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I still think Bird's success is merely symptomatic of American shortsighted solutions to systemic US urban planning issues. I doubt this will reach the same lev

I still think Bird's success is merely symptomatic of American shortsighted solutions to systemic US urban planning issues. I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets, and good existing last mile solutions (bikeshares, bikelanes, high bus coverage), but I'm happy to eat my words if I'm just not seeing it and folks from Amsterdam, Seoul, Tokyo, NYC or Berlin would like to chime in and prove me wrong. The biggest challenge I see of existing well-executed public transit/cities is last mile coverage for handicapped/disabled folks and sufficient infrastructure for them in stations without having to resort to uber/lyft for <1mile transit. If Bird/scooter industry expanded into solving these problems I would greatly celebrate. I get frustrated seeing Bird celebrated as the next coming of the steam engine, when it barely moves the needle for regular transit, without remotely addressing the biggest long-standing issues of the space.

shereadsthenews 8y ago
Americans will try literally anything as long as it is neither sensible land use nor proven transportation schemes. This scooter stuff is extremely appealing to the American mind.
- RobLach 8y ago
  What about the American mind makes electric scooters so alluring? That statement sounds ridiculous.
  - shereadsthenews 8y ago
    I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”
    - creddit 8y ago
      > I don’t know and I can’t explain it. I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.
      - keerthiko 8y ago
        Although I disagree with GP's original phrasing, the parent comment: > If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.” ...describes a very real experience they had at least anecdotal experience with, which I too can relate to (getting those responses to those suggestions from Americans). I have some hypotheses for these, but honestly they have also been beaten to death by transit advocates elsewhere.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      I have noticed the same thing just in general society unrelated to Americans. When you propose an alternative that works 95% of the time people will find that edge case where it doesn't work and refuse to acknowledge the solution. A similar related event was when stop lights got converted to LEDs. In some areas in some times of the year there would be snow that covers up the light which now no longer runs hot enough to melt it. News at the time sensationalized this issue making it seem like the LED stop lights were bad despite the obvious solution being to just put a heater on the light to run in those areas on those few days where it is needed. When people suggest getting to work by bike they don't expect you to only ever use a bike for the rest of your life but to cut out the needless car trips that could be done by bike and leave the car until it is needed. The money you save on not using a car multiple times a day would easily pay for a taxi in the rare case you need it.
    - michaelt 8y ago
ggm 8y ago
I (also?) think these disruptive transport plays are a bit grubby, and probably predating public transport shared costs and the commons. Here in brisbane, they basically became scofflaw over "riding without helmet" and "riding on pavement" to force the issue. Why the state authorities caved instead of taking them to the cleaners is beyond me. We've already started to have drunks on scooters, elderly people feeling exposed to random vehicle hits, no-helmet fine issues, public nuisance, juicers hiding scooters to game the demand pricing/charging.. What we needed was integrated public transport on a non-profit basis. Lower cost fares, better integration. We got half of it. A really good high circumference e-ticket integrated fare scheme, but not cheap and with some serious computer-systems weaknesses. The transport planners are obsessed with reducing public cost, not with increasing public utility.
- MauranKilom 8y ago
  It might just be me, but I'm having a hard time following your post due to these terms: > scofflaw > taking to the cleaners > juicers I normally would just go look it up, but this is a high density of jargon/colloquialisms. Or maybe it's not and I just never heard them, but I'm just offering my data point here.
  - laurieg 8y ago
    I think you were just a little unlucky and hit a post with a few words and phrases you don't know. Scofflaw is a pretty old word, and being a combination of scoff and law many people could work out its meaning. Take someone to the cleaners is a fairly common idiom. Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on.
    - ardy42 8y ago
      > Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on. It probably is. Saying something is "out of juice" to mean "out of power" has a fairly long history. It's a pretty straightforward to extend that slang to someone who restores power to things by recharging them.
Isn0gud 8y ago
I live in Paris with an arguably good public transport system in place and Lime scooters were quite popular this summer. This is only anecdotally ofc, but you see a lot of people using them. There are not as many Bird scooters yet though. Where I see the niche is medium distances were the metro is not a fast solution but if scooters are ubiquitously available for these situations, I see value in them. And yeah, Tourists seem to love them.
- keerthiko 8y ago
  I know they are popular in a variety of places, but I think transit options that are disproportionately popular with tourists compared to the locals are a glaring indicator of being long-term inefficient (and potentially harmful to the development of the better options already present in the city). To me SF's tendency to celebrate random experimental transit is the main reason public transit is so underdeveloped here. Do you think there are potentially better solutions for the niche filled by scooters in Paris that could integrate more fluidly with existing transit or are scooters the global maxima with existing tech?
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  I tried a Lime in Paris last fall and it was terrifying. Being 3 feet away from cars going 25 kph, one slight mistake and you're dead. Never again. Bikes feel a lot safer.
megy 8y ago
I don't agree, London and Paris really took to their bike share systems. This will appeal to even more people.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  The Paris bike share system became completely dysfunctional last year when they changed the contractor. It's a huge embarrassment for the city, because it had worked well before. I hope they fix it.
  - baby 8y ago
    Oh boy, the Velov' of Lyon (which I believe were the very first iteration of these bike share systems) are completely broken since they changed them. Now you can't get one from a station without the app, and the app doesn't work for most people. It's a shit show.
derekdahmer 8y ago
FWIW I sometimes use a Lime to get to work in Oakland on a straight-shot road, with a bike lane, that already has a bus doing that exact route. I use the scooter because its faster than the bus for about the same price ~$3. And super fun.
justboxing 8y ago
> I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets, I hope you are right. The littering / parking isn't the biggest problem or nuisance. It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. Forget the fact that it's illegal[1] in most states to ride a motorized vehicle (other than disability vehicles) on the sidewalks, almost all of these lyme, scoot, bird riders ignore it and routinely cause collisions in San Francisco. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters > A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk. Related: 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...
- qudat 8y ago
  > It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. It's more dangerous to ride them on streets, even on bike paths. Who cares if it's illegal? I'd rather ride on the sidewalk then get hit by a car trying to pass me at 45 mph.
  - dbuder 8y ago
    But I'd rather you get hit by a car than run into me while I'm walking along minding my own business.
  - foob 8y ago
    > Who cares if it's illegal? The pedestrians that are endangered by relatively high speed motorized vehicles riding on sidewalks care. It's totally reasonable for you to not want to ride a scooter on the street, but that doesn't entitle you to break the law and make sidewalks less safe for others.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      It's the cars that kill and maim pedestrians and drive scooter riders to the sidewalks. They're your real enemy.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yread 8y ago
I wish you were right, but there are people with deep pockets who believe otherwise: https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/ https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/ Amsterdam-based e-scooter startup dott raises €20 million to expand across European cities
yardie 8y ago
Lime and Bird are pretty popular in Paris. A city with great public transit.

shereadsthenews 8y ago

Americans will try literally anything as long as it is neither sensible land use nor proven transportation schemes. This scooter stuff is extremely appealing to the American mind.

RobLach 8y ago
What about the American mind makes electric scooters so alluring? That statement sounds ridiculous.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”
  - creddit 8y ago
    > I don’t know and I can’t explain it. I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.
    - keerthiko 8y ago
      Although I disagree with GP's original phrasing, the parent comment: > If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.” ...describes a very real experience they had at least anecdotal experience with, which I too can relate to (getting those responses to those suggestions from Americans). I have some hypotheses for these, but honestly they have also been beaten to death by transit advocates elsewhere.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    I have noticed the same thing just in general society unrelated to Americans. When you propose an alternative that works 95% of the time people will find that edge case where it doesn't work and refuse to acknowledge the solution. A similar related event was when stop lights got converted to LEDs. In some areas in some times of the year there would be snow that covers up the light which now no longer runs hot enough to melt it. News at the time sensationalized this issue making it seem like the LED stop lights were bad despite the obvious solution being to just put a heater on the light to run in those areas on those few days where it is needed. When people suggest getting to work by bike they don't expect you to only ever use a bike for the rest of your life but to cut out the needless car trips that could be done by bike and leave the car until it is needed. The money you save on not using a car multiple times a day would easily pay for a taxi in the rare case you need it.
  - michaelt 8y ago

ggm 8y ago

I (also?) think these disruptive transport plays are a bit grubby, and probably predating public transport shared costs and the commons. Here in brisbane, they basically became scofflaw over "riding without helmet" and "riding on pavement" to force the issue. Why the state authorities caved instead of taking them to the cleaners is beyond me. We've already started to have drunks on scooters, elderly people feeling exposed to random vehicle hits, no-helmet fine issues, public nuisance, juicers hiding scooters to game the demand pricing/charging.. What we needed was integrated public transport on a non-profit basis. Lower cost fares, better integration. We got half of it. A really good high circumference e-ticket integrated fare scheme, but not cheap and with some serious computer-systems weaknesses. The transport planners are obsessed with reducing public cost, not with increasing public utility.

MauranKilom 8y ago
It might just be me, but I'm having a hard time following your post due to these terms: > scofflaw > taking to the cleaners > juicers I normally would just go look it up, but this is a high density of jargon/colloquialisms. Or maybe it's not and I just never heard them, but I'm just offering my data point here.
- laurieg 8y ago
  I think you were just a little unlucky and hit a post with a few words and phrases you don't know. Scofflaw is a pretty old word, and being a combination of scoff and law many people could work out its meaning. Take someone to the cleaners is a fairly common idiom. Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on. It probably is. Saying something is "out of juice" to mean "out of power" has a fairly long history. It's a pretty straightforward to extend that slang to someone who restores power to things by recharging them.

Isn0gud 8y ago

I live in Paris with an arguably good public transport system in place and Lime scooters were quite popular this summer. This is only anecdotally ofc, but you see a lot of people using them. There are not as many Bird scooters yet though. Where I see the niche is medium distances were the metro is not a fast solution but if scooters are ubiquitously available for these situations, I see value in them. And yeah, Tourists seem to love them.

keerthiko 8y ago
I know they are popular in a variety of places, but I think transit options that are disproportionately popular with tourists compared to the locals are a glaring indicator of being long-term inefficient (and potentially harmful to the development of the better options already present in the city). To me SF's tendency to celebrate random experimental transit is the main reason public transit is so underdeveloped here. Do you think there are potentially better solutions for the niche filled by scooters in Paris that could integrate more fluidly with existing transit or are scooters the global maxima with existing tech?
dreamcompiler 8y ago
I tried a Lime in Paris last fall and it was terrifying. Being 3 feet away from cars going 25 kph, one slight mistake and you're dead. Never again. Bikes feel a lot safer.

megy 8y ago

I don't agree, London and Paris really took to their bike share systems. This will appeal to even more people.

dreamcompiler 8y ago
The Paris bike share system became completely dysfunctional last year when they changed the contractor. It's a huge embarrassment for the city, because it had worked well before. I hope they fix it.
- baby 8y ago
  Oh boy, the Velov' of Lyon (which I believe were the very first iteration of these bike share systems) are completely broken since they changed them. Now you can't get one from a station without the app, and the app doesn't work for most people. It's a shit show.

derekdahmer 8y ago

FWIW I sometimes use a Lime to get to work in Oakland on a straight-shot road, with a bike lane, that already has a bus doing that exact route. I use the scooter because its faster than the bus for about the same price ~$3. And super fun.

justboxing 8y ago

> I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets, I hope you are right. The littering / parking isn't the biggest problem or nuisance. It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. Forget the fact that it's illegal[1] in most states to ride a motorized vehicle (other than disability vehicles) on the sidewalks, almost all of these lyme, scoot, bird riders ignore it and routinely cause collisions in San Francisco. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters > A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk. Related: 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...

qudat 8y ago
> It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. It's more dangerous to ride them on streets, even on bike paths. Who cares if it's illegal? I'd rather ride on the sidewalk then get hit by a car trying to pass me at 45 mph.
- dbuder 8y ago
  But I'd rather you get hit by a car than run into me while I'm walking along minding my own business.
- foob 8y ago
  > Who cares if it's illegal? The pedestrians that are endangered by relatively high speed motorized vehicles riding on sidewalks care. It's totally reasonable for you to not want to ride a scooter on the street, but that doesn't entitle you to break the law and make sidewalks less safe for others.
  - Fricken 8y ago
    It's the cars that kill and maim pedestrians and drive scooter riders to the sidewalks. They're your real enemy.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

yread 8y ago

I wish you were right, but there are people with deep pockets who believe otherwise: https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/ https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/ Amsterdam-based e-scooter startup dott raises €20 million to expand across European cities

yardie 8y ago

Lime and Bird are pretty popular in Paris. A city with great public transit.