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not really, though socal on the whole is a sprawl. greater LA is decentralized into a bunch of blended edge cities[0], but the city itself is basically split in

not really, though socal on the whole is a sprawl. greater LA is decentralized into a bunch of blended edge cities[0], but the city itself is basically split into the LA basin and the san fernando valley. within these sub-regions, it's eminently bikable, with the two areas linked by subway and rail for bikers. central LA, encompassing downtown through mid-wilshire and toward santa monica/venice, is relatively dense (20-40k/sq mi), and roughly 15 miles from downtown to the beach (also connected by light rail). if you live in this central LA area (or central san fernando), most places you need to go are less than an hour's e-bike ride away, and most likely less than 1/2 hour away. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_cities

filoleg 5y ago
Not from LA, but was able to test it in real life during one of my visit with friends there (a couple of years ago). We got to Santa Monica beach in the afternoon, spent some time there, and we had a reservation for dinner in koreatown (close to downtown), roughly 15 miles away. Closer to 5:30pm it was time to leave, so we split into two groups: 3 people decided to take Uber, 4 people (including me) decided to take those Lime/Bird escooters. The results were rather surprising. The escooter group got to the restaurant about 15 minutes later than the Uber group, but only because we were navigating to the wrong place and overshot the restaurant by almost 2 miles. Without counting that, our overall trip was around 1.5 hours. Here is the kicker: batteries on those scooters were rather not the best. With 4 people riding together, every 20 minutes or so, someone's battery would die (because we didn't all start with 100% at the same time, it doesn't mean that the battery life on those was just 20 minutes, it was just the offset that led to this). And when the battery would die, we wouldn't abandon the person, so we would start searching around for another scooter being available somewhere nearby. With this in mind, if it was just 1 person riding by themselves, it would definitely beat an Uber ride on that day. And even with 4 people with batteries dying every 20 minutes on someone's scooter, we pretty much beat the people who took Uber by a small margin (which would have been much larger if it was just one person on one escooter). To underline, I was surprised by two things on that day: how awfully close to the stereotype LA traffic actually was and how viable escooters were in that environment. Prior to seeing it with my eyes, I was also thinking that LA was a bit too sprawled out for it to work. Glad to have been proven wrong.

filoleg 5y ago

Not from LA, but was able to test it in real life during one of my visit with friends there (a couple of years ago). We got to Santa Monica beach in the afternoon, spent some time there, and we had a reservation for dinner in koreatown (close to downtown), roughly 15 miles away. Closer to 5:30pm it was time to leave, so we split into two groups: 3 people decided to take Uber, 4 people (including me) decided to take those Lime/Bird escooters. The results were rather surprising. The escooter group got to the restaurant about 15 minutes later than the Uber group, but only because we were navigating to the wrong place and overshot the restaurant by almost 2 miles. Without counting that, our overall trip was around 1.5 hours. Here is the kicker: batteries on those scooters were rather not the best. With 4 people riding together, every 20 minutes or so, someone's battery would die (because we didn't all start with 100% at the same time, it doesn't mean that the battery life on those was just 20 minutes, it was just the offset that led to this). And when the battery would die, we wouldn't abandon the person, so we would start searching around for another scooter being available somewhere nearby. With this in mind, if it was just 1 person riding by themselves, it would definitely beat an Uber ride on that day. And even with 4 people with batteries dying every 20 minutes on someone's scooter, we pretty much beat the people who took Uber by a small margin (which would have been much larger if it was just one person on one escooter). To underline, I was surprised by two things on that day: how awfully close to the stereotype LA traffic actually was and how viable escooters were in that environment. Prior to seeing it with my eyes, I was also thinking that LA was a bit too sprawled out for it to work. Glad to have been proven wrong.