[xur17]

It wouldn't be too difficult for cities to create designated 'parking spots' for scooters. Or require that they must be next to a bike rack. The apps all require you to take a picture of the scooter after parking, so it would be pretty easy to verify if someone moved it after the fact.

[edaemon]

That wouldn't be too difficult, and I think some cities have done that. The problem is that it's difficult to enforce and there isn't much incentive to try; are they going to give out tickets for poor scooter parking? Who would they ticket? Bird/Lime, the user, or the unknown person who moved it afterwards?

I think docking stations are the better solution. Portland has docked shared bikes and they work well. It prevents the littering problem almost entirely, and it could provide a way to keep these scooters charged.

[xur17]

You're right that it would be hard to figure out the exact mechanics of the enforcement, but I think it can be done.

> I think docking stations are the better solution. Portland has docked shared bikes and they work well. It prevents the littering problem almost entirely, and it could provide a way to keep these scooters charged.

I strongly disagree. Docked bikes have been around for a while in most cities, and scooters have been a lot more popular because they are everywhere. If I use a docked bike to go 2 miles I'll spend half my time on either end walking to and from a dock.

The only way to make the docked model work is to have many small docks - several on every block, which isn't going to happen. My suggestion is essentially this (multiple docks on every block) without the need for infrastructure. Cars (which are way less space efficient) have more parking options that docked bikes, which makes 0 sense.

[edaemon]

> The only way to make the docked model work is to have many small docks - several on every block, which isn't going to happen.

That's probably the root of the disagreement: ubiquitous docks seem perfectly possible to me. I wouldn't advocate for several on every block but I think there's a feasible level where they remain pretty common. Here in Portland the bike stations are close enough that you don't often have to walk more than 2-3 blocks [1]. It would be even easier to create scooter stations, since they're less than half the size of a bike -- small enough to put a 10-12 scooter station on a sidewalk corner without much fuss. That compares pretty favorably with bike stations, which usually need to take up street space (which I'm fine with, but it can create political/logistical barriers).

You make a fair point about the scooters' pervasiveness being important for their popularity. Looking again at the system I know best, Portland has a hybrid system: in the highest traffic areas you can leave a bike pretty much anywhere at no cost, and you can leave one anywhere at all for a $2 fee. To prevent bikes from being strewn about and/or poorly distributed they offer a program where you earn account credit if you return a bike to a station [2].

I think that kind of thing would work pretty well with scooters, since they need to be charged every so often. Bird already has their Charger program [3] that pays you to pick up and charge their scooters. Users could instead earn account credit for returning scooters to stations, especially if they need charging and/or that station is low on scooters. That would allow people to leave them around but would keep them charged and "crowdsource" the effort to cut down on scooter clutter.

[1] https://www.biketownpdx.com/map

[2] https://biketownpdx.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/3600011157...

[3] https://www.chargers.bird.co/join

[scootermcscoot]

Why would it be so hard to enforce? Treat the problem, not the symptom. If the problem is that people leave scooters in the middle of the sidewalk, pass a code that says scooters blocking a thoroughfare will be impounded. Don’t mandate to the companies where their property must be stored, let them know where it can’t be stored and hold them accountable thusly.

If Bird had to pay a fee to get scooters out of impound, I’m sure it would find a customer-friendly way to encourage its users to keep the scooters out of impound to begin with.

It seems like this problem is already solved with cars. If you leave a car in the middle of the street, it will get towed. Then the registered owner has to pay a fee to recover it. No worrying about whether to give a ticket to the last driver, or the owner, etc.

[taejo]

Or rather, the owner worries about recovering the fee from the last driver. This works fine for dockless car rentals; the only reason I can see that it wouldn't work for bikes is that the margins are too small to actually cover administering such a system.

[LyndsySimon]

This seems like over-solving the problem, to me. All that's needed is a general guideline: 'Scooters should be parked on the side of the sidewalk nearest the road, no more than 12" from the curb'.

Given that photos of the scooter are required by the apps anyhow, enforcement via a small fine should be trivial.