vehicles across the street, blocking the side walk and bike lane in the other direction. Reported to 311, forwarded to parking enforcement, won't enforce because blocked sidewalks and blocked bike lanes are handled by different people, and this involves both. * "Enclosures International Corporation" in San Francisco basically runs a fulfillment operation with frequent forklift traffic on a public sidewalk and the bike lane. Super dangerous actually, because it forces cyclists to cross defunct train tracks in the traffic lane at a sharp angle. When the fork lifts aren't there, the Audi Q7 of one of their employees still blocks the sidewalk. Reported to 311, you can guess the outcome. I asked @sf311 on Twitter why these things don't get enforced, but parking scooters on sidewalks does [0]. The answer: > These scooters do not have a license plate. So it does not fall under SFMTA DPT. > DPW BSM permits use of and enforces ordinances regarding public areas, as pertains to blocking items that don't have a license. [0]: https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024
  - hvidgaard 9y ago
    > I asked @sf311 on Twitter why these things don't get enforced, but parking scooters on sidewalks does [0]. The answer: >> These scooters do not have a license plate. So it does not fall under SFMTA DPT. >> DPW BSM permits use of and enforces ordinances regarding public areas, as pertains to blocking items that don't have a license. > [0]: https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 Excellent example of Red Tape in the wild.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  A small business with a fleet of vans will take up more public space than a much larger fleet of dockless bicycles. Private cars are the worst offenders, though. This is just another case of people being blind to the convenience and privilege they already have and kicking off when other people attempt to get such convenience.
- pmontra 9y ago
  Car sharing companies do that around the world all the time: people park the cars of those companies among privately owned cars. In my country those companies pay a license to city councils and get the right to enter limited traffic zones and park in areas that require a fee. Bike sharing companies pay a license too.
- terenig 9y ago
  Rental car companies actually do utilize public parking: when cars are rented out, customers are free to park them in any public parking spot. These are businesses that are freely using public space.
Lionsion 9y ago
> Dockless bikes and scooters are not actually the problem. > For decades now, cars have gotten the royal treatment. Users were able to pick up their cars and drop them off anywhere in the city. It was simply expected that anywhere one goes in a city, one could be guaranteed a free, giant space to park one’s private 4000 pound box, no questions asked. Sure, in some dense areas, payment is now required. Yet private vehicle parking is basically considered a right. We know this because when we can’t find parking for more than two minutes, we get upset. 5 minutes? We get very upset. Isn't this a false comparison? You're not allowed to park your car in any random place you like, you're required to park in specially marked and designated areas. For instance, I can't park my car in the middle of a street or in a park without getting it ticketed and towed. Isn't the big nuisance of dockless bikes that they are literally littered on sidewalks and other public spaces? I don't recall there being any uproar about docked bike rentals, which are much more comparable to the current situation with cars.
- lovich 9y ago
  People keep posting about "dockless cars" when these situations come up, some how ignoreing that vehicles are parked in designated areas as you said, and that it's people's personal vehicles and not companies private fleets that they are charging use for. I think that modern cities have way too much space allocated to car parking but it is in no way equivalent to a company pushing off one of their major costs onto society
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    it's people's personal vehicles and not companies private fleets that they are charging use for. Isn't that worse? If they were car share cars, then at least local residents would be able to use them, but instead, all of those cars parked on city streets are usable by only a single person each. For example, the city street I used to live on had around 250 housing units and about 40 street parking spaces. It would have been nicer if those 40 cars were car-share cars rather than being tied up by the 40 residents that got there first.
    - 9y ago
phsource 9y ago
Site's down, so alternative (Google Cached) link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paAIFbeyMBcJ:haveago.city/disgraceful-dockless-drama/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paAIFbe...
analog31 9y ago
In my view, when bike parking becomes a problem in urban areas, cities do take steps towards regulating it. In my locale, there are numerous places where I've seen little signs forbidding bike parking, such as trees and hand railings. I don't know if these signs are backed up by real ordinances or what, but it does seem to point to a problem that's interesting enough for somebody to have addressed it. The nearby college used to be laissez faire about gas scooters, and now those have designated parking spaces and registration tags. One feature of the system for enforcing parking ordinances, is that if your car is illegally parked, you're on the hook. Your license plate is tied to your identity, and you will be found. Even rentals or shares could have a way to identify the most recent user, otherwise the rental company has to eat the fine. With some random bike or scooter, not so easy, if there is not some kind of enforced numbering system. I'm also guessing that with things such as bikes that are cheap enough (e.g., bikes and scooters), a growth strategy for a start-up is to address availability and ease of use first, and deal with cleaning up their mess later. Move fast and break things. I'm an avid cyclist and cycling advocate, so I'd love to see bike sharing thrive, but I'm not brimming with great ideas.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  One obvious solution would be to add more bike parking. Bike parking is rare in most cities, which is why you end up with people locking their bikes to poles, fences, trees, benches, and anything else available. It's amazing how much urban space we're willing to dedicate to cars in the way of streets and parking (most of it free!), and yet bicycle parking is often a rarity.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    A couple percent of car parking spots converted to bike racks/scooter parking would do a lot to mitigate these issues.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    When I was a kid, the schools had long rows of bike racks festooned with bikes. These days, a school has a single 5 foot rack with one forlorn bike in it and parents have to authorize their kids to bike to school. When I drive by a school when they let out, the 20mph speed limit is a bit pointless because there are hardly any kids walking home (unlike the mobs when I was a kid). Their moms are all waiting in a long line with their SUVs idling (for some reason they never turn off the motor) while they text away.
sankyo 9y ago
I am all for scooters that are not on the sidewalk. I am all for making it more difficult to own and maintain a car to help eliminate all the problems that they cause. We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking, or even pedestrian deaths, traffic, and other car issues. So why are we asking LimeBike, Bird, or Spin to figure out bike/scooter storage? Lime Bird and Spin own the scooters that are blocking the sidewalk. Not so for Toyota. Zipcars arranges parking for their cars when they are not being rented.
- s0rce 9y ago
  There are car rental services like gig car that don't have dedicated spots and work perfectly. Maybe we can just let people leave the scooters in car parking spots. I'm sure that would go over great.
- randyrand 9y ago
  I own my personally electric scooter. Id like a spot to park too.
burlesona 9y ago
From the article: “If cities allow, and mandate that we be able to park cars everywhere, why shouldn’t bikes have the same convenience, especially considering they require 10 times less space than cars and offer the enormous efficiency, environmental, cost, and health benefits listed above?” Alternatively we could drop the entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere and the regulations forcing that choice on the country. But either way, I’m all for bikes and scooters etc. getting the same benefit that cars get.
- the-pigeon 9y ago
  > entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. Not that we shouldn't pursue those sorts of changes but that thinking of it as "entitlement" is shallow and not constructive. The entire system was engineered around the car. To remove the car you have to reengineer the system.
  - subpixel 9y ago
    > Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. Let me rephrase that for you: In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized (as a thing only poor 'others' would use). That is changing, slowly, as places that basically gave up on public transport are discovering that less and less people in their cities want to own a car.
    - RightMillennial 9y ago
      A better phrasing would be that in most places in the U.S. public transport simply does not exist. Not everyone lives in the heart of the city where it may be an option.
    - Lionsion 9y ago
      US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit. Contrast this to a Chinese city of the same size, which due to the fact that literally everyone lives in small apartments, is much more compact and easier to serve via public transport.
sebleon 9y ago
> One quick fix: designate one car parking stop near every street corner as drop-off spots for dockless lightweight EVs. Problem solved. Yes, this seems like an efficient and practical solution. Personally very happy to see how quickly people have begun adopting alternative transportation options, need for cars is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
e_tm_ 9y ago
The management community at the apartment complex I live in (Wash. DC) has issued notices to all residents about parking bikes/scooters physically on their property. The main point being to avoid blocking ingress and egress points into the buildings themselves, but also gives the private property owner a way to force the problem onto the City. This leads to large groups of bikes all colocated on the nearest sidewalk, safely in the public domain. From a practical standpoint this is an issue when the sidewalk gets fully blocked, although it is not an everyday situation.
chroma 9y ago
The status quo bias extends to more than just cars. I work in SF and some of my coworkers have complained about having to step over poorly-parked scooters. A couple of times, I've had to do the same. When it comes to things I've had to avoid on SF sidewalks, the scooters are a non-problem. Far more often I am stepping over used needles, feces, and garbage. There are some alleys where I'm forced to walk in the road because the sidewalks are taken up with tents. Yet scooters are the thing we want to crack down on? What absurd priorities.
- gamblor956 9y ago
  Cracking down on the scooters is relatively easy: there are a handful of major actors, and dealing with them solves the problem. Human waste, needles, garbage on the sidewalk is the result of hundreds of bad actors, which correspondingly takes significantly more resources to deal with. (And on that note, the state of Texas is the worst offender. Their official policy for dealing with their homeless during the Perry era, and still their unofficial policy, was to give their homeless showers and then a bus ticket to SF.)
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    And does California charge them for this? That's an incredible story, especially from a Europe where immigration controls is on everyone's lips.
    - gamblor956 9y ago
      We don't, and legally we can't. Once they accept the ticket to SF and choose to make their home on the sidewalk, they become our problem, legally. And SF (even now) is so much nicer than Texas that few of the homeless are willing to go back.
      - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
        Disputes between states are always political and only occasionally legal. But yeah I can see it being difficult to prove, and harder to action. If one state wanted to sue the other, what is the process? Congress? Supreme court?
jimjimjim 9y ago
basically, humans are selfish and unthinking, and won't notice anything unless it annoys them. the market stabilizes at the benefit-annoyance intersection. this means bikes, ride sharing, internet, tv, autonomous cars will all annoying be as hell but not quite annoying enough to quit doing it. this of course sucks and is why there should be regulations.
swrobel 9y ago
"We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking" A more apt comparison would be Avis, Hertz, etc but I think that would still be disingenuous. Car rental companies certainly penalize you for abandoning a rental car whereas these scooter/bike rental companies just let you dump them wherever.
- randyrand 9y ago
  The comparison to rentals is dumb imo. I own my own electric scooter. Many people do. This problem has to do with scooter ownership in general, regardless of the owner.
  - swrobel 9y ago
    Really you just leave yours anywhere even though you own it?
    - randyrand 9y ago
      it's heavy enough that most people dont steal it. i leave my motorcycle sitting out too. Sometimes I lock it up though.
      - swrobel 9y ago
        "most people." lol.
terenig 9y ago
Hi all! My name is Terenig, I'm the author of this post and founder of Have A Go. My friend messaged me giving me the heads up that this article was on Hacker News. I was really surprised! I'll do my best to reply to some of the thoughtful comments.
- s17n 9y ago
  The problem isn't parking, it's where are these things going to drive? Bikes work OK on the street but scooters really don't (even where there are protected lanes, they really need a smoother road surface) so they end up riding on the sidewalk, hence the backlash from pedestrians. The solution is obvious (make dedicated lanes, pave them like a sidewalk) but it would mean taking a lot of space away from cars, not as painless as 1 spot per block.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    Roads are way smoother than sidewalks. Not to be condescending but do you bike around the Bay Area? There are certainly bad roads (potholes, patches, etc) but overall the roads are fairly smooth and sidewalks are bumpy from the joints between the slabs and uneven.
    - s17n 9y ago
      Not to be condescending but do you live in the city? Cause the roads are not really scooter ready.
  - terenig 9y ago
    You make a great point. We have been advocating 3rd speed or protected bike lanes for that reason. As for the pain that might cause drivers: bike/scooter lanes are a much higher bandwidth form of urban transportation. So more people on scooters/bikes means less people in cars. This actually means traffic reduction, even with fewer car lanes. Now add to that the increased access/usage of public transit (a much higher bandwidth form of urban mobility) because of easy access to bus/subway stations thanks to dockless bikes/scooters, and now we're talking about significant traffic reduction. Not to mention cleaner air, reduced emissions, etc. So drivers should actually be in favor of more bike infrastructure. Counterintuitive, but that's how this particular complex system functions!
staticautomatic 9y ago
This article reeks of spin. I'll bet real money that it's a PR piece.
- staticautomatic 9y ago
  Down voted by the PR firm? Inquiring minds want to know...
- BrainInAJar 9y ago
  Yes the all powerful bike lobby
  - staticautomatic 9y ago
    Is there some reason you think these companies aren't using some of their VC money for this PR war?
  - terenig 9y ago
    Ya, Have A Go is now totally drowning in all the bike lobby cash. Please don't tell anyone! In all seriousness, Have A Go is not affiliated with any bike sharing/renting companies. If you visit our site, you'll see that we are actually based on the ownership model. Our mission is to help transition us to green, healthy, fun, affordable, and efficient modes of personal mobility, and that's why we wrote this piece! Not because of the $13,500 dollars we received......d'oh!!!
    - staticautomatic 9y ago
      Thank you for clarifying that. I find your position on the subject indistinguishable from what I'd expect of PR spin, but I'll take your word that your motivation isn't financial.
      - terenig 9y ago
        No problem :) Here's the mission statement that I wrote out a year ago, hopefully clarifying my motivations: http://haveago.city/our-vision/ http://haveago.city/our-vision/ But to be 100% honest, if I was offered payment, I would consider it. Reason being: I truly believe in lightweight electric mobility and have dedicated full-time hours to help expand their use. In exploring ways of making this financially sustainable, if it's consult fees, so be it! If that happens, I'll disclose. As for sounding PR-y, I hope you'll judge the post again on its merits. I've been very influenced by the wealth of urban planning literature indicating how walking/biking make for great, rich, and pleasant cities and how cars make for dangerous streets and negatively affect communities. I also live in LA and find it very frustrating that we have so much poverty/homeless here and that access to affordable mobility like bikes without risking ones life isn't an option since cars are so dominant. So I'm genuinely excited and hopeful for any prospect of shifting our mobility away from them.
s17n 9y ago
The problem isn't parking, the problem is that to work well they need dedicated lanes. I agree that this should happen but it's not as easy as taking a parking space per block - you'd have to eliminate half of all the parking or reduce the number of car lanes or something.
- woolvalley 9y ago
  You ride on the side of the road, like with bikes. Nobody really does dockless bikes with their personal bikes because of theft.
  - s17n 9y ago
    Have you tried that with a scooter? It's not pleasant. For bikes, sure.
    - woolvalley 9y ago
      I do it with a boosted board, which is even worse. These e-scooters are not your typical kid scooters, they have pneumatic tires, and those tires are bigger than the 80-90mm skateboard tires that are available on electric skateboards. Here is one example: http://www.mi.com/us/mi-electric-scooter/ http://www.mi.com/us/mi-electric-scooter/
      - s17n 9y ago
        I've only tried the Birds but it was awful.
        woolvalley 9y ago
        California's roads are pretty horrible. If you live somewhere where they actually maintain roads, it's a lot nicer.
jwilliams 9y ago
I'm pro scooters and dockerless bikes in general -- but I also don't really buy into the logic of this article. In the key markets for these things - there is no presumption of parking. I imagine avoiding parking is the #1/#2 reason for most users would use this service (I'd include ride sharing here too). I specifically don't have a car in San Francisco because I have nowhere to park it. When dockerless bikes were launched in other markets (e.g. Sydney, Melbourne) it really was a mess. Bikes thrown in rivers. Stacked up as hazards. In trees. On the top of stuff in general. And Melbourne is a much more bike-friendly city than many North American ones. But it was still a huge bomb. It's probably sensible for the SFMTA to at least consider the consequences and stage a rollout. The SFMTA was actually being pretty co-operative. And for a government agency, they were moving pretty fast - i.e. getting stuff going in weeks/months. Instead, one of the companies launched early on St Patrick's Day. When the others felt they were losing first mover advantage, they did too.
- mrharrison 9y ago
  As a biker, having to park my bike at Walgreens and seeing the same Jump bikes parked at the bike stand, from the day before, and nowhere to park my bike is definitely a nuisance. Didn't really encounter this issue before, people normally come and go with their bikes. As a walker, when entitled scooter peeps jump on the sidewalk and start whizzing around you, and at almost hit you, it's a nuisance as well. I like the Ford Go Bikes/Citi Bikes, it's organized and it's a proven system in NYC and other cities, that doesn't burden others. Except those who lose parking spots in their neighborhood to docking stations.
  - woah 9y ago
    The inconvenience and danger caused by cars is so much more. You have to be on alert to avoid being killed by them. Huge swaths of valuable city real estate are devoted to free or low priced subsidized storage of cars for entitled car owners. It's astounding that this has gone on for so long and it needs to be stopped.
    - Angostura 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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austinl 9y ago
I'd much rather have scooters parked on the sidewalk than cars on the road. I previously used Lyft or Uber to get to work, now I primarily use Scoot, Bird, or Jump (depending on the distance/availability). I've found all of these solutions are much more enjoyable and cost efficient than a car. Generally excited to see less and less people using cars in the city.
justanother 9y ago
So cities should subsidize your multi-million-dollar operation by reducing urban on-street parking inventory and donating that space to you? Okay, but here's some free advice about how cities work: You won't get that by writing internet blog posts that contain false equivalencies (ie scooter rental companies and car manufacturers). You'll get it by wining and dining a lot of city councilpersons. Best get started.
sarreph 9y ago
> What’s the issue? Some blocked sidewalks. As if that was a new issue in cities. Yes, blocked sidewalks is the issue. And while I'm glad the author suggests a remedy — of creating designated parking zones — this is essentially describing dockable bikes. In my experience, docked bikes do not solve the convenience and availability problem well enough. I've used dockless bikes recently in both Europe and Asia, and in the cities of both, dockless bikes are being literally strewn about the place. Flower-beds, narrow sidewalks, pedestrian junctions, private grounds, etc. are all being used as dumping grounds for users' dockless bike destinations. I've even been on wild-goose-chases after multiple consecutive 'available' bikes, only to realise that they must be literally taken inside peoples' property and homes. Why? For the former, I'm pretty sure it's simply a 'not my problem / not my bike' issue. Private bike owners usually have to lock their bikes up somewhere out of the way, and generally seem more respectful of their bikes' surroundings. With dockless bikes, it's just to easy to dump your bike in the middle of the sidewalk and not have to deal with any consequences. Certain bike hire companies are trying to deal with this by incentivizing certain parking spaces; however, why would you bother getting +10.CoolBikeXP for going out of your way when you can chuck your bike on someone's lawn right outside your office? And as for the latter, because people seem to be getting away with it. People are so lovely [/s] that they'd seriously consider just keeping a rental bike inside their home, thus ruining the service for nearby users. I want dockless bikes to be the future, and I think they should be, but we really need to fix users' docking behaviour, or else we'll end up with tragedy-of-the-commons[0] type consequences once enough people start using them. [0] — this is a tenuous analogy, but for lack of better phrasing, I'm referring to the ultimate widespread abuse of potential public / open docking spaces.
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Dockless bikes are working pretty much fine in Oxford, where I live. The city is pretty much the poster child for the idea in the UK, with three firms competing (Ofo, Mobike, Pony). Pavements generally aren't obstructed and the bike companies aren't experiencing a high degree of theft.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  We have dockless bikes in Bristol, and we've had similar issues. The biggest issue I've found is that most services require you give up use once you park, meaning that you could use one to get lunch and then come back to see that the bike you used is gone, with no bike nearby. There are definitely solutions out there to these problems, but I think the space is still relatively new for companies to have these problems fully addressed. I don't share the sentiment or the entitlement of the article, though. Rather than addressing the problems, they're largely complaining about vehicles that don't really have a choice but to be parked for a long period of time (i.e. lorries running deliveries).
Jaruzel 9y ago
Site offline; Archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200143/http://haveago.city/disgraceful-dockless-drama/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200143/http://haveago.ci...
matttproud 9y ago
This article's author has a chip on the shoulders regarding automobiles: > pick up their cars and drop them off _anywhere_ in the city (emphasis mine) Really? One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter. Individuals inconsiderately stranding means of transportation across the city is patently unsafe. I can sure as hell see a car misparked on the sidewalk when walking and avoid it because it is big and in the field of view; but with a bikecycle or scooter there is no guarantee given its small size. Each day feels like game of Mario Kart: am I going to trip over a banana someone left in the streets? FFS. I would be happy if the cities issued fines/citations to the individuals responsible for improperly discarding the conveyances. A protocol already exists for rental car companies; why not for rental scooters/bikes? This is perfectly solvable. (I am no defender of automobiles and view even the most urban cities of the United States as hopelessly car-bound.)
- bdamm 9y ago
  It is solvable, typically by city government. No doubt if there are sufficient people annoyed by discarded scooters overcrowding the sidewalks then the city will be compelled to act. The city may designate specific zones for such discarded conveyance, or they may designate zones that are to remain free of such. They may choose to redirect police efforts towards ticketing those "littering" the streets with these devices, or they may choose to ask the police to create a blitz of enforcement, among the various enforcement options. They may choose to revoke the business license for entities providing such conveyances, or they may choose to enact new taxes to pay for the management. There are many options, and city governments are entirely appropriate to make the choices. I encourage you to take your grievance there.
- T-N-T 9y ago
  >One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter. The law is broken so often it might as well not exist AT all, at least in my country. Vigilantes here have started to take pictures of cars that are "parked like shit" to shame the drivers publicly because the law has been insufficient, the punishments not applied often enough or not harsh enough to truly dissuade car drivers from not parking on a sidewalk, bikelane, in front of a shop or even at times directly on a part of a road... http://www.garecommeunemerde.fr/gcum/galerie/ http://www.garecommeunemerde.fr/gcum/galerie/ The website gallery isn't showing a tiny minority. I see examples of this every day as soon as I leave my home.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> These new lightweight EVs keep most of the benefits of cars, cut travel times, are easy and convenient, help flatten hills, increase range, and marginalize fatigue and sweating, without the terrible drawbacks of cars: their enormous weight, size, danger, inefficiency, huge parking costs, pollution, expensive infrastructure, degradation of neighborhoods, etc. Everybody is trying to sell you something. The worst are trying to sell you what you want. The best are trying to sell you what you need. Of course, there is always an alternative. In this case: walk everywhere, reduce your risk of a heart attack.
- owenversteeg 9y ago
  Walking is simply not an alternative for moderate distance with a bike. For example, Google Maps's biking time for a common route near me (train station to university) is 6 minutes. Walking time is 26 minutes. The distance is 2km, so that's 20km/hr biking or about 4km/hr walking. I've tested this with longer distances and it seems to hold. In my experience, Google's biking speed is fairly spot on for me, and its walking speed is a bit faster than I walk. So I'd imagine that biking is at least six times faster than walking for me personally. Also, if I really have somewhere to be, I can bike substantially faster and be OK, but running for half an hour with a heavy backpack and bags is much harder. I spend a decent amount of time getting around on a bike - an hour and a half yesterday, maybe a half an hour today, so just the last two days alone I'd have spent twelve hours walking! That's totally unacceptable. Finally, I imagine that biking (although easier) isn't that much less healthy than walking. Still much healthier than driving.
- terenig 9y ago
  Walking BEST. Biking, second best. If too far, too hot, too steep, e-bikes third best. Plus good public transportation.
terenig 9y ago
One additional thing to think about. Cars in general use what were for thousands of years historically public spaces: the streets. Now, people are pretty much banned from using streets and are relegated to small or nonexistent sidewalks or sparse public parks. We forget that cities are quite old and cars are very new and our acceptance of streets being for cars isn't actually historically normal and is really a huge concession by cities and citizens to historically public, spaces for walking, commerce, festivals, meetups, musicians, artists, kids, the elderly, etc. The right to freely use and leave bikes/scooters anywhere is simply one tiny push back to this historic uses of streets.
erdojo 9y ago
This story total propaganda and a load of horse manure. They are not green. They are not convenient. And cityfolk hate them. Go back to LA bros.

194 points by andrewfromx 9y ago

If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public space without permission.

gkoberger 9y ago
You mean... like Getaround and Zipcar already do? The streets are filled with companies using public spaces: Fedex deliveries blocking the road, sidewalk signs for bars, Getaround rentals, food carts, mailboxes, ATMs, parking meters, Scoot scooters, taxi lines, Lyft/Ubers, Redbox DVD rentals, annoying Greenpeace petition people, construction, billboards, etc. I don't think it's a cost-saving measure for scooter/bike companies, but rather convenience for users. I wouldn't use scooters if I had to walk 4 blocks to a "designated pickup zone". Yes, these scooters/bikes are making money. But they also really improve cities, by cutting down on traffic congestion and car emissions. As long as they're regulated via permits (meaning the government makes a bit of money to pay for maintenance), they should be allowed... and if people dislike them, they'll go out of business, and it'll solve itself.
- terenig 9y ago
  Yep! And even rental car companies do take advantage of public parking: when cars are actually in use, customers are free to park them in any public parking spot.
- extra88 9y ago
  Zipcar pays for the parking spots they use. Obviously, while they’re being rented the drivers may use public spots the same as car owners do.
  - gkoberger 9y ago
    And Bird is paying (or offering to, at least) $1/scooter/day to SF. That's $365/scooter/year. I've heard Zipcar pays SF $1000-ish/year, so inch-for-inch it's certainly a good deal.
    - extra88 9y ago
      In the greater Boston area, I think I've only seen Zipcar spots on private property (though I'm not sure what the ownership is of the MBTA parking spaces) and I would expect the rate to be somewhat negotiable, based on supply & demand for the neighborhood.
      - kingbirdy 9y ago
        Same in Philadelphia
        jarvuschris 9y ago
        There are some zipcar spots on streets in Philly
        mentalpiracy 9y ago
        Enterprise has a few streetside too. Almost assuredly, these companies pay Philly for the rights to that those marked spots.
      - jonknee 9y ago
        There are car sharing services in Seattle that operate much like the scooters and bikes (park them in any city space, pay just for when you use, etc). The city charges a flat rate per car per month. Like dockless bike share it ends up being way more useful.
        badwolf 9y ago
        I love Car2Go here in Austin. They pay the city some flatrate per year, and so car2go can park anywhere in public street parking without paying meters.
- jjoske 9y ago
  Well where I live (Melbourne, Aus) what a assume are the equivalent to Zipcar actually buy/rent car spaces to leave for their cars.
- dwighttk 9y ago
  >Yes, these scooters/bikes are making money. Are they? Are any of the companies public? It seems like a burn through cash to get a user base sort of thing but maybe these companies are older and more established than it seems to me.
  - F_r_k 9y ago
    Are you required to be public in order to make money ?
    - d_k_f 9y ago
      No, but it would make it possible to actually check whether they do or not, which I guess is why parent is asking.
      - dwighttk 9y ago
        yeah, just gives you numbers you can look at vs. just guessing.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  Fedex deliveries blocking the road for a short time are generally considered preferable to removing a whack of on-street parking from every block in order to have an excess of loading zones, or not being able to have deliveries at all. sidewalk signs for bars are regulated, at least in my city. They have to leave (IIRC) 6' of clearance on the sidewalk so they don't obstruct pedestrian traffic. Whether those rules are being followed is perhaps another issue, but I haven't generally found them to be a nuisance. Getaround rentals are private cars that you rent from the owner. If the city requires a fee to be paid for overnight on-street parking, that fee will be paid by the owner. If the street is meter parking, that fee will be paid by whoever is using the car. food carts typically pay the city a fee in exchange for use of public space. mailboxes are either owned by the government or installed on private property. ATMs are installed on private property. parking meters are government property. Scoot scooters (don't know what those are) taxi lines are a government designated thing. Note that most cities that have them also make money from taxi licensing. Lyft/Ubers are a minor menace, I agree with you on that one. Redbox DVD rentals are installed on private property. annoying Greenpeace petition people are required to get permits, at least in my city. construction also requires permits. billboards are installed on private property. Long story short, I think you're being hyperbolic here.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    "Fedex deliveries blocking the road" Preferable to cars, maybe, since it frees up parking, however, around here they simply park in the bike lane. I go by a UPS store daily and there are often 1-2 trucks both parked in the bike lane.
    - icantdrive55 9y ago
      I kinda get the need for commercial drivers to not obey laws most of us are scared of. They are being overworked because of us, and our convient buying patterns. That said, I would love to see fees/fines for mini code violations tied to a person's/company's Income. I get a $50 parking ticket. Why--because I'm poor. (My biggest fear is getting a ticket. These high priced tickets are a real concern for people like myself.) FedEx would get a $10,000 ticket. I would do like to see fees/fines tied to income. And "we don't have the technology" is no an excuse anymore.
- Angostura 9y ago
  Certainly, where I live in London, Zipcar has arranged with the council to have special bays marked, reserved for them. The council like car-sharing, so are happy - but it is done in a manageable way.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    I would how risky that is for Zipcar. What incentive would there be for the council to say no to a competitor offering more money for the spaces?
    - gcb0 9y ago
      uk gov might not work like a greed corporation as its usa counterparts. usually when a deal is stabilished with one company, others can jump in for the same price/share. the worst that would happen for zip car is to have to share the spaces.
  - obel1x 9y ago
    There is also Zipcar Flex in London. You can park the cars in on-street parking, even paid or residents bays. But they have only agreed it with some councils so far. Map: https://www.zipcar.co.uk/takethebluepin#zipzone-map https://www.zipcar.co.uk/takethebluepin#zipzone-map
- erdojo 9y ago
  Yet another clueless astroturfer who alters the facts to fit your own narrative. Go back to your PR boss and tell them we're not buying your "messaging".
Spooky23 9y ago
Hertz and Avis have spots near downtown hotels in my city. It’s an easy problem for cities to regulate.
burlesona 9y ago
Cities also force all property owners to provide many “private” parking spaces for the use of whoever’s car may need a place to sit. The space they take up generally makes life worse for all other users of the street. The nuisance of these little scooters is trivial in comparison.
blang 9y ago
Car2Go does this, well sort of. In Seattle the company pays about $1300 [1] per car per year for parking, which includes skipping metered parking, which could come to a pretty large subsidy [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/car2go-a-handy-option-but-it-doesnrsquot-come-cheap/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/car2go-a-handy-option-...
dcosson 9y ago
> Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large This is the point under contention. I strongy disagree, I would very happily give up public parking for other uses of that space - more bike/scooter lanes that can be further offset from fast-moving cars, dedicated space for Uber/Lyft dropoffs that don't block the roads, 5-minute loading/unloading parking for Fedex trucks and Postmates delivery people to idle for a few minutes. Free (or heavily subsidized) parking for private cars is at the bottom of this list for me. It's also much more expensive to provide than these other things, because there's only one person benefitting from each parking space per few hours while all the others can benefit many more people. And even for the very drivers that street parking is intended to benefit - in lots of situations there are too few spaces on the street at all, so we're blocking this valuable space and most people won't find a spot anyway and will be forced to use a private garage. And it's not that I never drive, I sometimes do, I still think it's a much better use of public space if I had to find a private lot or garage on the occasions when I drive so that these other things can be available to everyone.
- paulgb 9y ago
  Exactly. I'd add to this that benefiting the public at large vs. a company isn't exactly clear-cut. If I don't own a car, free parking doesn't benefit me directly, but having that space used for bikeshare docks does (even if this also benefits the bikeshare company). You could just as easily argue that free parking benefits Ford since it makes driving more feasible.
Zigurd 9y ago
Uber? You may say "Uber is just a platform" but they use public facilities as well as private cars. That User car takes up as much space as 20+ dockless ebikes.
astura 9y ago
Hertz and Avis don't park their fleet in public spaces because it would be bad for business. You want to rent a car? Gotta walk four blocks to pick it up.
jonemo 9y ago
> If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. I don't have a counter-example for your very specific statement, but these are close: * The car rental company "Rent a Wreck" in San Francisco drives between 5 and 20 of their camper vehicles off the lot and parks them in public parking spaces every morning around 7am and brings them back in in the evening. Reported to 311, "not enforceable". * The Enterprise car rental branch at the Amtrak station in Emeryville, CA, routinely blocks a bike lane and public parking spots with rental vehicles. They also perform vehicle inspections and handovers there. No outrage, in fact Emeryville doesn't enforce parking in bike lanes or at red curbs, period. * "Global Gourmet Catering" in San Francisco backs rental trucks into their loading bay such that the entire sidewalk, the entire bike lane, and up to half a traffic lane is blocked approximately every second day. In the evenings the same trucks are parked in public diagonal parking spots sized for passenger vehicles across the street, blocking the side walk and bike lane in the other direction. Reported to 311, forwarded to parking enforcement, won't enforce because blocked sidewalks and blocked bike lanes are handled by different people, and this involves both. * "Enclosures International Corporation" in San Francisco basically runs a fulfillment operation with frequent forklift traffic on a public sidewalk and the bike lane. Super dangerous actually, because it forces cyclists to cross defunct train tracks in the traffic lane at a sharp angle. When the fork lifts aren't there, the Audi Q7 of one of their employees still blocks the sidewalk. Reported to 311, you can guess the outcome. I asked @sf311 on Twitter why these things don't get enforced, but parking scooters on sidewalks does [0]. The answer: > These scooters do not have a license plate. So it does not fall under SFMTA DPT. > DPW BSM permits use of and enforces ordinances regarding public areas, as pertains to blocking items that don't have a license. [0]: https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  > I asked @sf311 on Twitter why these things don't get enforced, but parking scooters on sidewalks does [0]. The answer: >> These scooters do not have a license plate. So it does not fall under SFMTA DPT. >> DPW BSM permits use of and enforces ordinances regarding public areas, as pertains to blocking items that don't have a license. > [0]: https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 https://twitter.com/jonemo/status/985989669895553024 Excellent example of Red Tape in the wild.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
A small business with a fleet of vans will take up more public space than a much larger fleet of dockless bicycles. Private cars are the worst offenders, though. This is just another case of people being blind to the convenience and privilege they already have and kicking off when other people attempt to get such convenience.
pmontra 9y ago
Car sharing companies do that around the world all the time: people park the cars of those companies among privately owned cars. In my country those companies pay a license to city councils and get the right to enter limited traffic zones and park in areas that require a fee. Bike sharing companies pay a license too.
terenig 9y ago
Rental car companies actually do utilize public parking: when cars are rented out, customers are free to park them in any public parking spot. These are businesses that are freely using public space.

Lionsion 9y ago

> Dockless bikes and scooters are not actually the problem. > For decades now, cars have gotten the royal treatment. Users were able to pick up their cars and drop them off anywhere in the city. It was simply expected that anywhere one goes in a city, one could be guaranteed a free, giant space to park one’s private 4000 pound box, no questions asked. Sure, in some dense areas, payment is now required. Yet private vehicle parking is basically considered a right. We know this because when we can’t find parking for more than two minutes, we get upset. 5 minutes? We get very upset. Isn't this a false comparison? You're not allowed to park your car in any random place you like, you're required to park in specially marked and designated areas. For instance, I can't park my car in the middle of a street or in a park without getting it ticketed and towed. Isn't the big nuisance of dockless bikes that they are literally littered on sidewalks and other public spaces? I don't recall there being any uproar about docked bike rentals, which are much more comparable to the current situation with cars.

lovich 9y ago
People keep posting about "dockless cars" when these situations come up, some how ignoreing that vehicles are parked in designated areas as you said, and that it's people's personal vehicles and not companies private fleets that they are charging use for. I think that modern cities have way too much space allocated to car parking but it is in no way equivalent to a company pushing off one of their major costs onto society
- Johnny555 9y ago
  it's people's personal vehicles and not companies private fleets that they are charging use for. Isn't that worse? If they were car share cars, then at least local residents would be able to use them, but instead, all of those cars parked on city streets are usable by only a single person each. For example, the city street I used to live on had around 250 housing units and about 40 street parking spaces. It would have been nicer if those 40 cars were car-share cars rather than being tied up by the 40 residents that got there first.
  - 9y ago

phsource 9y ago

Site's down, so alternative (Google Cached) link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paAIFbeyMBcJ:haveago.city/disgraceful-dockless-drama/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:paAIFbe...

analog31 9y ago

In my view, when bike parking becomes a problem in urban areas, cities do take steps towards regulating it. In my locale, there are numerous places where I've seen little signs forbidding bike parking, such as trees and hand railings. I don't know if these signs are backed up by real ordinances or what, but it does seem to point to a problem that's interesting enough for somebody to have addressed it. The nearby college used to be laissez faire about gas scooters, and now those have designated parking spaces and registration tags. One feature of the system for enforcing parking ordinances, is that if your car is illegally parked, you're on the hook. Your license plate is tied to your identity, and you will be found. Even rentals or shares could have a way to identify the most recent user, otherwise the rental company has to eat the fine. With some random bike or scooter, not so easy, if there is not some kind of enforced numbering system. I'm also guessing that with things such as bikes that are cheap enough (e.g., bikes and scooters), a growth strategy for a start-up is to address availability and ease of use first, and deal with cleaning up their mess later. Move fast and break things. I'm an avid cyclist and cycling advocate, so I'd love to see bike sharing thrive, but I'm not brimming with great ideas.

CydeWeys 9y ago
One obvious solution would be to add more bike parking. Bike parking is rare in most cities, which is why you end up with people locking their bikes to poles, fences, trees, benches, and anything else available. It's amazing how much urban space we're willing to dedicate to cars in the way of streets and parking (most of it free!), and yet bicycle parking is often a rarity.
- s0rce 9y ago
  A couple percent of car parking spots converted to bike racks/scooter parking would do a lot to mitigate these issues.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  When I was a kid, the schools had long rows of bike racks festooned with bikes. These days, a school has a single 5 foot rack with one forlorn bike in it and parents have to authorize their kids to bike to school. When I drive by a school when they let out, the 20mph speed limit is a bit pointless because there are hardly any kids walking home (unlike the mobs when I was a kid). Their moms are all waiting in a long line with their SUVs idling (for some reason they never turn off the motor) while they text away.

sankyo 9y ago

I am all for scooters that are not on the sidewalk. I am all for making it more difficult to own and maintain a car to help eliminate all the problems that they cause. We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking, or even pedestrian deaths, traffic, and other car issues. So why are we asking LimeBike, Bird, or Spin to figure out bike/scooter storage? Lime Bird and Spin own the scooters that are blocking the sidewalk. Not so for Toyota. Zipcars arranges parking for their cars when they are not being rented.

s0rce 9y ago
There are car rental services like gig car that don't have dedicated spots and work perfectly. Maybe we can just let people leave the scooters in car parking spots. I'm sure that would go over great.
randyrand 9y ago
I own my personally electric scooter. Id like a spot to park too.

burlesona 9y ago

From the article: “If cities allow, and mandate that we be able to park cars everywhere, why shouldn’t bikes have the same convenience, especially considering they require 10 times less space than cars and offer the enormous efficiency, environmental, cost, and health benefits listed above?” Alternatively we could drop the entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere and the regulations forcing that choice on the country. But either way, I’m all for bikes and scooters etc. getting the same benefit that cars get.

the-pigeon 9y ago
> entitlement to drive and park cars everywhere Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. You majorly hurt commerce and people's quality of life by removing vehicles without completely changing the layout of cities to make them work with other options. Not that we shouldn't pursue those sorts of changes but that thinking of it as "entitlement" is shallow and not constructive. The entire system was engineered around the car. To remove the car you have to reengineer the system.
- subpixel 9y ago
  > Most places in the US at least are not very livable without a car. Let me rephrase that for you: In most place in the US public transport is woefully under-funded, under-utilized, and overly stigmatized (as a thing only poor 'others' would use). That is changing, slowly, as places that basically gave up on public transport are discovering that less and less people in their cities want to own a car.
  - RightMillennial 9y ago
    A better phrasing would be that in most places in the U.S. public transport simply does not exist. Not everyone lives in the heart of the city where it may be an option.
  - Lionsion 9y ago
    US cities also tend to be more spread out, which also reduces the appeal of public transit. Contrast this to a Chinese city of the same size, which due to the fact that literally everyone lives in small apartments, is much more compact and easier to serve via public transport.

sebleon 9y ago

> One quick fix: designate one car parking stop near every street corner as drop-off spots for dockless lightweight EVs. Problem solved. Yes, this seems like an efficient and practical solution. Personally very happy to see how quickly people have begun adopting alternative transportation options, need for cars is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

e_tm_ 9y ago

The management community at the apartment complex I live in (Wash. DC) has issued notices to all residents about parking bikes/scooters physically on their property. The main point being to avoid blocking ingress and egress points into the buildings themselves, but also gives the private property owner a way to force the problem onto the City. This leads to large groups of bikes all colocated on the nearest sidewalk, safely in the public domain. From a practical standpoint this is an issue when the sidewalk gets fully blocked, although it is not an everyday situation.

chroma 9y ago

The status quo bias extends to more than just cars. I work in SF and some of my coworkers have complained about having to step over poorly-parked scooters. A couple of times, I've had to do the same. When it comes to things I've had to avoid on SF sidewalks, the scooters are a non-problem. Far more often I am stepping over used needles, feces, and garbage. There are some alleys where I'm forced to walk in the road because the sidewalks are taken up with tents. Yet scooters are the thing we want to crack down on? What absurd priorities.

gamblor956 9y ago
Cracking down on the scooters is relatively easy: there are a handful of major actors, and dealing with them solves the problem. Human waste, needles, garbage on the sidewalk is the result of hundreds of bad actors, which correspondingly takes significantly more resources to deal with. (And on that note, the state of Texas is the worst offender. Their official policy for dealing with their homeless during the Perry era, and still their unofficial policy, was to give their homeless showers and then a bus ticket to SF.)
- lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  And does California charge them for this? That's an incredible story, especially from a Europe where immigration controls is on everyone's lips.
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    We don't, and legally we can't. Once they accept the ticket to SF and choose to make their home on the sidewalk, they become our problem, legally. And SF (even now) is so much nicer than Texas that few of the homeless are willing to go back.
    - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
      Disputes between states are always political and only occasionally legal. But yeah I can see it being difficult to prove, and harder to action. If one state wanted to sue the other, what is the process? Congress? Supreme court?

jimjimjim 9y ago

basically, humans are selfish and unthinking, and won't notice anything unless it annoys them. the market stabilizes at the benefit-annoyance intersection. this means bikes, ride sharing, internet, tv, autonomous cars will all annoying be as hell but not quite annoying enough to quit doing it. this of course sucks and is why there should be regulations.

swrobel 9y ago

"We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking" A more apt comparison would be Avis, Hertz, etc but I think that would still be disingenuous. Car rental companies certainly penalize you for abandoning a rental car whereas these scooter/bike rental companies just let you dump them wherever.

randyrand 9y ago
The comparison to rentals is dumb imo. I own my own electric scooter. Many people do. This problem has to do with scooter ownership in general, regardless of the owner.
- swrobel 9y ago
  Really you just leave yours anywhere even though you own it?
  - randyrand 9y ago
    it's heavy enough that most people dont steal it. i leave my motorcycle sitting out too. Sometimes I lock it up though.
    - swrobel 9y ago
      "most people." lol.

terenig 9y ago

Hi all! My name is Terenig, I'm the author of this post and founder of Have A Go. My friend messaged me giving me the heads up that this article was on Hacker News. I was really surprised! I'll do my best to reply to some of the thoughtful comments.

s17n 9y ago
The problem isn't parking, it's where are these things going to drive? Bikes work OK on the street but scooters really don't (even where there are protected lanes, they really need a smoother road surface) so they end up riding on the sidewalk, hence the backlash from pedestrians. The solution is obvious (make dedicated lanes, pave them like a sidewalk) but it would mean taking a lot of space away from cars, not as painless as 1 spot per block.
- s0rce 9y ago
  Roads are way smoother than sidewalks. Not to be condescending but do you bike around the Bay Area? There are certainly bad roads (potholes, patches, etc) but overall the roads are fairly smooth and sidewalks are bumpy from the joints between the slabs and uneven.
  - s17n 9y ago
    Not to be condescending but do you live in the city? Cause the roads are not really scooter ready.
- terenig 9y ago
  You make a great point. We have been advocating 3rd speed or protected bike lanes for that reason. As for the pain that might cause drivers: bike/scooter lanes are a much higher bandwidth form of urban transportation. So more people on scooters/bikes means less people in cars. This actually means traffic reduction, even with fewer car lanes. Now add to that the increased access/usage of public transit (a much higher bandwidth form of urban mobility) because of easy access to bus/subway stations thanks to dockless bikes/scooters, and now we're talking about significant traffic reduction. Not to mention cleaner air, reduced emissions, etc. So drivers should actually be in favor of more bike infrastructure. Counterintuitive, but that's how this particular complex system functions!

staticautomatic 9y ago

This article reeks of spin. I'll bet real money that it's a PR piece.

staticautomatic 9y ago
Down voted by the PR firm? Inquiring minds want to know...
BrainInAJar 9y ago
Yes the all powerful bike lobby
- staticautomatic 9y ago
  Is there some reason you think these companies aren't using some of their VC money for this PR war?
- terenig 9y ago
  Ya, Have A Go is now totally drowning in all the bike lobby cash. Please don't tell anyone! In all seriousness, Have A Go is not affiliated with any bike sharing/renting companies. If you visit our site, you'll see that we are actually based on the ownership model. Our mission is to help transition us to green, healthy, fun, affordable, and efficient modes of personal mobility, and that's why we wrote this piece! Not because of the $13,500 dollars we received......d'oh!!!
  - staticautomatic 9y ago
    Thank you for clarifying that. I find your position on the subject indistinguishable from what I'd expect of PR spin, but I'll take your word that your motivation isn't financial.
    - terenig 9y ago
      No problem :) Here's the mission statement that I wrote out a year ago, hopefully clarifying my motivations: http://haveago.city/our-vision/ http://haveago.city/our-vision/ But to be 100% honest, if I was offered payment, I would consider it. Reason being: I truly believe in lightweight electric mobility and have dedicated full-time hours to help expand their use. In exploring ways of making this financially sustainable, if it's consult fees, so be it! If that happens, I'll disclose. As for sounding PR-y, I hope you'll judge the post again on its merits. I've been very influenced by the wealth of urban planning literature indicating how walking/biking make for great, rich, and pleasant cities and how cars make for dangerous streets and negatively affect communities. I also live in LA and find it very frustrating that we have so much poverty/homeless here and that access to affordable mobility like bikes without risking ones life isn't an option since cars are so dominant. So I'm genuinely excited and hopeful for any prospect of shifting our mobility away from them.

s17n 9y ago

The problem isn't parking, the problem is that to work well they need dedicated lanes. I agree that this should happen but it's not as easy as taking a parking space per block - you'd have to eliminate half of all the parking or reduce the number of car lanes or something.

woolvalley 9y ago
You ride on the side of the road, like with bikes. Nobody really does dockless bikes with their personal bikes because of theft.
- s17n 9y ago
  Have you tried that with a scooter? It's not pleasant. For bikes, sure.
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    I do it with a boosted board, which is even worse. These e-scooters are not your typical kid scooters, they have pneumatic tires, and those tires are bigger than the 80-90mm skateboard tires that are available on electric skateboards. Here is one example: http://www.mi.com/us/mi-electric-scooter/ http://www.mi.com/us/mi-electric-scooter/
    - s17n 9y ago
      I've only tried the Birds but it was awful.
      - woolvalley 9y ago
        California's roads are pretty horrible. If you live somewhere where they actually maintain roads, it's a lot nicer.

jwilliams 9y ago

I'm pro scooters and dockerless bikes in general -- but I also don't really buy into the logic of this article. In the key markets for these things - there is no presumption of parking. I imagine avoiding parking is the #1/#2 reason for most users would use this service (I'd include ride sharing here too). I specifically don't have a car in San Francisco because I have nowhere to park it. When dockerless bikes were launched in other markets (e.g. Sydney, Melbourne) it really was a mess. Bikes thrown in rivers. Stacked up as hazards. In trees. On the top of stuff in general. And Melbourne is a much more bike-friendly city than many North American ones. But it was still a huge bomb. It's probably sensible for the SFMTA to at least consider the consequences and stage a rollout. The SFMTA was actually being pretty co-operative. And for a government agency, they were moving pretty fast - i.e. getting stuff going in weeks/months. Instead, one of the companies launched early on St Patrick's Day. When the others felt they were losing first mover advantage, they did too.

mrharrison 9y ago
As a biker, having to park my bike at Walgreens and seeing the same Jump bikes parked at the bike stand, from the day before, and nowhere to park my bike is definitely a nuisance. Didn't really encounter this issue before, people normally come and go with their bikes. As a walker, when entitled scooter peeps jump on the sidewalk and start whizzing around you, and at almost hit you, it's a nuisance as well. I like the Ford Go Bikes/Citi Bikes, it's organized and it's a proven system in NYC and other cities, that doesn't burden others. Except those who lose parking spots in their neighborhood to docking stations.
- woah 9y ago
  The inconvenience and danger caused by cars is so much more. You have to be on alert to avoid being killed by them. Huge swaths of valuable city real estate are devoted to free or low priced subsidized storage of cars for entitled car owners. It's astounding that this has gone on for so long and it needs to be stopped.
  - Angostura 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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austinl 9y ago

I'd much rather have scooters parked on the sidewalk than cars on the road. I previously used Lyft or Uber to get to work, now I primarily use Scoot, Bird, or Jump (depending on the distance/availability). I've found all of these solutions are much more enjoyable and cost efficient than a car. Generally excited to see less and less people using cars in the city.

justanother 9y ago

So cities should subsidize your multi-million-dollar operation by reducing urban on-street parking inventory and donating that space to you? Okay, but here's some free advice about how cities work: You won't get that by writing internet blog posts that contain false equivalencies (ie scooter rental companies and car manufacturers). You'll get it by wining and dining a lot of city councilpersons. Best get started.

sarreph 9y ago

> What’s the issue? Some blocked sidewalks. As if that was a new issue in cities. Yes, blocked sidewalks is the issue. And while I'm glad the author suggests a remedy — of creating designated parking zones — this is essentially describing dockable bikes. In my experience, docked bikes do not solve the convenience and availability problem well enough. I've used dockless bikes recently in both Europe and Asia, and in the cities of both, dockless bikes are being literally strewn about the place. Flower-beds, narrow sidewalks, pedestrian junctions, private grounds, etc. are all being used as dumping grounds for users' dockless bike destinations. I've even been on wild-goose-chases after multiple consecutive 'available' bikes, only to realise that they must be literally taken inside peoples' property and homes. Why? For the former, I'm pretty sure it's simply a 'not my problem / not my bike' issue. Private bike owners usually have to lock their bikes up somewhere out of the way, and generally seem more respectful of their bikes' surroundings. With dockless bikes, it's just to easy to dump your bike in the middle of the sidewalk and not have to deal with any consequences. Certain bike hire companies are trying to deal with this by incentivizing certain parking spaces; however, why would you bother getting +10.CoolBikeXP for going out of your way when you can chuck your bike on someone's lawn right outside your office? And as for the latter, because people seem to be getting away with it. People are so lovely [/s] that they'd seriously consider just keeping a rental bike inside their home, thus ruining the service for nearby users. I want dockless bikes to be the future, and I think they should be, but we really need to fix users' docking behaviour, or else we'll end up with tragedy-of-the-commons[0] type consequences once enough people start using them. [0] — this is a tenuous analogy, but for lack of better phrasing, I'm referring to the ultimate widespread abuse of potential public / open docking spaces.

Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
Dockless bikes are working pretty much fine in Oxford, where I live. The city is pretty much the poster child for the idea in the UK, with three firms competing (Ofo, Mobike, Pony). Pavements generally aren't obstructed and the bike companies aren't experiencing a high degree of theft.
EnderMB 9y ago
We have dockless bikes in Bristol, and we've had similar issues. The biggest issue I've found is that most services require you give up use once you park, meaning that you could use one to get lunch and then come back to see that the bike you used is gone, with no bike nearby. There are definitely solutions out there to these problems, but I think the space is still relatively new for companies to have these problems fully addressed. I don't share the sentiment or the entitlement of the article, though. Rather than addressing the problems, they're largely complaining about vehicles that don't really have a choice but to be parked for a long period of time (i.e. lorries running deliveries).

Jaruzel 9y ago

Site offline; Archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200143/http://haveago.city/disgraceful-dockless-drama/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200143/http://haveago.ci...

matttproud 9y ago

This article's author has a chip on the shoulders regarding automobiles: > pick up their cars and drop them off _anywhere_ in the city (emphasis mine) Really? One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter. Individuals inconsiderately stranding means of transportation across the city is patently unsafe. I can sure as hell see a car misparked on the sidewalk when walking and avoid it because it is big and in the field of view; but with a bikecycle or scooter there is no guarantee given its small size. Each day feels like game of Mario Kart: am I going to trip over a banana someone left in the streets? FFS. I would be happy if the cities issued fines/citations to the individuals responsible for improperly discarding the conveyances. A protocol already exists for rental car companies; why not for rental scooters/bikes? This is perfectly solvable. (I am no defender of automobiles and view even the most urban cities of the United States as hopelessly car-bound.)

bdamm 9y ago
It is solvable, typically by city government. No doubt if there are sufficient people annoyed by discarded scooters overcrowding the sidewalks then the city will be compelled to act. The city may designate specific zones for such discarded conveyance, or they may designate zones that are to remain free of such. They may choose to redirect police efforts towards ticketing those "littering" the streets with these devices, or they may choose to ask the police to create a blitz of enforcement, among the various enforcement options. They may choose to revoke the business license for entities providing such conveyances, or they may choose to enact new taxes to pay for the management. There are many options, and city governments are entirely appropriate to make the choices. I encourage you to take your grievance there.
T-N-T 9y ago
>One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter. The law is broken so often it might as well not exist AT all, at least in my country. Vigilantes here have started to take pictures of cars that are "parked like shit" to shame the drivers publicly because the law has been insufficient, the punishments not applied often enough or not harsh enough to truly dissuade car drivers from not parking on a sidewalk, bikelane, in front of a shop or even at times directly on a part of a road... http://www.garecommeunemerde.fr/gcum/galerie/ http://www.garecommeunemerde.fr/gcum/galerie/ The website gallery isn't showing a tiny minority. I see examples of this every day as soon as I leave my home.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> These new lightweight EVs keep most of the benefits of cars, cut travel times, are easy and convenient, help flatten hills, increase range, and marginalize fatigue and sweating, without the terrible drawbacks of cars: their enormous weight, size, danger, inefficiency, huge parking costs, pollution, expensive infrastructure, degradation of neighborhoods, etc. Everybody is trying to sell you something. The worst are trying to sell you what you want. The best are trying to sell you what you need. Of course, there is always an alternative. In this case: walk everywhere, reduce your risk of a heart attack.

owenversteeg 9y ago
Walking is simply not an alternative for moderate distance with a bike. For example, Google Maps's biking time for a common route near me (train station to university) is 6 minutes. Walking time is 26 minutes. The distance is 2km, so that's 20km/hr biking or about 4km/hr walking. I've tested this with longer distances and it seems to hold. In my experience, Google's biking speed is fairly spot on for me, and its walking speed is a bit faster than I walk. So I'd imagine that biking is at least six times faster than walking for me personally. Also, if I really have somewhere to be, I can bike substantially faster and be OK, but running for half an hour with a heavy backpack and bags is much harder. I spend a decent amount of time getting around on a bike - an hour and a half yesterday, maybe a half an hour today, so just the last two days alone I'd have spent twelve hours walking! That's totally unacceptable. Finally, I imagine that biking (although easier) isn't that much less healthy than walking. Still much healthier than driving.
terenig 9y ago
Walking BEST. Biking, second best. If too far, too hot, too steep, e-bikes third best. Plus good public transportation.

terenig 9y ago

One additional thing to think about. Cars in general use what were for thousands of years historically public spaces: the streets. Now, people are pretty much banned from using streets and are relegated to small or nonexistent sidewalks or sparse public parks. We forget that cities are quite old and cars are very new and our acceptance of streets being for cars isn't actually historically normal and is really a huge concession by cities and citizens to historically public, spaces for walking, commerce, festivals, meetups, musicians, artists, kids, the elderly, etc. The right to freely use and leave bikes/scooters anywhere is simply one tiny push back to this historic uses of streets.

erdojo 9y ago

This story total propaganda and a load of horse manure. They are not green. They are not convenient. And cityfolk hate them. Go back to LA bros.