4 ms·

You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in

You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’s reserved for cars so that everyone else has room. Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.

_fullpint 5y ago
> the battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk I'm not asking for 10% of the sidewalk for myself -- that's ~4.8 inches, which is much less of the space needed for a stroller, a person with a cane, or someone in a wheelchair. I don't see any lobbying, let alone any actions from these companies that ensure that the quality of the lives of the people I mentioned isn't negatively impacted. What I do see is rent seeking and extraction of public value for there own profits. Lobbying is great, but they aren't doing anything currently to actually curb their users from partaking in reducing the use of public space for those that can't simply 'walk around it and pray their lobbying works one day.'
trainsarebetter 5y ago
This. end the stroads!
lkbm 5y ago
I agree, but right now it feels like the scooter companies have decided it's easier to inconvenience pedestrians than to ally with us and fight car culture. I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike for the companies. I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding crushing regulatory responses on the long term. We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat the real problem.
- derivagral 5y ago
  Complaints like this are typically run through the city or campus that leases operation rights to the fleet. These entities usually get fairly forceful in (competitive) markets. Your local scooter outfit(s) are not going to want to risk a market with a ton of complaints and bad operations feedback. That said: given GPS limitations, the time it takes for a van with humans to arrive (and park!), as well as lagging feedback loops... this isn't an easy problem. Last I was in the industry, they were just starting to concept customer reputation systems, but generally they were more concerned with winning markets and decreasing operating costs.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    The fact that scooter companies are focused on “winning markets” makes me think they are a negative. For this to work the price has to be low. That means competition. In my neighborhood both Comcast and CenturyLink provide service. When the CenturyLink installer showed up he explained the install would take longer than estimated because he couldn’t use the line directly in front of my house. That’s a “Comcast line”. Apparently Comcast techs will literally cut competing lines off theirs. I wonder what the scooter van equivalent is. Is there someone leaving competing scooters in the middle of the sidewalk as a psy-op to disrupt competing marketshare?
    - derivagral 5y ago
      I haven't heard of direct antagonism as such, but I do know there've been social media groups dedicated to defacing/destroying property, incl hacking/theft. Unless maybe you're one of the top 2-3, I don't think anyone has time (in eng at least) to do such things. From what I could tell, everyone does use custom software. To your point about ISP competition, the original company in the space I was at was developing generic operations software. Our main (large) client decided to inhouse instead of continue the contract, and a smaller competitor bought us. Sharing platforms isn't really in the cards; the best you'll get is MDS[0] or GBFS[1], but those initiatives are typically led by municipalities or their vendors. The former is usually restricted to regulators, and the latter isn't always reliably implemented unless the market specifies it. These are also moving specs (markets want different versions, ofc), it was great fun! As far as "winning" vs other motivations, remember that (afaik) none of these companies are profitable yet and the VCs aren't dong this for fun. The people I worked with cared very much about the mission, but the board doesn't always agree. [0] https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-spec... [1] https://gbfs.mobilitydata.org/ https://gbfs.mobilitydata.org/
Kaze404 5y ago
I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.
- rtlfe 5y ago
  > I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    You are right that there is no comparison, and I haven't made one. Scooters are safer than cars, but me wanting them gone does not mean I want those people to be driving instead.
  - slickdork 5y ago
    Counterpoint: These scooters go 20 MPH and there's no oversight on where or how they are used. I walk around a 'pedestrian only' lake every day, and these scooters come about literally 2 inches from me going 20 mph every 2-3 minutes. Usually they are driven by (likely drunk) teenagers. My daily walk is incredibly more dangerous and stressful due to these scooters existing.
    - isomel 5y ago
      Maybe it depends on the cities but where I live, these scooters are limited to about 12.5 mph (20 km/h), and are supposed to share the space with bikes on the bike lanes and road, not on the sidewalk. So while they are indeed parked on the sidewalk everywhere, I do not see them as dangerous at all.
    - rtlfe 5y ago
      That's a pretty different situation than what people who walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from recreational pedestrian areas.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Tell me that when I trip over them in the dark, or when they're buried under a foot of snow.
Symbiote 5y ago
If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road. I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand! Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre. https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-copenhagen-although-restrictions https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-... (Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)
- vkou 5y ago
  > They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road. Ticket the scooter company for improperly parked/docked scooters in geofenced areas where parking/docking is available. The scooter companies will update their software & hardware to bill the rider if they leave their scooter outside of a permitted dock. The riders will be incentivized to park/dock the scooters. The problem will fix itself, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't ride scooters, and I don't like stepping over them when people dump them/knock them down, but I love that they exist, and we need more, not less infrastructure to support non-automobile transport. In this case, the infrastructure consists of installing bike/scooter racks. It's not expensive.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    The scooter companies had over a year of negotiations with the city, and nothing improved. Copenhagen already has bike racks on most streets in the centre. The blue Cs and blue dots are some of them, many more aren't marked: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/55.6782/12.5735&layers=C https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/55.6782/12.5735&layers...
aahortwwy 5y ago
No thanks. I spent five years living on a street with very large sidewalks (at least triple-wide, if not quadruple wide). Cyclists and scooter riders were just as inconsiderate of pedestrians. Traveling at dangerous speed, weaving across the whole sidewalk, and parking the vehicles in remarkably inconvenient spots were all very common behaviors. The problem is cultural. People in larger, faster, more dangerous vehicles seem to think they have right of way in shared spaces and that everyone else should get out of their way. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle or a scooter on a road also used by cars will have experienced this. Compare this to Tokyo, where there's less space, more of it is shared, but people don't behave like I've described above.
mulmen 5y ago
I hate the rental scooters and bikes. It’s just trash in my way. I live in an area that already has great walking and cycling options, but the scooters make that much less enjoyable. But you are right and I hadn’t considered the benefits. So thanks for posting this. Because of all the scooter trouble the city has reclaimed some parking spaces for scooters. So that is a step in the right direction. And if it gets people out of their houses and seeing where the bike infrastructure works and doesn’t that’s probably good for future expansion too.
mkl 5y ago
Scooter companies aren't in it for the long haul like that. I've seen four different scooter companies come and go in my city (well, the fourth hasn't gone yet). They seem to buy a batch of scooters, keep them in service until they've made back their investment or lost too many scooters, then disappear. They don't care about the disruption and inconvenience they cause, or the ways they could make the city better, because they don't even see those things - they don't seem to have a presence here beyond a few gig-employees charging scooters.

_fullpint 5y ago

> the battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk I'm not asking for 10% of the sidewalk for myself -- that's ~4.8 inches, which is much less of the space needed for a stroller, a person with a cane, or someone in a wheelchair. I don't see any lobbying, let alone any actions from these companies that ensure that the quality of the lives of the people I mentioned isn't negatively impacted. What I do see is rent seeking and extraction of public value for there own profits. Lobbying is great, but they aren't doing anything currently to actually curb their users from partaking in reducing the use of public space for those that can't simply 'walk around it and pray their lobbying works one day.'

trainsarebetter 5y ago

This. end the stroads!

lkbm 5y ago

I agree, but right now it feels like the scooter companies have decided it's easier to inconvenience pedestrians than to ally with us and fight car culture. I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike for the companies. I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding crushing regulatory responses on the long term. We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat the real problem.

derivagral 5y ago
Complaints like this are typically run through the city or campus that leases operation rights to the fleet. These entities usually get fairly forceful in (competitive) markets. Your local scooter outfit(s) are not going to want to risk a market with a ton of complaints and bad operations feedback. That said: given GPS limitations, the time it takes for a van with humans to arrive (and park!), as well as lagging feedback loops... this isn't an easy problem. Last I was in the industry, they were just starting to concept customer reputation systems, but generally they were more concerned with winning markets and decreasing operating costs.
- mulmen 5y ago
  The fact that scooter companies are focused on “winning markets” makes me think they are a negative. For this to work the price has to be low. That means competition. In my neighborhood both Comcast and CenturyLink provide service. When the CenturyLink installer showed up he explained the install would take longer than estimated because he couldn’t use the line directly in front of my house. That’s a “Comcast line”. Apparently Comcast techs will literally cut competing lines off theirs. I wonder what the scooter van equivalent is. Is there someone leaving competing scooters in the middle of the sidewalk as a psy-op to disrupt competing marketshare?
  - derivagral 5y ago
    I haven't heard of direct antagonism as such, but I do know there've been social media groups dedicated to defacing/destroying property, incl hacking/theft. Unless maybe you're one of the top 2-3, I don't think anyone has time (in eng at least) to do such things. From what I could tell, everyone does use custom software. To your point about ISP competition, the original company in the space I was at was developing generic operations software. Our main (large) client decided to inhouse instead of continue the contract, and a smaller competitor bought us. Sharing platforms isn't really in the cards; the best you'll get is MDS[0] or GBFS[1], but those initiatives are typically led by municipalities or their vendors. The former is usually restricted to regulators, and the latter isn't always reliably implemented unless the market specifies it. These are also moving specs (markets want different versions, ofc), it was great fun! As far as "winning" vs other motivations, remember that (afaik) none of these companies are profitable yet and the VCs aren't dong this for fun. The people I worked with cared very much about the mission, but the board doesn't always agree. [0] https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-spec... [1] https://gbfs.mobilitydata.org/ https://gbfs.mobilitydata.org/

Kaze404 5y ago

I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.

rtlfe 5y ago
> I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  You are right that there is no comparison, and I haven't made one. Scooters are safer than cars, but me wanting them gone does not mean I want those people to be driving instead.
- slickdork 5y ago
  Counterpoint: These scooters go 20 MPH and there's no oversight on where or how they are used. I walk around a 'pedestrian only' lake every day, and these scooters come about literally 2 inches from me going 20 mph every 2-3 minutes. Usually they are driven by (likely drunk) teenagers. My daily walk is incredibly more dangerous and stressful due to these scooters existing.
  - isomel 5y ago
    Maybe it depends on the cities but where I live, these scooters are limited to about 12.5 mph (20 km/h), and are supposed to share the space with bikes on the bike lanes and road, not on the sidewalk. So while they are indeed parked on the sidewalk everywhere, I do not see them as dangerous at all.
  - rtlfe 5y ago
    That's a pretty different situation than what people who walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from recreational pedestrian areas.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

Tell me that when I trip over them in the dark, or when they're buried under a foot of snow.

Symbiote 5y ago

If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road. I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand! Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre. https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-copenhagen-although-restrictions https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-... (Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)

vkou 5y ago
> They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road. Ticket the scooter company for improperly parked/docked scooters in geofenced areas where parking/docking is available. The scooter companies will update their software & hardware to bill the rider if they leave their scooter outside of a permitted dock. The riders will be incentivized to park/dock the scooters. The problem will fix itself, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't ride scooters, and I don't like stepping over them when people dump them/knock them down, but I love that they exist, and we need more, not less infrastructure to support non-automobile transport. In this case, the infrastructure consists of installing bike/scooter racks. It's not expensive.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  The scooter companies had over a year of negotiations with the city, and nothing improved. Copenhagen already has bike racks on most streets in the centre. The blue Cs and blue dots are some of them, many more aren't marked: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/55.6782/12.5735&layers=C https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/55.6782/12.5735&layers...

aahortwwy 5y ago

No thanks. I spent five years living on a street with very large sidewalks (at least triple-wide, if not quadruple wide). Cyclists and scooter riders were just as inconsiderate of pedestrians. Traveling at dangerous speed, weaving across the whole sidewalk, and parking the vehicles in remarkably inconvenient spots were all very common behaviors. The problem is cultural. People in larger, faster, more dangerous vehicles seem to think they have right of way in shared spaces and that everyone else should get out of their way. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle or a scooter on a road also used by cars will have experienced this. Compare this to Tokyo, where there's less space, more of it is shared, but people don't behave like I've described above.

mulmen 5y ago

I hate the rental scooters and bikes. It’s just trash in my way. I live in an area that already has great walking and cycling options, but the scooters make that much less enjoyable. But you are right and I hadn’t considered the benefits. So thanks for posting this. Because of all the scooter trouble the city has reclaimed some parking spaces for scooters. So that is a step in the right direction. And if it gets people out of their houses and seeing where the bike infrastructure works and doesn’t that’s probably good for future expansion too.

mkl 5y ago

Scooter companies aren't in it for the long haul like that. I've seen four different scooter companies come and go in my city (well, the fourth hasn't gone yet). They seem to buy a batch of scooters, keep them in service until they've made back their investment or lost too many scooters, then disappear. They don't care about the disruption and inconvenience they cause, or the ways they could make the city better, because they don't even see those things - they don't seem to have a presence here beyond a few gig-employees charging scooters.