7 ms·

San Francisco announces next steps in regulating shared, powered scooters

38 points by aj_icracked 8y ago

maerF0x0 8y ago
>offer a low-income plan This one is odd to me. BMW doesn't have to offer low income cars. AFAIK Uber doesnt have to cut fares for low-income folks. Walking and the bus/train is the low income plan.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  Perhaps some of the scooter companies are arguing that they provide a solution to overcrowded mass transit; SFMTA provides options like the Lifeline Pass (https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline-pass https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline-pass). Additionally, they are relying upon public streets and areas to sell their services (as I understand it, you don't go to a private depot to pick up a scooter you wish to rent), whereas BMW dealerships conduct their business on private property.
  - wbl 8y ago
    Ever look at where cars end up parked?
    - maerF0x0 8y ago
      I agree with your point, but also fuel is taxed... I dont know how maths workout though.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      Registering a car in CA isn't exactly cheap.
    - bdcravens 8y ago
      Generally those are privately owned, ostensibly by those paying taxes. A better analogy would be if Enterprise left rental cars parked on public streets for customers to pick up as part of the transaction.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  This makes sense if you group scooters and docking bicycle share programs into the same category. Most US city bikeshare programs include deeply discounted (like $5/mo) access for the poor.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  Scooters are an urban mobility solution, one that if successful will reduce the need to utilize last mile public transportation. This potentially means transit routes will be shut down. If you want to make it easy for everyone to navigate a city, you need to make sure that they have access to meaningful transportation options. As for automobiles I understand there are practical reasons why subsidizing them isn't cost effective, but for a while in the 20th century automobile dependency was used to make sure the poor masses couldn't make it out to the suburbs -- places rich in jobs, education and investment opportunities that entire generations missed out on.
  - ng12 8y ago
    > This potentially means transit routes will be shut down. If you want to make it easy for everyone to navigate a city Why is this a private industry problem? Isn't that SFMTA's charter?
    - maerF0x0 8y ago
      In some regards I think this is the real story... "After billions spent, Government public transit fails to innovate effective solutions to their mission"
    - eridius 8y ago
      And the SFMTA is the one regulating this type of transport.
cft 8y ago
So you can pitch an unpermitted tent on a city sidewalk, full of stolen bicycle parts, but you cannot leave a scooter there?
- k_sh 8y ago
  The tents aren't owned by a company that rents them out, and the scooters aren't used as a last-resort shelter for homeless folks.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
>As part of the pilot, up to five qualified companies could be issued permits to operate shared, motorized scooters in San Francisco So essentially if you're not fast or well connected enough to get one of those permits then you're shit out of luck? What happens if a company scooter-sharing hurts gets one of those permits to sit on? Why did this industry need a limited pilot in the first place??
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  We'll call them "Scooter Medallions" and they will be an investment property!
- cblock811 8y ago
  Because the scooters were already clogging sidewalks and aggravating people. The limit prevents that. Otherwise VC's will invest in ten of these companies like lemmings, kind of like how we have so many food deliver apps. At least this way we'll only have five. This doesn't seem too crazy to me but maybe that's just me.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  "If you're California you regulate stuff. It's what you do" <insert car insurance sales pitch here> Why couldn't the city couldn't just impound and auction scooters, bikes, skateboards, shopping carts that are parked illegally? They almost certainly can do this under one of the bajillion existing statutes. Don't want you crap stolen by the government, don't let your users park it in dumb places. As I understand it riding a scooter on the sidewalk is already illegal. I don't see how this is any different from bike sharing other than the form factor making them more tempting to ride on the sidewalk.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Why did this industry need a limited pilot in the first place? "I've been having chuck steak ever since I've been on the force,' declared Alexander 'Clubber' Williams of the New York Police Department in 1876. 'Now I'm going to have a bit of tenderloin.'" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3670673/New-Yorks-less-than-tenderloin.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews...
ChuckMcM 8y ago
It astonishes me how rapidly San Francisco has mobilized to get the scooters off the street in comparison to how little they have been able to accomplish to get the poop, needles, and condoms off the same streets. I know which I would choose, if I was told to pick one or the other to be removed from city streets.
- sjburt 8y ago
  I don't think anyone is trying to run a poop-sharing business that the city can go after.
  - anothergoogler 8y ago
    If the poop is free, are you the product?
- danso 8y ago
  Why would it astonish you? The posted article is about proposed regulations, not resources for enforcement. Is it the case that San Francisco has no laws regarding littering and public defecation?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > The posted article is about proposed regulations, not resources for enforcement. Proposing and negotiating regulations and creating a pilot permitting regime costs money and, more expensively, attention. It is remarkable that, given the multitude of political failures currently going on in San Francisco, that this has been prioritized.
- deft 8y ago
  which would you rather go clean up?
  - ChuckMcM 8y ago
    If I were a city supervisor looking to maximize the health and welfare of people walking on my city's sidewalks, I would fund getting rid of the disease threat before I spent funds on the mechanical threat.
adomanico 8y ago
How about dealing with the human feces on the sidewalks and rampant homelessness instead of stifling innovation.
- justboxing 8y ago
  Strawman argument. The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    > The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians. John Snow would disagree.
  - refurb 8y ago
    Really? Why is San Diego dealing with a hepatitis A outbreak? Sure, just walking through is lower risk than actually living on the street, but it's not a non-threat.
- cjhopman 8y ago
  Do you know how much sf spends on homelessness each year?
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    20k per homeless person. Which shows their level of corruption and or incompetence.
    - jon_richards 8y ago
      If they were more efficient, they could be spending 30k per homeless person!
cjlars 8y ago
>For the first six months of the pilot, a total of 1,250 scooters may be permitted. If the first six months are successful, the total number of scooters may increase to 2,500 in months seven through 12. While I support the city's efforts to balance the downsides, mainly the sidewalk parking issue, with the upsides of cheap, clean, and accessible mobility, I think there are two wrongheaded decisions the city is making. 1. Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? That failed tremendously as it was administered under the old Cab system. It also risks preempting new developments, e.g. at some point the scooters will be able to drive themselves to you. You do not want to give incumbents a legal mechanism to block that competitive challenge. 2. Why limit the number of scooters? It is already difficult to find one of these for a ride to / home from work. Limiting the number just creates incentives for bad behavior by users. Ever seen someone 'guarding' an inactive scooter? I saw someone hiding one under his lunch table (it was 'available' in the app), presumably so that he could ride it home when done. Artificial scarcity is likely to create many more problems than it solves. In both cases a better public policy proposal would be marginal taxes per unit on the scooters themselves with no cap on number. The community incurs an externality in allowing these operators to enjoy free on sidewalk parking, simply set a price to balance that and let commuters decide how many units should be around. Or to put it into econospeak: Pigovian taxes are better than quotas.
- eridius 8y ago
  > Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? No. It's because this is a pilot program. At the end of the program, if the program is successful and a decision is made to allow this on a more permanent basis, then presumably the restrictions will be lifted. For context, the bike share pilot programs (e.g. the Ford GoBikes and the JUMP bikes) also have similar restrictions. Same answer goes for why limiting the number of scooters.
  - cjlars 8y ago
    They may regulate it appropriately in the end, but it sets a bad framework as precedent. Regardless, the deadweight loss from this decision is substantial. Imagine that the equilibrium number of scooters (the # the market will support, note that we are in the 'rapid adoption phase' right now) is 5000, instead of 2500. At 10 rides per day, times $3 per ride, times the duration of both levels of the quota, that's about $40M in lost economic value. You may fairly argue about those assumptions, but if the city were to propose a special $40M (or $5M or $10M) tax to pay for a study on the scooters, we would rightly be outraged. But they both have the same impact -- people in the city are $40M worse off with what, exactly, being gained in return? Also note specifically that a big issue with the taxi medallion system was that the quotas prevented the discovery of the equilibrium # of taxis. If we do not allow a market equilibrium to be reached, it's very easy for regulators to endlessly argue over the 'right' number without ever getting close to what the market actually wants. Politics has a lot of inertia -- the medallion system perpetuated itself for generations -- so I do not think you can understate the importance of bad precedent.
themark 8y ago
"Specifically, operators would need to...have a privacy policy that safeguards user information..." That's pretty cool.
justboxing 8y ago
> San Francisco supports transportation innovation, but it cannot come at the price of public safety,” Herrera said. “This permit program represents a thoughtful, coordinated and effective approach to ensure that San Francisco strikes the right balance. We can have innovation, but it must keep our sidewalks safe and accessible for all pedestrians. This. Exactly. In the past week alone, I've been witness to, or victim in, 3 pedestrian safety incidents. In the first one, a dude and a lady companioned were riding the "Bird"s and turned into the sidewalk I was walking on (Fillmore Street) and crashed into me. They awkwardly apologized and were gone, didn't even bother to see if I was injured. In another incident on Market and 1st (going towards the bay bridge) a scooter "Parked" on the sidewalk was blown from the wind and had falled on the sidewalk ramp. Saw an old black lady in a wheel chair struggling to get around it to get on the sidewalk. The 3rd was a Muni driver honking at 2 riders who were bank in the middle of the road on Howard St going towards the Ferry Building. He almost crashed the bus into them. While I'm all for innovation, it cannot come at the cost of pedestrian safety. Even if these startups meant for their scooters to be riden on the road, and not the sidewalk (It's ILLEGAL to ride a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk of San Francisco[1] ) only a small minority of the riders seem to be following it. I've seen so many riding it on the sidewalks. [1] Source: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-illegal-fines-transportation https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-i...
- conanbatt 8y ago
  My main concern walking down market street is the drug traffickers having fights for the payday loans corner, human shit, needles and sick and mentally deranged people walking about. I wish scooters made the top 5 public safety issues.
  - justboxing 8y ago
    This is also a straw-man argument.
    - praneshp 8y ago
joshe 8y ago
It's actually pretty good that there are 5 spots. Bird, Lime, Spin are here now. Lyft has expressed interest. SkipScooters, from 2 of the founders of Boosted skateboards, seems like they might know how to make a great scooter. Maybe Uber/Jump would make 6? The other interesting competition aspect is that each is limited to 250 scooters. Not enough to build a network. So you'll have to join a few of them to make it reliable. This will keep some less competitive companies alive a little longer. Long term it would be crazy to prevent competition like this. And worth watching, cities are laughably poor at good licensing. There are supposed to be 45,000 licensed uber/lyft drivers vs 1,500 taxi medallions in SF. 30 times too few taxis! It's amazing that was the status quo for 40 years. [1] The slow ramp is the huge bummer though. Three months of 1250, 6 months of 2500 would make more sense. Then 10-30 thousand for a couple years. You need a lot of vehicles to make a reliable network. Same goes for Jump style locking bikes. Scooters are a little objectionable and probably need to be managed, but wow cars are so much worse. Any possible replacement for SF's 500,000 cars should get the fullest support and permissiveness from government. They take up huge amounts of space for parking, kill people, cause pollution, and sit in traffic jams. Tesla is cool but in cities cars are not the answer (go Boring company go!). It's worth pointing out that in SF you can still buy and operate your own electric scooter or ebike. Unlike the baffling NYC situation. SF is actually ok at adapting, just really slowly. Some numbers: 500,000 cars registered in SF [2] 20 traffic fatalities in 2017, killing 14 pedestrians 2 cyclists 4 motorcycle drivers 0 car drivers It sounds like they were all killed by cars.[3] [1] http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft-drivers-in-san-francisco-grab-lawmakers-attention http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4-98b5-8011b059260a/est_fees_pd_by_county.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4... [3] https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths-san-francisco-2017 https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths-san-f...
- DrScump 8y ago
  Sometimes, bicyclists kill pedestrians. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Cyclist-pleads-guilty-in-Castro-crosswalk-death-4680814.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Cyclist-p...
mLuby 8y ago
"share trip data with the city" sounds easily abused. I hope they mean in aggregate rather than individual trips.

38 points by aj_icracked 8y ago

>offer a low-income plan This one is odd to me. BMW doesn't have to offer low income cars. AFAIK Uber doesnt have to cut fares for low-income folks. Walking and the bus/train is the low income plan.

bdcravens 8y ago
Perhaps some of the scooter companies are arguing that they provide a solution to overcrowded mass transit; SFMTA provides options like the Lifeline Pass (https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline-pass https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline-pass). Additionally, they are relying upon public streets and areas to sell their services (as I understand it, you don't go to a private depot to pick up a scooter you wish to rent), whereas BMW dealerships conduct their business on private property.
- wbl 8y ago
  Ever look at where cars end up parked?
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    I agree with your point, but also fuel is taxed... I dont know how maths workout though.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Registering a car in CA isn't exactly cheap.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    Generally those are privately owned, ostensibly by those paying taxes. A better analogy would be if Enterprise left rental cars parked on public streets for customers to pick up as part of the transaction.
hprotagonist 8y ago
This makes sense if you group scooters and docking bicycle share programs into the same category. Most US city bikeshare programs include deeply discounted (like $5/mo) access for the poor.
jdavis703 8y ago
Scooters are an urban mobility solution, one that if successful will reduce the need to utilize last mile public transportation. This potentially means transit routes will be shut down. If you want to make it easy for everyone to navigate a city, you need to make sure that they have access to meaningful transportation options. As for automobiles I understand there are practical reasons why subsidizing them isn't cost effective, but for a while in the 20th century automobile dependency was used to make sure the poor masses couldn't make it out to the suburbs -- places rich in jobs, education and investment opportunities that entire generations missed out on.
- ng12 8y ago
  > This potentially means transit routes will be shut down. If you want to make it easy for everyone to navigate a city Why is this a private industry problem? Isn't that SFMTA's charter?
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    In some regards I think this is the real story... "After billions spent, Government public transit fails to innovate effective solutions to their mission"
  - eridius 8y ago
    And the SFMTA is the one regulating this type of transport.

cft 8y ago

So you can pitch an unpermitted tent on a city sidewalk, full of stolen bicycle parts, but you cannot leave a scooter there?

k_sh 8y ago
The tents aren't owned by a company that rents them out, and the scooters aren't used as a last-resort shelter for homeless folks.

tomatotomato37 8y ago

>As part of the pilot, up to five qualified companies could be issued permits to operate shared, motorized scooters in San Francisco So essentially if you're not fast or well connected enough to get one of those permits then you're shit out of luck? What happens if a company scooter-sharing hurts gets one of those permits to sit on? Why did this industry need a limited pilot in the first place??

ChuckMcM 8y ago
We'll call them "Scooter Medallions" and they will be an investment property!
cblock811 8y ago
Because the scooters were already clogging sidewalks and aggravating people. The limit prevents that. Otherwise VC's will invest in ten of these companies like lemmings, kind of like how we have so many food deliver apps. At least this way we'll only have five. This doesn't seem too crazy to me but maybe that's just me.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
"If you're California you regulate stuff. It's what you do" <insert car insurance sales pitch here> Why couldn't the city couldn't just impound and auction scooters, bikes, skateboards, shopping carts that are parked illegally? They almost certainly can do this under one of the bajillion existing statutes. Don't want you crap stolen by the government, don't let your users park it in dumb places. As I understand it riding a scooter on the sidewalk is already illegal. I don't see how this is any different from bike sharing other than the form factor making them more tempting to ride on the sidewalk.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Why did this industry need a limited pilot in the first place? "I've been having chuck steak ever since I've been on the force,' declared Alexander 'Clubber' Williams of the New York Police Department in 1876. 'Now I'm going to have a bit of tenderloin.'" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3670673/New-Yorks-less-than-tenderloin.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews...

ChuckMcM 8y ago

It astonishes me how rapidly San Francisco has mobilized to get the scooters off the street in comparison to how little they have been able to accomplish to get the poop, needles, and condoms off the same streets. I know which I would choose, if I was told to pick one or the other to be removed from city streets.

sjburt 8y ago
I don't think anyone is trying to run a poop-sharing business that the city can go after.
- anothergoogler 8y ago
  If the poop is free, are you the product?
danso 8y ago
Why would it astonish you? The posted article is about proposed regulations, not resources for enforcement. Is it the case that San Francisco has no laws regarding littering and public defecation?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > The posted article is about proposed regulations, not resources for enforcement. Proposing and negotiating regulations and creating a pilot permitting regime costs money and, more expensively, attention. It is remarkable that, given the multitude of political failures currently going on in San Francisco, that this has been prioritized.
deft 8y ago
which would you rather go clean up?
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  If I were a city supervisor looking to maximize the health and welfare of people walking on my city's sidewalks, I would fund getting rid of the disease threat before I spent funds on the mechanical threat.

adomanico 8y ago

How about dealing with the human feces on the sidewalks and rampant homelessness instead of stifling innovation.

justboxing 8y ago
Strawman argument. The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  > The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians. John Snow would disagree.
- refurb 8y ago
  Really? Why is San Diego dealing with a hepatitis A outbreak? Sure, just walking through is lower risk than actually living on the street, but it's not a non-threat.
cjhopman 8y ago
Do you know how much sf spends on homelessness each year?
- conanbatt 8y ago
  20k per homeless person. Which shows their level of corruption and or incompetence.
  - jon_richards 8y ago
    If they were more efficient, they could be spending 30k per homeless person!

cjlars 8y ago

>For the first six months of the pilot, a total of 1,250 scooters may be permitted. If the first six months are successful, the total number of scooters may increase to 2,500 in months seven through 12. While I support the city's efforts to balance the downsides, mainly the sidewalk parking issue, with the upsides of cheap, clean, and accessible mobility, I think there are two wrongheaded decisions the city is making. 1. Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? That failed tremendously as it was administered under the old Cab system. It also risks preempting new developments, e.g. at some point the scooters will be able to drive themselves to you. You do not want to give incumbents a legal mechanism to block that competitive challenge. 2. Why limit the number of scooters? It is already difficult to find one of these for a ride to / home from work. Limiting the number just creates incentives for bad behavior by users. Ever seen someone 'guarding' an inactive scooter? I saw someone hiding one under his lunch table (it was 'available' in the app), presumably so that he could ride it home when done. Artificial scarcity is likely to create many more problems than it solves. In both cases a better public policy proposal would be marginal taxes per unit on the scooters themselves with no cap on number. The community incurs an externality in allowing these operators to enjoy free on sidewalk parking, simply set a price to balance that and let commuters decide how many units should be around. Or to put it into econospeak: Pigovian taxes are better than quotas.

eridius 8y ago
> Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? No. It's because this is a pilot program. At the end of the program, if the program is successful and a decision is made to allow this on a more permanent basis, then presumably the restrictions will be lifted. For context, the bike share pilot programs (e.g. the Ford GoBikes and the JUMP bikes) also have similar restrictions. Same answer goes for why limiting the number of scooters.
- cjlars 8y ago
  They may regulate it appropriately in the end, but it sets a bad framework as precedent. Regardless, the deadweight loss from this decision is substantial. Imagine that the equilibrium number of scooters (the # the market will support, note that we are in the 'rapid adoption phase' right now) is 5000, instead of 2500. At 10 rides per day, times $3 per ride, times the duration of both levels of the quota, that's about $40M in lost economic value. You may fairly argue about those assumptions, but if the city were to propose a special $40M (or $5M or $10M) tax to pay for a study on the scooters, we would rightly be outraged. But they both have the same impact -- people in the city are $40M worse off with what, exactly, being gained in return? Also note specifically that a big issue with the taxi medallion system was that the quotas prevented the discovery of the equilibrium # of taxis. If we do not allow a market equilibrium to be reached, it's very easy for regulators to endlessly argue over the 'right' number without ever getting close to what the market actually wants. Politics has a lot of inertia -- the medallion system perpetuated itself for generations -- so I do not think you can understate the importance of bad precedent.

themark 8y ago

"Specifically, operators would need to...have a privacy policy that safeguards user information..." That's pretty cool.

justboxing 8y ago

> San Francisco supports transportation innovation, but it cannot come at the price of public safety,” Herrera said. “This permit program represents a thoughtful, coordinated and effective approach to ensure that San Francisco strikes the right balance. We can have innovation, but it must keep our sidewalks safe and accessible for all pedestrians. This. Exactly. In the past week alone, I've been witness to, or victim in, 3 pedestrian safety incidents. In the first one, a dude and a lady companioned were riding the "Bird"s and turned into the sidewalk I was walking on (Fillmore Street) and crashed into me. They awkwardly apologized and were gone, didn't even bother to see if I was injured. In another incident on Market and 1st (going towards the bay bridge) a scooter "Parked" on the sidewalk was blown from the wind and had falled on the sidewalk ramp. Saw an old black lady in a wheel chair struggling to get around it to get on the sidewalk. The 3rd was a Muni driver honking at 2 riders who were bank in the middle of the road on Howard St going towards the Ferry Building. He almost crashed the bus into them. While I'm all for innovation, it cannot come at the cost of pedestrian safety. Even if these startups meant for their scooters to be riden on the road, and not the sidewalk (It's ILLEGAL to ride a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk of San Francisco[1] ) only a small minority of the riders seem to be following it. I've seen so many riding it on the sidewalks. [1] Source: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-illegal-fines-transportation https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-i...

conanbatt 8y ago
My main concern walking down market street is the drug traffickers having fights for the payday loans corner, human shit, needles and sick and mentally deranged people walking about. I wish scooters made the top 5 public safety issues.
- justboxing 8y ago
  This is also a straw-man argument.
  - praneshp 8y ago

joshe 8y ago

It's actually pretty good that there are 5 spots. Bird, Lime, Spin are here now. Lyft has expressed interest. SkipScooters, from 2 of the founders of Boosted skateboards, seems like they might know how to make a great scooter. Maybe Uber/Jump would make 6? The other interesting competition aspect is that each is limited to 250 scooters. Not enough to build a network. So you'll have to join a few of them to make it reliable. This will keep some less competitive companies alive a little longer. Long term it would be crazy to prevent competition like this. And worth watching, cities are laughably poor at good licensing. There are supposed to be 45,000 licensed uber/lyft drivers vs 1,500 taxi medallions in SF. 30 times too few taxis! It's amazing that was the status quo for 40 years. [1] The slow ramp is the huge bummer though. Three months of 1250, 6 months of 2500 would make more sense. Then 10-30 thousand for a couple years. You need a lot of vehicles to make a reliable network. Same goes for Jump style locking bikes. Scooters are a little objectionable and probably need to be managed, but wow cars are so much worse. Any possible replacement for SF's 500,000 cars should get the fullest support and permissiveness from government. They take up huge amounts of space for parking, kill people, cause pollution, and sit in traffic jams. Tesla is cool but in cities cars are not the answer (go Boring company go!). It's worth pointing out that in SF you can still buy and operate your own electric scooter or ebike. Unlike the baffling NYC situation. SF is actually ok at adapting, just really slowly. Some numbers: 500,000 cars registered in SF [2] 20 traffic fatalities in 2017, killing 14 pedestrians 2 cyclists 4 motorcycle drivers 0 car drivers It sounds like they were all killed by cars.[3] [1] http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft-drivers-in-san-francisco-grab-lawmakers-attention http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft... [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4-98b5-8011b059260a/est_fees_pd_by_county.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4... [3] https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths-san-francisco-2017 https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths-san-f...

DrScump 8y ago
Sometimes, bicyclists kill pedestrians. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Cyclist-pleads-guilty-in-Castro-crosswalk-death-4680814.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Cyclist-p...

mLuby 8y ago

"share trip data with the city" sounds easily abused. I hope they mean in aggregate rather than individual trips.