5 ms·

> Company litters thousands of billboards all over streets and sidewalks, creating city-wide eyesore / road hazard > Citizens remove hazard from streets, profi

> Company litters thousands of billboards all over streets and sidewalks, creating city-wide eyesore / road hazard > Citizens remove hazard from streets, profiting at company's expense Isn't this the definition of poetic justice?

gtirloni 8y ago
I understand these are faceless corporations but, if you're a concerned citizen and want to make a statement through civil disobedience, why not disable the scooters and leave a note? Why profit? I can't see this as poetic justice. Two wrongs don't make a right, as the saying goes.
- gtirloni 8y ago
  For the downvotters, I'm not advocating you do any of that. I was writing from the point of view of someone who thinks what's being done is right (people screwing a company that is, in their views, harming their city) and how ripping it off by hiding the scooters and profiting from the charges is kind of messed up.
lazerwalker 8y ago
Only if you only view the scooters as a "hazard" and an "eyesore". An alternate interpretation (even if you're rightfully skeptical of for-profit venture-funded startups like these) is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role This argument only holds water if public transportation sucks in a city. If you can get to wherever you want to go within a 200 metre radius of a city by public transport (which is the case in a lot of European cities to begin with) then this argument does not make any sense. fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure. That's at least debatable. If it's really part of public transport infrastructure then this should be coordinated with the cities. But the mindset seems more a : "We shit 500 of those things throughout a relatively small city and disrupt the holly bejeezus out of this town". As long as this attitude prevails I neither see this as a valid argument.
  - cycrutchfield 8y ago
    >This argument only holds water if public transportation sucks in a city. As it does in most American cities.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    I live in Berlin, a city with relatively good public transport. Being able to go where ever you want to go using public transport doesn't mean that the connection is good. Often it's a lot faster to ride a bike than to take a bus from a train station to your ultimate destination. Scooters can reduce that inconvenience and thus increase the share of trips that are done without cars. I don't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens. The city often has poor visibility into where people actually want to go and by which criteria they choose the mode of transport. And adding bureaucracy without clear benefits doesn't seem smart.
    - CaptainZapp 8y ago
      I don't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens. It would, for example, avoid that you have 1'000 defunct OBikes in a relatively small city (~90km2) basically cluttering up everything, but being of so bad quality that they're borderline useless. Even if you're stupid enough to cough up the required deposit and download their dodgy app. Same bikes which need to be removed not even a year later on the taxpayers dime. It would help to not make entire town districts unafordable and unhabitable in some cities by the likes of AirBnB waltzing in for fun and profit. I could come up with more examples, Uber being the most obvious. I see a city as a rather complex organism, with a lot of competing factors and variables, which require careful balancing and calibration. There's a reason that cities prepare master plans about development for the next two decades. If the burghers believe that change is required it's up to them to initiate such change. It should not be up to some venture capital fueled SV companies, which use public property for private gain, to make such decisions.
      - adrianN 8y ago
- amyjess 8y ago
  > a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure You could also call it "a last-mile role in public transit that's completely inaccessible to the disabled". Hell, my disability is relatively minor—I have developmental dyspraxia (a.k.a. developmental coordination disorder)—and I attempted to ride one of these scooters once, and I was so completely out-of-control riding it that I had to stop after a block, drag it back onto the sidewalk, and tuck it in a corner so nobody trips over it. It took me several minutes to stop shaking. And they can also cause externalities for people with other disabilities. For example, people throwing them down on the sidewalks can create tripping hazards for the blind (though from what I've seen, this was a much bigger problem with the bikes that predated the scooters than the scooters themselves).

gtirloni 8y ago

I understand these are faceless corporations but, if you're a concerned citizen and want to make a statement through civil disobedience, why not disable the scooters and leave a note? Why profit? I can't see this as poetic justice. Two wrongs don't make a right, as the saying goes.

gtirloni 8y ago
For the downvotters, I'm not advocating you do any of that. I was writing from the point of view of someone who thinks what's being done is right (people screwing a company that is, in their views, harming their city) and how ripping it off by hiding the scooters and profiting from the charges is kind of messed up.

lazerwalker 8y ago

Only if you only view the scooters as a "hazard" and an "eyesore". An alternate interpretation (even if you're rightfully skeptical of for-profit venture-funded startups like these) is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure.

CaptainZapp 8y ago
is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role This argument only holds water if public transportation sucks in a city. If you can get to wherever you want to go within a 200 metre radius of a city by public transport (which is the case in a lot of European cities to begin with) then this argument does not make any sense. fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure. That's at least debatable. If it's really part of public transport infrastructure then this should be coordinated with the cities. But the mindset seems more a : "We shit 500 of those things throughout a relatively small city and disrupt the holly bejeezus out of this town". As long as this attitude prevails I neither see this as a valid argument.
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  >This argument only holds water if public transportation sucks in a city. As it does in most American cities.
- adrianN 8y ago
  I live in Berlin, a city with relatively good public transport. Being able to go where ever you want to go using public transport doesn't mean that the connection is good. Often it's a lot faster to ride a bike than to take a bus from a train station to your ultimate destination. Scooters can reduce that inconvenience and thus increase the share of trips that are done without cars. I don't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens. The city often has poor visibility into where people actually want to go and by which criteria they choose the mode of transport. And adding bureaucracy without clear benefits doesn't seem smart.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    I don't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens. It would, for example, avoid that you have 1'000 defunct OBikes in a relatively small city (~90km2) basically cluttering up everything, but being of so bad quality that they're borderline useless. Even if you're stupid enough to cough up the required deposit and download their dodgy app. Same bikes which need to be removed not even a year later on the taxpayers dime. It would help to not make entire town districts unafordable and unhabitable in some cities by the likes of AirBnB waltzing in for fun and profit. I could come up with more examples, Uber being the most obvious. I see a city as a rather complex organism, with a lot of competing factors and variables, which require careful balancing and calibration. There's a reason that cities prepare master plans about development for the next two decades. If the burghers believe that change is required it's up to them to initiate such change. It should not be up to some venture capital fueled SV companies, which use public property for private gain, to make such decisions.
    - adrianN 8y ago
amyjess 8y ago
> a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure You could also call it "a last-mile role in public transit that's completely inaccessible to the disabled". Hell, my disability is relatively minor—I have developmental dyspraxia (a.k.a. developmental coordination disorder)—and I attempted to ride one of these scooters once, and I was so completely out-of-control riding it that I had to stop after a block, drag it back onto the sidewalk, and tuck it in a corner so nobody trips over it. It took me several minutes to stop shaking. And they can also cause externalities for people with other disabilities. For example, people throwing them down on the sidewalks can create tripping hazards for the blind (though from what I've seen, this was a much bigger problem with the bikes that predated the scooters than the scooters themselves).