All of the commenters saying e-scooters shouldn't be allowed on sidewalks are right. Sidewalks in most densely populated US cities are too narrow and busy to safely allow a human gliding along at 15 mph within ~2 ft of a doorway where another human may be exiting, or past blind corners.
The bigger issue is that e-scooter parking is fundamentally broken right now. Despite being told not to, users still park them in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Even if the user parks them correctly, they get knocked over or blow over into the walkway. This product is broken until these companies do what Jump did, and INTEGRATE A LOCK INTO THE PRODUCT, and make users lock it to something at the end of their ride. This almost entirely eliminates the problem of blocking a walkway, and also reduces the loss of product to theft, accidental damage, etc.
Since they're required by law in California, I'd also like helmets to be integrated into the locking mechanism, but that's a nice-to-have.
E-scooter companies: Build locks into your products. It fixes many of your problems.
Sidewalks being too narrow is an issue of prioritization. Cities have optimized for car traffic in many locations, and everyone else has to take the sliver of concrete they were graciously given next to the cars with one or two people in them each. You may think, but we can't make it wider else the cars don't fit. Absolutely. So don't let them there at all. Flank every block with a walking/slow bicycle/scooter/board plaza. City centers are for people doing things, so we should prioritize foot traffic, because if you are in a car you are merely coming to or moving through the city. You are not the primary use case of the city center. It evolved this way over time but that doesn't mean it was the right choice to let cars flow through city centers, and we can change it back.
I think a better, albeit more difficult and expensive solution, would be to implement space for scooters and things like them. In the US we only have two spaces: the sidewalk and the street. Adding a third space for bikes, scooters, and other small personal vehicles would go a long way to promote safety and efficiency.
Not proper ones. Real bike lanes in bike-able cities have a small curb separating them from the street and then another one to separate from the sidewalk.
Agreed, and those are essentially what I'm advocating for, but the vast majority of bike lanes aren't like that. I live in Portland, the most bike-friendly city in the US, and we have very few of them.
I would also say they aren't really bike "lanes" -- they're not a lane in the street. The Dutch call them "cycle tracks" which seems more fitting.
For Bay Area HN folks: check out what San Jose has done with the bike lanes downtown recently. Separation from traffic using a combo of parked cars and barriers.
I find that style much worse than the "on-road" style due to people crossing the bike-lake to their cars without looking.
They also routinely fill up with rubbish if there is any construction going on, or any issues with garbage collection (often enough that once per trip you have to get off your bike, take it onto the road, past the obstruction, then back onto the bike lane).
Very good bill! Definitely moving in the right direction.
Some thoughts:
1)Helmet laws:
I've always found helmet requirements pretty arbitrary: if runners who run at 10-15mph aren't required to wear helmets, why force them onto cyclists and scooter users?
Such laws have been known to adversely affect ridership, which, in turn, decreases safety for everyone because drivers don't expect cyclists/scooter users. I've seen a study that found that the net effect is that helmet laws decrease safety.
2)No sidewalk riding:
Good. I'd argue that even if bicycles could be OK on sidewalks, e-scooters/e-bikes should not be, because there's no incentive for e-vehicles to go slowly on sidewalks.
For cyclists, intermittent slowdowns enforce a low speed, because it takes effort to accelerate. But on an e-scooter, all it takes is a turn of a handle to get to 15mph in a very short span of time.
So, while there's a physical cost for cyclists going too fast, there isn't one for e-scooter users.
Agree on the sidewalk clutter - they are starting to turn into a nuisance in Austin downtown. I had to move two, parked side by side, on a sidewalk. My attempt to move them resulted in them squealing, causing me to feel like a thief for just trying to make room on the sidewalk to keep walking.
Agreed. I have never seen an actual scooter owner park badly. It's always a rental scooter company. I object entirely to them just seizing the public sidewalks as the parking lot for their private businesses. And then I object again at the tragedy-of-the-commons effect when scooter renters feel entitled to drop it wherever they're done with it.
That's a poor comparison. Bike lanes are for public use; the space may change purpose, but it's still public. Companies scattering their privately owned rental gear on public space is a taking of that space.
Oh yeah, bike lanes are definitely for public use! It's the free parking that isn't— that's the one that's private individuals demanding the ongoing right to take up valuable public space by dumping their private property on it for hours at a time.
I'm not sure if this is just a failed attempt to be funny or you really don't get it.
An individual using public space individually is what public space is for. People have private picnics in public parks. Public roads mostly carry private cars. Parking spaces are again used by individuals for short durations. But what the scooter and e-bike companies are doing is converting public space into private business use. It would be the equivalent of somebody running a used car lot by taking over a bunch of spaces on one street. Or by a company taking public parking spaces and selling them back to members of the public. (Both of which businesses have attempted to do lately and been smacked down.) Or somebody opening up a restaurant on the sidewalk. (Which can be done legally by a permitted food truck or food cart, but not by anybody who just gets the urge.)
Bike lanes in the US are incredibly unsafe for bikers and scooters, and accidents easily result in death of the biker/scooter.
Scooters and pedestrians sharing a sidewalk is also unsafe, but accidents are far less lethal.
The problem is that bikes/scooters are adding a third distinct speed fundamentally incompatible with the existing two, and that takes up a lot of space costs a lot of allocative inefficiencies (what if there are lots of cars and pedestrians, but no bikes/scooters at this moment?). There's no easily solution but if we're going to ask scooters to share space, at least choose the one that is less fatal, as annoying at it is for pedestrians.
Scooters seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the footpaths are too busy to ride a scooter on anyway.
They are much more useful in medium-density cities and suburbs where the roads and footpaths are less busy and public transport is not as effective.
I love using my scooter for commuting and errands in my low-density city, but I can't imagine riding it through a busy CBD - not on the road or the footpath. And yet that seems to be where most of these scooter rental companies are deploying. It seems crazy.
"Cars seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the roads are too busy to drive a car on anyway."
Cars address a different set of requirements. You use one when you need to transport many people, heavy cargo, tools, etc. A scooter does not solve any of those problems.
A scooter does allow a single person and their possessions to travel at faster than walking pace without getting sweaty. In the CBD that is not necessary, since public transport works so well. In the suburbs a scooter is more effective.
Sure, but look at your typical freeway rush hour traffic jam— how many of those vehicles really have multiple people or heavy cargo?
The point is that for short commutes and as a last mile solution to extend the coverage of public transit, scooters are amazing. And a rental system means they can stay downtown instead of needing to take up space both ways on the mass transit vehicle.
> Sure, but look at your typical freeway rush hour traffic jam - how many of those vehicles really have multiple people or heavy cargo?
I'm not sure how that's relevant. You edited my comment to try and make it apply to cars, but it does not - cars are necessary both in the CBD and out for instances where you need to transport cargo etc, while scooters are less necessary in the CBD if you can use good public transport instead.
The fact that many people use cars when they aren't necessary is not relevant, other than to note that there's a lot of potential to reduce traffic by replacing single-occupant cars with personal transport.
And I'm not claiming that scooters or scooter rentals are bad - I love my scooter and see scooter rental companies as a big part of reducing the number of cars on the road. But why do they insist on deploying in areas where scooters are not wanted? Why not focus on the areas where they are most practical?
> But why do they insist on deploying in areas where scooters are not wanted? Why not focus on the areas where they are most practical?
Because the most population-dense areas (NYC, SF) also happen to have the highest density of VC investment money.
I agree with you all the way up until here! I live in Miami, where single-passenger cars are king. Scooters would be great here. But the cities that would benefit most from scooters are not exactly overflowing with investment money.
Sure - because cars have been most peoples only practical mode of transport for decades and it has become their default.
Now that scooters and ebikes are offering a very practical alternative to driving, cars no longer need to be the default choice when travelling and we can expect their use to decline.
High-density areas typically have bike lanes for scooters to use.
The problem of getting ~3 miles in a city like SF (SoMa to Mission) involves a 10 min walk to a train, and several more minutes walking once you get off the train, or walking to a bus stop and waiting 10+ mins there, with another walk to your destination. 10-15 minute car or scooter trips easily become 45+ min public transport trips.
Hi, regular cyclist in both San Francisco and the East Bay. Rented scooters are slow and erratic and a touch annoying to me. But, I'd rather share the road with a scooter than a car any day. Do scooters remove cars from the road, especially for short trips? I dunno, but I'd be willing to bet they do.
I bike to work everyday in the east bay and have no issues sharing what little infrastructure bikes have with scooters. I can easily pass them in most instances and if not they are no slower than a slow cyclist. So far 0 issues except when they go the wrong way but cyclists are also guilty of this. Compared to cars which have clipped me a couple times and routinely park in the bike lanes.
Cycling is my only mode of transportation. I don't own a car and no longer take the bus. (Before I got my bike, the bus was my sole mode of transportation.) I bike to and from work every day (~6mi round trip) in addition to thousands of miles of recreational biking every year.
I'm in Austin where we have Lime, Bird, and Jump, and while I personally have yet to try the scooters, I strongly support more people riding electric scooters and believe the bike lane is the right place for them, at least out of the current options.
I don't hate the idea of having bike lanes and separate scooter lanes, but since we can't even manage to get bike lanes everywhere, I'm happy to go with putting them on the bike lanes.
I have to ride in the road for most of my commute, and a lot of human drivers are scary dangerous bad. Scooter riders are never more than annoying, and usually I can just pass them without difficulty if they're going slowly (which most are from a bike perspective). Most importantly, if they hit me, I'll likely be fine. (I've been hit by cars twice over the past ten years and I was fine in those instances too, but it's not my favorite experience. I've also had drivers try to force me off the road. People on their scooters don't do that.)
I find it preposterous when pedestrians expect bicycles and scooters to expose themselves to life-threatening dangers, by sharing a roadway with two-tonne motorized vehicles.
You are 100% right. As a biker I would prefer to be on the sidewalk. It's safer and less scary. As a pedestrian, I prefer bikers stay off the sidewalk. It's safer and less scary.
But when you consider the big picture, I think it's obvious that cars kill cyclists and pedestrians in the street much, MUCH more often that bikes kill pedestrians on the sidewalk.
As opposed to random people on bikes? Cyclists love to parrot the “share the road” mantra — until they actually have to share the road. There is nothing “better” about a bike that should give it some esteemed status. I have personally had more negative interactions with cyclists in cities than scooter riders. Is it the motor that bothers you? Because if that’s the case, then let’s enforce bike lane speed limits and treat all modes of light two-wheel transit equally.
I don’t think that bus can ever be defined as “good public transport” in a dense metropolitan area.
Trains or light rails are probably what gp was speaking about.
I found the buses in Beijing to be "good public transport" as long as a) you could do the entire journey on one bus, or one transfer where a lot of buses could be used to get to your destination, b) the beginning stop was close to your location and the ending stop was close to your destination, and c) both stops were served by multiple lines. Given that buses in Beijing are spaced an average of about 10 min apart, C means that you didn't have to wait long for the bus. The subway travels faster, but you typically have to walk ten minutes on either end, so the bus will win. I frequently used the bus on routes that satisfied all conditions.
The down side is that you need to be familiar with Chinese characters, and do a lot of clicking and zooming in and out at ditu.google.cn beforehand.
Wait 20 minutes for a bus. Or take a scooter 20 blocks instead. How do I take the bus from Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf? By the time I figured that out, I’d be halfway there. Scooters represent speed and mobility. Buses represent crowds and waiting. Besides scooters are actually fun. A bus is an exercise in patience and time-wasting. If China followed your advice, Shanghai would be a continuous line of buses covering every square inch of road. Those that hate scooters have never used one.
Agreed 100% on the sidewalk-riding. The other day I was outside a restaurant waiting for a table. I moved back one step to let some people by and felt something brush my coat. It was some idiot riding one of those powered rental scooters downhill. 15 MPH at least, and given that it was downhill, maybe more. Two steps back and I would have been in the emergency room.
You are allowed to call people out for riding dangerously. They might not appreciate it at the time, but as long as you aren't aggressively rude they will probably ride more slowly the next time they get on a scooter.
Eventually personal transport will be normal and everybody will know how and where to use it appropriately, but it will take a bit of time and practice to get to that point.
Having just recently experienced this, at 15-20 mph he was well out of easy speech range before I fully realized what had happened, let alone had composed a reasonably polite thing to say.
20 mph is 30 feet per second, and this yahoo brushed my back as I was talking to someone. 5 seconds to turn, understand, and start talking isn't unreasonable. If you can politely get the attention of somebody 150 feet away and receding rapidly using your voice, I'd sure like to see it.
When I was there it was actually one of the more friendly and cool communities I'd lived in. It's a bummer to think that it could have gone so downhill as to be hostile to cyclists, given the demographic.
Yes. Impressions probably depend on who you know and where you are. I think Cornel people are much friendlier to cyclists than the average resident, but I don't live very close to campus.
I should add that in general I think it's a great place, this is one sore point for me.
Copenhagen is one of the most wonderful cities to get around I've seen. Many of the bike lanes are separated and raised from vehicle street level by a small curb, which does not stop a determined vehicle (or out of control vehicle) from invading the lane, but does wonders for the psyche of the bicyclist. The feeling of gliding through the city via your own network of paths is incredible. There's often plenty of bike parking too.
In my opinion, all densely populated cities with reasonable climates should be built that way. If San Francisco had similar dedicated lanes throughout the city, and more bike parking, I'd absolutely wager that car ownership (and all of those cars laying fallow on the street) would drop significantly.
The bigger issue is that e-scooter parking is fundamentally broken right now. Despite being told not to, users still park them in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Even if the user parks them correctly, they get knocked over or blow over into the walkway. This product is broken until these companies do what Jump did, and INTEGRATE A LOCK INTO THE PRODUCT, and make users lock it to something at the end of their ride. This almost entirely eliminates the problem of blocking a walkway, and also reduces the loss of product to theft, accidental damage, etc.
Since they're required by law in California, I'd also like helmets to be integrated into the locking mechanism, but that's a nice-to-have.
E-scooter companies: Build locks into your products. It fixes many of your problems.