22 ms·

Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta

• dizzant 4y ago
  The press release that went along with the study is here: https://iac.gatech.edu/electric-scooters-car-use-atlanta?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Full%20Story%0A&utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%20-%20Oct.%2031%2C%202022 https://iac.gatech.edu/electric-scooters-car-use-atlanta?utm...
• bogota 4y ago
  Only issue i have is that they need to reduce the top speeds on the app based scooters. Way too many people flying around corners on the sidewalk and i have to peak around corners now in busy areas.
  • CydeWeys 4y ago
    We need speed governors on cars even more badly. They go way too fast and kill by far the largest share of people by any transportation method.
    • londons_explore 4y ago
      15 mph should be plenty for everyone right?
    • TulliusCicero 4y ago
      People can't even handle speed cameras without freaking out. It's true that cars are extraordinarily deadly, and it's also true that most drivers don't want anything done about it if it might inconvenience them.
      • giraffe_lady 4y ago
        Usually when someone's habitual activities cause routine death and misery to others we don't factor in their desires too heavily when we change it.
      • duped 4y ago
        It would help if there wasn't blatant corruption in the installation and maintenance of those cameras. At least locally, multiple municipal officers have been arrested for taking bribes. It doesn't have anything to do with convenience.
      • ISL 4y ago
        I used to believe that speed-cameras were "unsportsmanlike" until I a) grew up a little, and b) visited a country where they were in extensive use and driving felt safer. Speed cameras massively decrease the need for traffic-stops, which is a huge win for both safety and potential profiling/discrimination. Lowering speeds can decrease the consequences of a crash and more-uniform low-cost enforcement can allow law-enforcement to focus limited human resources on responding to calls that actually require a human. I'm a big fan of speed cameras now, especially those that measure average speed by photographing cars at the ends of a long road segment.
        • jabroni_salad 4y ago
          Those segment cameras are great and they made a good impact where I live. They control a school zone that up until recently has been massively disrespected by commuters trying to avoid a stoplight on the main artery. Honestly the only cameras I really don't like are the red light cams that for some reason are also accompanied by lowering the yellow signal's time by half compared to a non-cam light controlled intersection. I'm sure there's a great reason for that happening but I can't think of anything charitable.
          • kayodelycaon 4y ago
            A lot of the cases I know about here in Ohio is they reduced the yellow time to generate more tickets. Ended up being banned state-wide because they being used for revenue generation rather than safety.
            • TulliusCicero 4y ago
              Which is obviously terrible, but that's not fundamental to the system. It would make more sense to have a state law mandating, say, a minimum yellow time for such cameras. But when most people drive, it's easier to do something that seems very pro-driver, even if it's anti-safety.
        • sokoloff 4y ago
          The average speed system has an advantage for drivers: if there's congestion in one section, you can make the time up on the later stage of the road (because there tends to be no live enforcement).
      • colinmhayes 4y ago
        My biggest issue with speed cameras is that one in my city also enforces the school zone limit even if it's not currently in effect. It's on a main arterial road that people usually go 40 on but brake check to slow down to 20 for a few blocks which inevitably causes traffic + crashes around the school.
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      90 mph on the highway is probably much, much safer than 40 mph in a residential area.
      • CydeWeys 4y ago
        Yes, the speed governors would be GPS-based, like they are for e-scooters. You'd be limited to going the speed limit of whatever road you're currently on.
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          Given how excellent my Model 3 wasn't at determining the speed limit of the freeway near me, let's not. If you want people to slow down, there are effective ways to design roads that work better than arbitrary speed limits.
          • CydeWeys 4y ago
            This is more of an indictment of Tesla than anything else. And if governors were actually required then they would come with a good open access source of data with updated speed limits on all roads.
        • alistairSH 4y ago
          Design roads to the speed. Too many of our roads (US) are wide, open, and "trick" drivers into going faster than necessary. Things that can help reduce speeds: - narrower lanes - less shoulder/median space - trees, bushes - traffic circles instead of red/yellow/green signals - various curbing arrangements
          • mjevans 4y ago
            Blindspots like bushes and shrubs only REDUCE SAFETY. People can't see the cars, cars can't see the people. Probably 70% of the cars will slow down, making it even more dangerous with a false sense of security among pedestrians. Since pedestrians don't have signaling apparatuses, the only way to share the parts of the road that must be shared is to clearly see everyone.
    • okokwhatever 4y ago
      Because education has failed. No? BS
    • criddell 4y ago
      I would have guessed motorcycles are more deadly.
      • CydeWeys 4y ago
        Only to their own riders, not to others. Plus motorcycles are a tiny share of overall motor vehicles on the road.
      • TulliusCicero 4y ago
        Motorcycles are more deadly for the rider. Cars cause more danger for everyone else.
        • NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
          Motorcycle insurance is cheap!
          • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
            Because people who self select to drive some alternative vehicle for fun are a safer demographic than the general public because the "I don't like commuting so I'm gonna do my nails and post on HN about how cars are evil while sitting in traffic" types are absent in the former group. If the general public started driving motorcycles it would get more expensive.
          • TulliusCicero 4y ago
            Well, motorcycles are cheaper to fix/replace, and being much lighter than cars, are less likely to cause property damage or injuries to other parties.
    • munificent 4y ago
      > kill by far the largest share of people by any transportation method. That's only because cars are by far the largest share of transportation period. When you normalize by looking at the death rate per person-mile, the numbers are very different. If you're trying to decide "what is the safest way to get to work", then the best numbers I could cobble together (which are not great) from a few sources are: Deaths per 100 million miles: Car: ~1 Bicycle: ~9 Walking: ~16 Motocycle: ~40 It's very hard to get good numbers here because most car fatality numbers also include fatalities from pedestrians and cyclists who were hit by cars. Really, there are two different questions to ask: 1. What is the safest way for me to get to work? 2. What is the safest way for all of us to get to work? You might assume those have the same answer, but they don't. The safest way for all of us to get to work is probably to have everyone walk and/or bike. But if you unilaterally decide to start biking or walking to work in a heavily car-dominated area, you are increasing your own personal risk unless you can find a route that separates you from the cars well. Transportation safety is fiendishly complex and no one sentence comment on HN will capture it well.
      • TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        Your statistic is how many people are killed while using the method of transportation, not how many people the method of transportation kills. Approximately 100% of the walking and cycling deaths and a good portion of the motorcycle deaths are caused by cars. Approximately 0 deaths are caused by walking or cycling.
        • munificent 4y ago
          Alas, when walking or cycling, one does not have the option of unilaterally opting out of the risk of being hit by a car.
          • lupire 4y ago
            but the solution is still to slow down the cars and reduce their prevalence.
      • 4y ago
    • bogota 4y ago
      Yes but people also aren’t expected to walk on roads with cars except at certain outlined points
  • tantalor 4y ago
    These scooters are not intended to be used on sidewalks.
    • TulliusCicero 4y ago
      Yes, though I can hardly blame people for doing it. They should be used in bike infrastructure instead, but at least in the states there's almost no safe bike infrastructure except in a handful of cities. Choosing between the sidewalk with pedestrians and the road with cars, I mean it's obvious right?
      • sokoloff 4y ago
        There is a long list of things that would optimize for individuals’ outcomes that contravene the laws society has passed.
        • TulliusCicero 4y ago
          Yeah, and when the individual outcome is "not dying", ignoring society's laws is pretty reasonable.
    • bogota 4y ago
      Yes but i see about 90% of people using them on sidewalks unfortunately
    • Zak 4y ago
      And some of the scooter companies have developed technology to detect when people ride them on sidewalks. Mandating its use or fining the rental companies for rider behavior would help with this problem. https://electrek.co/2020/01/30/limes-electric-scooters-can-now-detect-sidewalk-riding-and-theyll-snitch/ https://electrek.co/2020/01/30/limes-electric-scooters-can-n...
  • yummypaint 4y ago
    Space should be re-allocated from roads to properly protected scooter/bike lanes. The real problem is non-pedestrian traffic being forced onto sidewalks.
    • bogota 4y ago
      I completely agree but also don’t think i will see that fixed in the US in my lifetime. Maybe you are more optimistic
  • otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    If you ride a scooter and crash into a pedestrian, you yourself will get hurt as much as the pedestrian. This isn't a car or even a motorcycle. So this is a problem that will quickly solve itself.
    • mnw21cam 4y ago
      I doubt it. The rate at which you get new riders and old riders forgetting their painful lesson will naturally become equal to the number of people learning a painful lesson, and the number of reckless scooter riders will tend towards a stable equilibrium. I'd say we're already not far away from that equilibrium.
  • yieldcrv 4y ago
    I stay on the bike lane on the road 95% of the time Forgot that I take having bike lanes in my town for granted
• ahelwer 4y ago
  Amazes me how closely these forms of transportation are policed when the average hood height of pickup trucks I see everywhere equals or surpasses the height of most women I know. If you had to design a machine to optimally kill pedestrians I don't know how you could do better, beyond appending a thresher to the front. The engineers who designed these should be ashamed of themselves. Living in Atlanta generally has really accelerated my deep dislike of car-centered urban design. It will take a lot more than unbanning electric scooters to change things, but at least it's a step.
  • Tempest1981 4y ago
    For folks who fantasize about driving long-haul diesel trucks, I suspect.
  • TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty crazy how desensitized we collectively are to cars constantly killing people. Yes scooters blocking sidewalks is a problem, but cars straight up killing people is clearly like 1000x worse.
    • conductr 4y ago
      Not desensitized just different stats and impacting how they are seen as tangible. For example, the auto stats translate into me, a mid-40s adult living in a very car dependent part of the US, having only known of a few people to die my entire life (first hand, actual people I knew - was in high school when I had a much larger social network, so was statistically more likely to encounter this back then.) I don't know many people that have been severely injured either. Yet, those scooters began and instant and constant nuisance that many people across various social groups share. I'm not arguing against your point, just saying how perceptions get skewed based on how frequently you encounter them. It's easy for people to think driving is kind of safe when you and everyone you know drives daily without much consequence. The real statistics and magnitude (death vs annoyance) don't really mean much.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > Yeah, it's pretty crazy how desensitized we collectively are to cars constantly killing people. A bit hyperbolic, don't you think? The average is 1 for every 100,000,000 miles driven. And more like 1 in 600,000,000 if you are talking about people killed by cars who were not themselves in said car.
• treis 4y ago
  As someone that lives in Atlanta, this is one of those things that is so obviously not true that it's not worth spending the time to point out the flaws in the study.
  • selectout 4y ago
    Wouldn't it be worthwhile to share out the flaws for people that don't live in Atlanta or really even cities with Scooters?
  • TulliusCicero 4y ago
    By the power of hidden anecdote, I dispel your 'study' and 'data'!
    • treis 4y ago
      It's not an anecdote. It's a basic understanding of traffic in Atlanta, the geographic limits of the ban, and all the Covid related fall out happening at the same time. It's the equivalent of arguing that days are 10% longer due to the scooter ban. It doesn't need critical examination to know it's wrong.
      • smileysteve 4y ago
        You should try reading the article (and other comments), the data collected was pre-covid. > We report an effect each day beginning the day after the policy implementation, 10 August 2019 through 22 September 2019.
        • treis 4y ago
          If that's the ban they studied than it's even more ridiculous because it only applied after 9pm. The following March the scooters were effectively banned before returning later that Summer under a new permitting process.
  • dagmx 4y ago
    And you live in all of Atlanta I take it? Would you even be able to notice a 10% increase?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• acomjean 4y ago
  I can see that. One need only look at traffic when raining and people revert to drier methods of transport. In cambridge MA those electric scooters are quite everywhere. And they don't know where they should go (they tend to go in the bike lane, which I think is correct, even though they annoy us bikers a bit, I think its the moving fast, but not working at it..). But non electrified scooters are back too, along with the occasional one wheel. Bikes and scotters move you more quickly though certain routes than cars, as you tend to get through each light in just one clycle.
  • kibwen 4y ago
    MA cyclist here, I'm not annoyed by scooters and I'm happy to share the bike lane if it means fewer cars on the road. The only caveat is that with the advent of small electric vehicles we need to start thinking about what an appropriate speed limit is for bike lanes; I'm actually thinking less about scooters than I am about e-bikes, since those can easily reach highway speeds if they're not limited.
    • alistairSH 4y ago
      ...if they're not limited... The 3-class system is pretty good for defining e-bikes. But, it's useless for actually enforcing anything. 1 - pedal assist only, 20mph max assist 2 - pedal or throttle, 20mph max 3 - pedal only, 28mph max And anything faster is just an electric motorbike/scooter (and should have tags and a license, etc). I'm fine with sharing bike infrastructure and multi-use paths with class 1&2 e-bikes, e-scooter with similar speed limits, and anything else in the e-mobility space (e-hand-cycles, etc). I'm in the DC suburbs and we get a lot of e-bikes, but so far, they're mostly a mix of expensive Trek/Specialized stuff that older or less-able adults ride for fitness. Or, cheap (Amazon, etc) e-bikes used for transport. And bike lane traffic is light enough that there's no conflict. But, I definitely see the potential problem. A friend just texted me a for-sale listing for a lightweight e-dirt-bike that does 70mph, but from 10' away you'd never know it wasn't a pedal bike at all (looks like a regular downhill race bike).
  • NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    We need a lane for cars / trucks, a lane for electric micromobility, and a lane for human-powered vehicle transit (bikes, mostly).
• AlexB138 4y ago
  I wasn't at all surprised to see the ban. The way electric scooters were handled in Atlanta was an absolute nightmare. They littered every sidewalk, blocking pedestrian traffic in already crowded streets. 100% of people riding them rode them on the sidewalk and collisions were pretty common. People were getting hurt, and were very afraid of getting hit. It's really unfortunate it went this way, because Atlanta badly needs alternative transpiration options. We would likely have been better off with heavy enforcement around proper storage and riding of scooters, but so many people absolutely hated them due to how it was handled that I'm not surprised to see a ban instead. The poor handling of how they were rolled out did a lot of damage long term to fixing transportation. Now there will be an uphill battle against a ban passed in reaction to the mess they created. Disappointing all around.
  • dcdc123 4y ago
    That's not an Atlanta thing, they are a major annoyance everywhere. The people that use them just don't give a shit.
    • IshKebab 4y ago
      You could say the same thing about cars. In fact it's far more common for cars to be parked on pavements blocking access than it is for e-scooters. You just don't notice because you're used to it.
      • smileysteve 4y ago
        A major reason that scooters were banned in Atlanta was because cars (and a bus) kept accidentally killing people on scooters.
        • bombcar 4y ago
          A bus can never kill anyone, it's public transportation and is therefore infallible. Cars are heavy killing machines remember, but busses and trains are perfectly magical and never harm pedestrians at all. (Sarcasm, for the uninitiated.)
• hedora 4y ago
  This reminds me of when Cal Trans kicked the Priuses out of the carpool lane on I-880, and a UC study showed that it decreased the speed in all lanes, especially the carpool lane. The outcome? Instead of widening the roads or eliminating the carpool lanes, they kicked even more cars out, converted additional lanes to carpool / express lanes, and further snarled traffic. There's a state-wide mandate to reduce commute miles, and most cities have interpreted it to mean "increase congestion", not "improve public transit".
  • DigiDigiorno 4y ago
    Floridian here, what do you mean they kicked Priuses out of the carpool lane? In my experience, High Occupancy Vehicle lanes restrict usage based on the highness of the occupancy of the vehicle... What does brand have to do with this?
    • ISL 4y ago
      To boost adoption, hybrids and EVs were allowed into the HOV lanes (without high-occupancy passengers).
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      Some places incentivize low emissions vehicles by giving them access to high occupancy lanes.
    • jo_ro 4y ago
      My guess is that previously a Prius (or similar hybrid) qualified for the HOV lane regardless of how many passengers. The intuition is that because they are so fuel efficient, it's similar to carpooling.
    • thatoneguy 4y ago
      California let Priuses in to the carpool lanes for awhile with a "Carpool OK" sticker I think due to their reduced emissions. BEVs later got the same stickers but they were either limited in number and/or eventually were phased out. For me, I'd always just risk the fine for the 6-7 years I was down in the Bay Area. It never happened and I got hours or possibly whole days of my life back.
• nytesky 4y ago
  We need self driving scooters. You can summon them and they return to doc on their own when done.
• ljf 4y ago
  Bought an electric scooter for my father (didn't work out at all for him, too old), so I've inherited it. For about town (I live in a small town in the UK) it has meant I barely use the car now. I can get to a supermarket and back again in the time it would take me to walk there, I can get to my parents house and back to do some errand in the time it would take me to drive and park. But it is illegal. Each time I take it out I run the risk of getting a fine - but for now I'll take the risk as the benefit is too great for me. I'd love to buy a 'legal' one and would happily pay whatever registration or insurance was required.
  • NullPrefix 4y ago
    Electric scooters are illegal in UK?
    • dijit 4y ago
      Not legal on public roads or pavements. UK is almost as bad as the US when it comes to car-centricism, or it was historically. https://www.halfords.com/cycling/advice/are-electric-scooters-legal.html https://www.halfords.com/cycling/advice/are-electric-scooter...
      • kragen 4y ago
        "Pavements" means "sidewalks"?
        • loeg 4y ago
          Yeah.
    • switch007 4y ago
      On various level, yes “ Currently, there isn't a specific law for e-scooters so they are recognised as "powered transporters" - falling under the same laws and regulations as motor vehicles, and subject to all the same legal requirements - MOT, tax, licensing and specific construction. However, because e-scooters don't always have visible rear red lights, number plates or signalling ability, they can't be used legally on roads. Private e-scooters can only be used on private land and not on public roads, cycle lanes or pavements. The only e-scooters that can be used on public roads are those that are rented as part of government-backed trials. E-scooter trial in London, June 2021 IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES Do I need a driving licence? Yes. To use an e-scooter from an official trial, you need to have category Q entitlement on your driving licence.” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48106617 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48106617
• JacesArchivist 4y ago
  Atlanta native; I haven't dug into the design of the study, but I am supremely skeptical of these results. There is a huge influx of new residents right now (and likely for the foreseeable future). That in concert with a renewed push for working from the office likely accounts for any increase in congestion seen any time recently. The city yearns for more public transport, but it is hard to imagine that 10% of all the insane traffic is directly related to a ban on this relatively new mode of transport.
  • quxpar 4y ago
    It isn't difficult math - selfish flow of traffic produces extremely un-optimal results, and congestion is simply a function of how much traffic chooses a certain path. I highly recommend Tim Roughgarten's work if you want an academic analysis: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262182430/selfish-routing-and-the-price-of-anarchy/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262182430/selfish-routing-and-t...
  • knuckle 4y ago
    From the paper: The micromobility ban was implemented in the city of Atlanta on 9 August 2019. We use high-resolution data from 25 June 2019 to 22 September 2019 from Uber Movement to measure changes in evening travel times between 7:00 p.m. and midnight The data was very specific to evenings in certain areas.
  • akira2501 4y ago
    It's a comparative study of several insanely small datasets over an exceptionally small period of time with no experimental controls, just retrospective analysis. 12000 MARTA trips, 120 Mercedez Benz trips and 34000 scooter trips... in a metropolitan area with 2.6 million homes. I don't believe this report is proving anything it claims.
  • hackernewds 4y ago
    I'm sure a study of this calibre considered these very apparent collinear factors.
• honeybadger1 4y ago
  I can't wait until the city wakes up, bans them, and starts handing out tickets to people riding them in the park, on sidewalks, and on the beltline.
  • goatlover 4y ago
    What about the people who find scooters helpful for getting around? And why is it a problem in the parks? Do you have a better solution for reducing car traffic? Or the last mile problem?
  • SantalBlush 4y ago
    That's a really lazy and self-centered solution to something that helps a lot of people get around. Would you like us to take this position about cars?
    • honeybadger1 4y ago
      Oh, point acknowledged here, but I don't care. The city seems pretty uninterested in keeping them off off the sidewalk and private property. I am not interested in being diplomatic now since the city can't decide on anything and we have had to clean them off our property and sidewalk time after time. I also have property in other cities and this is not an issue in the metropolitan resident rich areas. Atlanta leaders seem particularly helpless, careless, or just inept to do the needful here. I am tired of the litter on our property and sidewalks in our part of town where people pay a premium to not have to deal with this sort of thing. If you don't live in Midtown, you don't have a right to complain. If you rent, you don't have grounds to complain. I do, so I can complain and I will.
• r00fus 4y ago
  This type of reaction is completely what I expected by the haphazard and almost comical rollout of scooters a few years ago. I had the opportunity to work with one of the scooter companies (which was underwritten by a large auto manufacturer) a couple of years ago and their organization was a mess and almost intentionally mismanaged. I could only infer that the large auto company wanted these guys to flail about until local governments would ban this threat to automotive dominance.
• alexpotato 4y ago
  I remember living in NYC pre-Uber. If you were trying to hail a cab in a spot with other people also trying to get one, you had to resort to aggressively yelling "Back the F@#$ off, that's my cab!" Then Uber came and that largely went away b/c why fight over a cab when you could call and Uber? Then CitiBike came along. It was amazing that you could just get a bike and ride somewhere. That is, until you were riding it to a commuter bus or train station at evening rush hour. Suddenly, you have 5 mins to catch your train and you see one open slot in the bike return. Another person also sees that spot and you race towards it until you ave to say "Back the F@#$ off, that's my spot!" In other words, if cities want to have these options then should address directional supply and demand issues otherwise people are just going to say "Not worth the hassle"
  • bombcar 4y ago
    The entire value of Uber was the app hailing (in my opinion) - the cab companies could have leaped on that but didn't. Same with the bike rental things like CitiBike - there should be roving vans throughout the city moving and balancing the slots based on usage. They have the data, use it. They could even offer to "fix" problems (e.g., arrive at the train station and there's not a slot available? CitiBike will send a vehicle to get you to your destination within reason).
    • idreyn 4y ago
      > there should be roving vans throughout the city moving and balancing the slots based on usage There are, and the system does rely in part on this rebalancing act to be functional. (Also to bring the E-bikes in for charging — sadly the stations won't be able to charge those for some time yet.)
      • alexpotato 4y ago
        To be fair, there are also occasionally staff at the busiest drop off locations who manually accept bikes and then just pile them off to the side.
    • asoneth 4y ago
• munk-a 4y ago
  The real solution to congestion is to shift cities away from having so much car infrastructure. If you build a car oriented city with gigantic box stores surrounded by lakes of parking lots as the only option then people will drive cars. Electric scooters are a terrible solution to a problem that really needs to be addressed.
  • NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    No; these things have been a plague everywhere, even in cities organized with good public transportation and non car-centric centers.
    • tjoff 4y ago
      Have been, but not anymore. At least here. Now you have to take a photograph when you end a ride to prove that you did it responsible. There are many areas that are marked as slow-speed and many areas that are marked as no-park. The most central parts are entirely no-park with exceptions for dedicated bicycle-parkings. Scooters that are misparked can be confiscated and the company needs to pay a fine to get it back. It took a little while but now it seems to be respected by the vast majority and it has become a decent addition to other public transportation. And I say this as someone who did despise them in the beginning. Lots of other areas to discuss though, such as whether they last long enough to make environmental sense etc.
    • franciscop 4y ago
      This is absolutely not true; look at any cities around Europe, or at Japanese cities, neither of those are "car oriented city with gigantic box stores surrounded by lakes of parking lots". In the case of Japan, life develops around the train stations indeed, where all the shops and entertainment is, and between those stations are the residential areas, so scooters are perfect here. In European cities (smaller) it's normally organized in rings, where most things you'd want to do are within the city center, or around large neighborhoods but also in circles (larger). So you can take a train/bus/cycle/scooter to the center, then going to the different places either walking or with the scooter.
• matthewmcg 4y ago
  This seems like a stretch--they are taking data collected from the effect of the evening scooter ban (after 9PM) and applying it to commute patterns. But people ride scooters in the evening to get to and from large events like Atlanta United games or concerts--it's a very different context than commuting.
• maxcan 4y ago
  Its like cities had zero controls on parking then just banned cars instead of building effective parking enforcement laws. Simple solution: 1) Cities establish guidelines on legal parking / riding. 2) Impose large fines for violations. 3) Scooter companies pass on those fines to the rider who parked illegally. But instead we have a bunch of blue cities banning the most affordable, equity enhancing, zero emissions, last mile transportation solution.
  • mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Agreed however just because you parked well doesn’t stop a clown from knocking them into the sidewalk later. At one point they were being thrown in the river.
    • maxcan 4y ago
      a few of the providers required a photo of the scooter when you ended your ride. seems to address that issue.
      • mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Protects an honest user but doesn't prevent it from happening unfortunately.
    • smileysteve 4y ago
      This, in Atlanta, people who were mentally unstable (intersecting with people who don't like scooters) were throwing parked ones into streets.
• stall84 4y ago
  I'm fine with a 100% self-driven/auto-piloted scooter/bike .. I'm sorry, but there are far too many uncoordinated fools out there without the slightest concept of newton's 2nd who are perpetually coming right up on my back for me to be cool with anything else (in an urban area at least).
  • matsemann 4y ago
    Your comment works equally well for cars. Why not ban them until drivers follow the laws and stop driving drunk, parking illegally on sidewalks, hit pedestrians etc.?
    • CydeWeys 4y ago
      At least scooters do a lot less damage when they hit anything!
  • smileysteve 4y ago
    One could hypothesize that if bikes/scooters were given more time and focus, ie, riding to things like school and local errands, then more people would develop skills around riding them.
• funkaster 4y ago
  Just came back from Austin (way smaller than Dallas) and it was during a large event weekend (F1 weekend). We used the electric scooters pretty much the entire weekend to get around the city, it was really good, much faster and efficient than taking an Uber/Lyft or driving. Most of the larger streets had a bike only lane and we never felt unsafe (my 70yo dad was riding with me on another scooter). Overall, I think that when combined with a good planning strategy from the city these types of micro transport could be something really good. I still think that good public transportation should be the goal here, but that requires way more infrastructure investment, and electric scooters or bikes could be the next best trade off.
  • numlocked 4y ago
    I was there that weekend myself and had a sukkah experience. I could imagine a certain type of person complaining about them - eg they are uttering sidewalks, left lying about here and there - but fundamentally it was great. The scooters are everywhere, with dedicated lanes, being ridden by everyone (locals and tourists) and the streets are wide and well marked. I lived in SF for ten years and it always felt like I was taking my life into my own hands on one there - but it felt like a “supported” mobility option in Austin. My friend and I looked at our credit cards and we each took 19 (!!) scooter rides in the ~72 hours we were there. I should add though - they are dangerous, even when we’ll done, and riders shouldn’t be cavalier. I fell once (I’m coordinated and competent - but a crack in a sidewalk, in broad daylight, got me) and feel extremely lucky to have gotten away with nothing more than a skinned knee and palm.
    • e40 4y ago
      Is it legal to ride on them on the sidewalk? Where I live it is not. It is, in fact, dangerous for walking humans to coexist with scooters on the sidewalk. I personally had many close calls and a few bumps. The close calls would have been serious, possibly fatal, had I not jumped out of the way.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        I wonder just how spiky your clothes could be before you'd get cited for incitement to danger. Is it illegal to walk around looking like a discount dime-store Sauron?
• t3estabc 4y ago
• dontbenebby 4y ago
  But how do you deal with the increased risk of chemical fires? It was a thing when I was picking careers that they barely hired firefighters because the changes in building codes meant... much fewer fires. Out in the townships, some went volunteer, and at the ones where it was paid a lot of them cross trained as EMTs or whatever. I don't think it registered over the years -- I never "just got a job" because everyone in the system -- from the Harvard doctor doing the surgery to the dad from cub scouts, who have known me since birth -- they wouldn't lift a finger to help me if I didn't show them the right card. And they're going to misunderstand me, on purpose, for the rest of my life, if I try to change that? I really don't like violence, but I have been bullied all my life, and some days I don't feel like stripping out the emo bullshit and leaving the LinkedIn friendly HN post and I hate these scooter companies that put very real risks out there when many people still don't even have a bank account let alone a smartphone to order up one of these... things. If anyone has a suggestion on a good scooter model to permanently purchase and pair with a helmet, I think maybe someone should do a startup that rents out helmets instead of chemical fire factories to be thrown into the woods next to the cloud factory. PS: Do not let Michael Chabon take you to a secondary location, even if it's Halloween.
• popol12 4y ago
  For my fellow french hackers: "scooter" is a trap word, it is actually a "trotinette", not a motorbike
  • ralphhughes 4y ago
    Native English speaker here that doesn't know any French and that's a great word! The word reminds me of a horse trot which is a bit faster than walking, so feels like a good description. Scooter isn't the only word to have multiple meanings, "bike" can mean motorbike or bicycle which is another one in the endless source of confusion that is English!
• moolcool 4y ago
  I think many cities will be caught off guard by how much cheap lithium-ion batteries are going to revolutionize transport in the next decade
• somehnacct3757 4y ago
  What about adult Heelys, can we normalize those rather than try this rent-and-litter startup scheme again?
• monksy 4y ago
  • dang 4y ago
    It's against HN's rules to post this without evidence, because internet users are so quick to interpret comments this way based on nothing other than someone else having a differing view (which does not count as evidence). The flip side, of course, is that if you think you're seeing this sort of abuse, you should let us know so we can investigate it. We do occasionally find evidence—and when we do we crack down hard. "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
    • monksy 4y ago
      My apologies. Will do.
      • dang 4y ago
        Appreciated!
• DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  …says a single study.
• bradleyankrom 4y ago
  Adding my own anecdote: Minneapolis has tons of electric scooters and has done a nice job of providing infrastructure (dedicated parking, expanded bike lanes, etc), especially downtown. There’s also plenty of signage reminding people that they aren’t allowed on sidewalks. Despite all of that, there are tons of people riding recklessly through crosswalks, on sidewalks, etc, on top of the usual problem of scooters being scattered all over the sidewalk and blocking pedestrian traffic. The problem isn’t with scooters, or even necessarily with the reckless operators - it’s the complete lack of enforcement of the rules. People are going to do what’s most convenient, even if it’s dangerous, even if it’s technically prohibited, unless there are consequences.
  • ahelwer 4y ago
    I've never seen a complaint about scooters that doesn't just boil down to "they aren't obeying the rules". The rules shouldn't be that way! Riding scooters or bikes on the sidewalk is miles safer than riding it on an unprotected roadway, and should be allowed everywhere. You can look up the statistics anywhere for pedestrian fatalities from collisions with cars vs. pedestrian fatalities from collisions with bikes or scooters. They differ by more than a few orders of magnitude. Sidewalks are pitifully small in most places and this is the problem that should be solved (optionally segregating the enlarged sidewalk), not pushing scooters and cyclists out into traffic.
    • bradleyankrom 4y ago
      I do not want scooters and pedestrians to share the same space - that doesn’t mean they have to be sharing space with cars. Bike lanes are ideally suited for scooters, and the onus for protecting operators in those lanes is on area planners. Sidewalks are for pedestrians, and if the proper infrastructure doesn’t exist to support bikes and scooters, they shouldn’t be operating in that area. I was speaking specifically to Minneapolis, which does have a good amount of the proper infrastructure, but scooter riders (and to a lesser extent, cyclists) often ignore it.
• siruncledrew 4y ago
  IMO the hardest part about rolling out other forms of public transportation like scooters is creating a public ecosystem that will properly support multiple modes. The public part is important because an ecosystem is not one individual entity like Bird/Lime/etc where everything for particular mode of travel has to funnel through. The escooter experiment has basically shown lacking an ecosystem causes problems. And the same thing would happen if “escooter” is replaced with “ebikes” or “eskateboards” or “emopeds”. They would still be scattered everywhere, get in people’s way, etc. So far the only real ecosystem for transportation we have comes down to cars once again (unless you live in NYC with the subway). There’s not enough momentum to holistically address multi-mode transportation meshed in public life and not just think in terms of “cars and car alternatives”.
• adameasterling 4y ago
  I love e-scooters. They're fun to ride around on and, when there are enough of them in an urban area, you can just rely on them being there for transit. I've been so disappointed by the public's reaction to scooters, though. They don't see how cars are significantly worse, in terms of the personal cost, public safety and destruction of urban spaces. Like, just to put this in perspective, I did a bit of digging behind the Atlanta ban. It happened right after (and as a direct result of) these events: - A 34 year old woman on an e-scooter was murdered* by a driver of a car, in a hit-and-run. [1] - A 20 year old man on an e-scooter was killed by a negligent driver of an SUV who was charged with 2nd degree homicide. [2] - A 37 year old man was killed by the driver of a bus who did not see him. Passengers on the bus say he was banging on the bus to alert the driver as he was crushed to death. I'm not able to find out if the bus driver was ever charged for this death. [3] - A homeless man (of unknown age?) on an e-scooter was killed by a truck. In this case, it does look like the e-scooter ran a red light and the driver was not at fault. [4] So in 2 out of 4 cases, clearly the car was at fault. The city reached first for not limiting cars in any way, but rather limiting scooters. I mean, I get it. There was no structure for doing anything to cars or the system that causes people to drive everywhere. And to be fair to Atlanta, the ban on scooters was only at night. We know there are ways to structure cities and traffic laws to make safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. Bad saldy, here in America, we are so reluctant to reach for those options. We have so many parking lots, so many stroads, so few walkable spaces. Whenever there's conflict between cars and people, we blame people. And then build extra lanes and extra parking lots and it just gets worse. By the way, this problem with cars happens here in San Francisco too: My friends and I have all seen an explosion of bad behavior by drivers, including a friend of mine who struck last year in a hit-and-run, breaking his femur. This is not just anecdote: Pedestrian deaths are on the rise here, while citations plummet. [5] 1. * I am not sure if "murder" is legally applicable in this case, but to me, if you strike and kill someone in your car and then run, you're a murderer. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/scooter-rider-hit-killed-by-car-in-midtown-atlanta-police-say/972063999/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/scooter-rider-hit-k... 2. https://www.bikelaw.com/2019/06/driver-charged-in-death-of-e-scooter-rider/ https://www.bikelaw.com/2019/06/driver-charged-in-death-of-e... 3. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/scooter-rider-hit-killed-by-bus-in-atlanta/968035832/ https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/scooter-rider-hit-k... 4. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/south-fulton-county/man-on-scooter-hit-killed-in-4th-scooter-related-death-in-metro-atlanta/973874796 https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/south-fulton-county/man-on-... 5. https://sfbayca.com/2022/07/05/traffic-deaths-in-san-francisco-rise-as-citations-plummet/ https://sfbayca.com/2022/07/05/traffic-deaths-in-san-francis...
• germandiago 4y ago
  These ppl are always looking for problems in their solutions.