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Electric Scooters Sharing


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Everyone's probably read about them, and has an opinion (informed or otherwise).

 

I just read a really interesting article on the subject:

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rental-bird-lime-skip-spin-cities

 

The closest place that I know has them is San Antonio. 

 

So when will Houston start seeing these electric scooter share companies roaming the various sidewalks, roads, etc?

 

I would love to see the companies play smart and work with public transportation, convenience stores, or grocery stores (or any other business) and set up 'scooter zones' that would be designated areas that offer a discount to riders if they park there, so they take up less space in areas they aren't wanted.

 

Anyway, I'm ready for them to get here.

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3 hours ago, samagon said:

Everyone's probably read about them, and has an opinion (informed or otherwise).

 

I just read a really interesting article on the subject:

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/27/17676670/electric-scooter-rental-bird-lime-skip-spin-cities

 

The closest place that I know has them is San Antonio. 

 

So when will Houston start seeing these electric scooter share companies roaming the various sidewalks, roads, etc?

 

I would love to see the companies play smart and work with public transportation, convenience stores, or grocery stores (or any other business) and set up 'scooter zones' that would be designated areas that offer a discount to riders if they park there, so they take up less space in areas they aren't wanted.

 

Anyway, I'm ready for them to get here.

 

While I appreciated the Vox article and video that I saw. I'm surprised at the lack of self-awareness that these kinds of groups have. For the past decade they have been advocating for more people using bikes and other forms of transit and then the market immediately finds an opportunity and fills that gap and then all the sudden its an issue and it seems to want to control the market. It just comes off as dense. A prime example of be careful what you wish for.

 

I agree with you though. A middle ground would be to provide more bike racks or zones for parking these things, but I'm honestly fine with the more chaotic nature as it currently exist. The mere fact that these things are just sitting anywhere on the street brings a bigger bike presence that just wasn't there before. Its almost a necessary evil to get to the point where we would like to get to which is people riding more bikes in more situations.

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Spent the weekend in Austin, which has these everywhere downtown. I was skeptical of them at first, but boy we enjoyed getting around on them.

 

Having these in Houston would do wonders to connect the sprawling entertainment zones. Downtown, Discovery Green, Midtown, Eado, and Washington Ave would be SO much easier to travel between and would make the ITL experience so much more enjoyable for visitors. 

 

These could even work in the Museum District, Montrose, The Heights, Buffalo Bayou Park, Memorial Park, Highland Village and Post Oak/Galleria. 

Edited by LBC2HTX
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  • 4 weeks later...

I went to Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill this past weekend.   Got a chance to experience using dockless bikes and scooters.  Didn't witness any obnoxious parking and it was super convenient.  I was somewhat concerned about bringing them to Houston but after this visit I say bring it on.

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  • 3 months later...
On 8/27/2018 at 3:04 PM, Luminare said:

 

While I appreciated the Vox article and video that I saw. I'm surprised at the lack of self-awareness that these kinds of groups have. For the past decade they have been advocating for more people using bikes and other forms of transit and then the market immediately finds an opportunity and fills that gap and then all the sudden its an issue and it seems to want to control the market. It just comes off as dense. A prime example of be careful what you wish for.

 

I agree with you though. A middle ground would be to provide more bike racks or zones for parking these things, but I'm honestly fine with the more chaotic nature as it currently exist. The mere fact that these things are just sitting anywhere on the street brings a bigger bike presence that just wasn't there before. Its almost a necessary evil to get to the point where we would like to get to which is people riding more bikes in more situations.

 

I'm a fan of scooters for the last mile transit problem, in fact, I use one myself, though a human-powered Razor A5 Lux, not an e-scooter, to get me to and from the bus stop, so that I can leave my car at home on nice days. I don't think, however, we should so quickly pooh-pooh peoples' concerns about e-scooter apps. I was in San Francisco a while back, and I saw the problem with these scooters littering sidewalks, I saw how they caused congestion and slowdown on the sidewalks of both pedestrian and wheeled traffic. That's not increasing mobility, that's reducing it. And some of these scooters get up to nearly 30 miles an hour. That's way too fast to be safe on sidewalks, especially with an inexperienced rider who just downloaded an app, but these things aren't great sharing the road with cars, either, where they can't necessarily keep up with the flow of traffic so can slow it down, and are low visibility, easy for a motorist to miss. And the problem is the very nature of the app business model is going to lean away from encouraging people to be courteous in their use of these things. When riders have no more commitment to the piece of hardware they're riding than the few minutes they are on it, and don't really care what happens to it when they stop riding it, a significant portion are going to just leave them anywhere, without any concern for whether it inconveniences or even injures someone. Unfortunately, there are just a lot of inconsiderate a-holes in this world. And this model also encourages a lot more casual, occasional, unskilled riders than people owning their own scooters would, which is going to put them and the pedestrians around them at greater risk.

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2 hours ago, Reefmonkey said:

 

And this model also encourages a lot more casual, occasional, unskilled riders than people owning their own scooters would, which is going to put them and the pedestrians around them at greater risk.

 

This, I think, is a short term problem. As people become more accustomed to the scooters and find out what their limits are (not just the limits of the devices, but the operator will have their limits too), the incidents of stupidity will go down. 

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I've been in LA for work for two months now and I have grown to hate these things. People leave them everywhere and the company (BIRD) is pretty lax with retrieval. For every responsible rider who is considerate of others there appears to be 10 others who are idiotic and selfish and another 10 who are completely clueless (usually tourists in Hollywood). I'm surprised there aren't more really bad accidents as I've seen folks fall of the devices and into coming traffic. Yesterday, I saw a guy going about 30 on the sidewalk (illegally) while filming himself flying down Gowen. Walkers were diving out of the way. Not a fan. 

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Except there is a sociological aspect to e-scooters there isn't with a bike. First, everyone is familiar with a bike, but there is a novelty aspect to scooters, and again, up until now at least, virtually 100% of the bikes on the streets have been ridden by people who owned them. That's limited the shear numbers of bikes and their impact on pedestrians, in a way that having fleets of scooters around for anyone to use already has. Also, bike owners have more invested in the bike, aren't just going to leave it anywhere when they stop riding it. Also as regular riders, they're more likely to comply with the laws. Furthermore, besides being illegal, trying to ride a big bulky bike on an even partially crowded city sidewalk is an exercise in frustration, which naturally deters people from trying to get away with it. Not so with scooters, which are much easier to zip through a crowd on. You simply can't say "well bikes haven't been a problem before, so fleets of rentable e-scooters lying around won't be either." It's apples and oranges.

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On 1/3/2019 at 11:04 AM, Reefmonkey said:

Except there is a sociological aspect to e-scooters there isn't with a bike. First, everyone is familiar with a bike, but there is a novelty aspect to scooters, and again, up until now at least, virtually 100% of the bikes on the streets have been ridden by people who owned them. That's limited the shear numbers of bikes and their impact on pedestrians, in a way that having fleets of scooters around for anyone to use already has. Also, bike owners have more invested in the bike, aren't just going to leave it anywhere when they stop riding it. Also as regular riders, they're more likely to comply with the laws. Furthermore, besides being illegal, trying to ride a big bulky bike on an even partially crowded city sidewalk is an exercise in frustration, which naturally deters people from trying to get away with it. Not so with scooters, which are much easier to zip through a crowd on. You simply can't say "well bikes haven't been a problem before, so fleets of rentable e-scooters lying around won't be either." It's apples and oranges.

 

 - The novelty of scooters is a short term issue and has no real bearing on the long term outlook. 

 - There are docked bike rentals, and have been for a while. Depending on the location they are in far greater use than personal bikes.

 - Sheer. Shear is what you do to sheep.

 - Leaving rental scooters (as well as dockless bikes) anywhere is a short term problem that companies will overcome quickly by introducing policies that encourage (either with stick, or carrot) riders to put the conveyance (scooter or otherwise) in an appropriate location upon completion of use.

 - This too, I believe, is going to be a short term thing. Education on where they should/can be ridden isn't out there at all. If you asked 15 people, you'd get 15 different answers. and likely, if you asked 15 cops, there'd be a level of confusion there as well.

 

Aside from misused homonyms, most of the issues you have don't appear to be long term things, or will be things that can be fixed simply, either through company policy, or public education. 

 

so it would seem that if these are the only problems you have then give patience a chance, these things will sort themselves out.

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1 hour ago, samagon said:

 

 - The novelty of scooters is a short term issue and has no real bearing on the long term outlook. 

 - There are docked bike rentals, and have been for a while. Depending on the location they are in far greater use than personal bikes.

 - Sheer. Shear is what you do to sheep.

 - Leaving rental scooters (as well as dockless bikes) anywhere is a short term problem that companies will overcome quickly by introducing policies that encourage (either with stick, or carrot) riders to put the conveyance (scooter or otherwise) in an appropriate location upon completion of use.

 - This too, I believe, is going to be a short term thing. Education on where they should/can be ridden isn't out there at all. If you asked 15 people, you'd get 15 different answers. and likely, if you asked 15 cops, there'd be a level of confusion there as well.

 

Aside from misused homonyms, most of the issues you have don't appear to be long term things, or will be things that can be fixed simply, either through company policy, or public education. 

 

so it would seem that if these are the only problems you have then give patience a chance, these things will sort themselves out.

 

The novelty of scooters means there is a distinct likelihood that they will have the staying power of Pokemon Go, or of Segways as the great mass mobility solution. But the problems they cause are here now. Your overall answer of "oh, things will work themselves out eventually" is not a legitimate public safety policy, and if (when) this fad fizzles out, there needs to be a discussion about how to manage the next "disruptive" business model that will appropriate public right-of-ways for the storage of their fleets/inventories.

 

Again, docked bikes are not scooters, they are not as likely to be used on sidewalks for the reasons I have already stated, and a bicycle requires a fairly long training period before someone learns to ride it proficiently, so no adult is going to just hop on a bike when they've never learned to ride before and immediately start riding it around a crowded city, and the fact that they have to be redocked to stop the meter from running up your credit card means they end up in designated locations and not littering sidewalks. You also overstate the numbers of docked bikes, or bikes from bike share programs in general, these programs have been hit or miss, and many large cities have been doing away with bike share programs that were never very successful (Seattle, Baltimore, eg).

 

The fact that scooters are too fast and dangerous for sidewalks but too slow and vulnerable for streets is not going to go away, and putting more and more of them out for use is only going to compound the problem.

 

Oh, and by the way, if you're going to be the kind of person who pedantically harps on single-letter typos to try to score cheap points in an internet discussion, better make sure you don't make any of your own from now on. The first letter of a sentence is capitalized, unless you're ee cummings, but you're not.

 

1 hour ago, samagon said:

 

so it would seem that if these are the only problems you have then give patience a chance, these things will sort themselves out.

Edited by Reefmonkey
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Re: that Galveston electric scooter sharing article.

 

"People already treat the beaches bad enough, so seeing scooters lying around the streets would not be good either," Galveston resident Michael Ford said.

 

"It's using public property to store your private property to showcase your private property," O'Neal said. "It's irresponsible, and its unsustainable."

 

Nice to know that he's so progressive he is against parking cars on public streets. Should make it much safer to bike.

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On 1/8/2019 at 2:17 PM, Reefmonkey said:

The fact that scooters are too fast and dangerous for sidewalks but too slow and vulnerable for streets is not going to go away, and putting more and more of them out for use is only going to compound the problem.

So, just like a bike...

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On 1/8/2019 at 4:27 PM, wilcal said:

Re: that Galveston electric scooter sharing article.

 

"People already treat the beaches bad enough, so seeing scooters lying around the streets would not be good either," Galveston resident Michael Ford said.

 

"It's using public property to store your private property to showcase your private property," O'Neal said. "It's irresponsible, and its unsustainable."

 

Nice to know that he's so progressive he is against parking cars on public streets. Should make it much safer to bike.

 

I think a more apt comparison is not to cars legally parked in designated parking areas, but to people setting up "shop" on sidewalks, spreading out their merchandise they are trying to sell, so you have to walk around them, creating bottlenecks, etc., for that's what these dockless scooter services are, private companies using the public space to run their business, leaving their equipment out for people to have to step around. In places where sidewalk vending is legal, it is usually regulated, with the city approving locations people can set up their business, so that people don't set them up in places that cause foot traffic congestion problems and/or safety concerns. When a dockless scooter company's customers can just leave scooters just anyone they want, that kind of sensible regulation can't happen.

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For those that are against scooters under what legal/technical frame work would you allow them?  The parking could possibly be handled by geofencing parking areas that are determined by the built in GPS.  You could encourage users to park in these areas by a implementing a "good neighbor" refund or ride bonus.  As for riding on sidewalks,  I see people ride bikes on the sidewalks all the time.   Maybe slow down traffic speeds through road design and have bike/scooter lanes in areas that people travel.  I'm not sure what the right answers are but scooters/dockless bikes fill a niche for people that would probably take an Uber for short range trips.

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27 minutes ago, BeerNut said:

The parking could possibly be handled by geofencing parking areas that are determined by the built in GPS. 

 

I don't think commercial/consumer GPS is good enough for that. Some cities have introduced specific parking areas for scooters on the sidewalk or in on-street parking spots and I don't think GPS resolution is good enough to determine if you parked on one part of the sidewalk.

 

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1 hour ago, wilcal said:

 

I don't think commercial/consumer GPS is good enough for that. Some cities have introduced specific parking areas for scooters on the sidewalk or in on-street parking spots and I don't think GPS resolution is good enough to determine if you parked on one part of the sidewalk.

 

Yeah you're right about the resolution for GPS...maybe BLE or something similar.  

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On 1/11/2019 at 2:24 PM, BeerNut said:

For those that are against scooters under what legal/technical frame work would you allow them?  The parking could possibly be handled by geofencing parking areas that are determined by the built in GPS.  You could encourage users to park in these areas by a implementing a "good neighbor" refund or ride bonus.  As for riding on sidewalks,  I see people ride bikes on the sidewalks all the time.   Maybe slow down traffic speeds through road design and have bike/scooter lanes in areas that people travel.  I'm not sure what the right answers are but scooters/dockless bikes fill a niche for people that would probably take an Uber for short range trips.

That all sounds pretty reasonable.  If the gps resolution is a problem, then I guess the cities are going to have to get tougher, have their parking enforcement officers collect any scooters that are left out irresponsibly, and let the companies know they have them, fine them for every day they hold one, and at the end of 30 days they get auctioned off.  Then the companies could start charging their users a surcharge equivalent to the cost of the fine if the last user left one somewhere it got picked up. That would encourage more responsible parking. The companies would need to require that only permanent credit cards or debit cards linked to a bank account be used when registering, no prepaid cards, because from what I read, that is already causing a problem and would be a way for people to dodge the fines. 

 

E-scooter aps or no, all cities need more and better protected bike lanes, and that would be the only place that these would be appropriate to ride. These devices should have highly visible (maybe even RFID) identification for each unit, so if a cop sees someone on the sidewalk on one and can’t take the time to stop him, can report it, the company gets a fine, which it passes on to the renter just like if you get a parking ticket in a rental car. 

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