[keerthiko]

I still think Bird's success is merely symptomatic of American shortsighted solutions to systemic US urban planning issues. I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets, and good existing last mile solutions (bikeshares, bikelanes, high bus coverage), but I'm happy to eat my words if I'm just not seeing it and folks from Amsterdam, Seoul, Tokyo, NYC or Berlin would like to chime in and prove me wrong.

The biggest challenge I see of existing well-executed public transit/cities is last mile coverage for handicapped/disabled folks and sufficient infrastructure for them in stations without having to resort to uber/lyft for <1mile transit. If Bird/scooter industry expanded into solving these problems I would greatly celebrate. I get frustrated seeing Bird celebrated as the next coming of the steam engine, when it barely moves the needle for regular transit, without remotely addressing the biggest long-standing issues of the space.

[ggm]

I (also?) think these disruptive transport plays are a bit grubby, and probably predating public transport shared costs and the commons. Here in brisbane, they basically became scofflaw over "riding without helmet" and "riding on pavement" to force the issue. Why the state authorities caved instead of taking them to the cleaners is beyond me.

We've already started to have drunks on scooters, elderly people feeling exposed to random vehicle hits, no-helmet fine issues, public nuisance, juicers hiding scooters to game the demand pricing/charging..

What we needed was integrated public transport on a non-profit basis. Lower cost fares, better integration. We got half of it. A really good high circumference e-ticket integrated fare scheme, but not cheap and with some serious computer-systems weaknesses. The transport planners are obsessed with reducing public cost, not with increasing public utility.

[8ytecoder]

I see these scooters as somewhat good for the society if it'd be accompanied by enforcement- proper docks or allotted areas and no riding on the sidewalk and following the rules of traffic flow.

As it is right now it's a mobility issue for the disabled. I come from a country with no sidewalks with the disabled forever left to the mercy of their caretakers. I was simply amazed by the level of planning to accommodate them in the US. But now these scooters are blocking the sidewalks everywhere. What are the disabled going to do? Get up and move the scooter?

[hawaiianbrah]

I hear that complaint and I think it was certainly more true when first launched, at least in Seattle and DC. Nowadays it seems like people are parking them better on average

[8ytecoder]

At least not in my metro. It's still haphazardly scattered everywhere. The thing is it need not be the riders themselves who do this. Unlike a docked bike that can't be moved the scooters can be lifted by anyone. Vandals definitely move it, throw it in water bodies, cut the wire and sometimes just knock it over.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

I’m in Denver. I’ve seen no change. Plus we have numerous different companies operating now. I regularly see them blocking the sidewalk entirely or all of them have been toppled over.

[finnh]

Does Seattle have Bird scooters? I haven't seen any scooters here, just bikes.

[hawaiianbrah]

No, no scooters. I was thinking of the bikes when including Seattle there.

[MauranKilom]

It might just be me, but I'm having a hard time following your post due to these terms:

> scofflaw

> taking to the cleaners

> juicers

I normally would just go look it up, but this is a high density of jargon/colloquialisms. Or maybe it's not and I just never heard them, but I'm just offering my data point here.

[laurieg]

I think you were just a little unlucky and hit a post with a few words and phrases you don't know.

Scofflaw is a pretty old word, and being a combination of scoff and law many people could work out its meaning.

Take someone to the cleaners is a fairly common idiom.

Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on.

[ardy42]

> Juicers seems to be slang related to the people who charge up the scooters, but again, juice + er is a pattern many people can pick up on.

It probably is. Saying something is "out of juice" to mean "out of power" has a fairly long history. It's a pretty straightforward to extend that slang to someone who restores power to things by recharging them.

[reaperducer]

One of the things I enjoy most about HN is learning the idiomatic language of other cultures, even if I have to look a word up.

I don’t think that asking people to use bland, lowest common denominator language is an incentive for smart people to participate. This isn’t the Simplified English version of Wikipedia.

[ggm]

> scofflaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofflaw > taking to the cleaners https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_to_the_cleaners > juicers https://www.reddit.com/r/LimeBike/comments/89tpqy/is_anyone_...

Apologies.

[robkop]

Juicers is a lime only term afaik (it referd to someone who charges lime scooters) and the rest are reasonably common Australian expressions (maybe scofflaw is a little less common).

[masonic]

In U.S. vernacular, "juicer" generally connotes someone using performance enhancing drugs.

[walshemj]

Juicers I would read as drug addicts given its an Australian

[el_dev_hell]

Straya at its finest

[walshemj]

And which other thing will you de prioritise or will you increase taxes

[ggm]

I would definitely increase taxes. I'm not small government minded, and I am not anti tax. AFAIK its by far the best way to get public utility functions done. The exceptions are out there: Japan Rail is a good example of an efficient non-public utility running, with no subsidy. So I don't claim its the only model, but its the one I like best. Most of the "but its my money" arguments come from people with disposable income, or who are in denial about how much the depend on centrally managed spend (again, IMNSHO)

In my own economy, attempts to avoid public support for transport have marginalized investment, and meant service is very expensive, and not well suited to local communities. A number of things like Uber have wrecked the taxi industry, and Lime appears to be squeezing a rental-bike model funded out of Bus Shelter advertizing. This doesn't make me happy.

[Isn0gud]

I live in Paris with an arguably good public transport system in place and Lime scooters were quite popular this summer. This is only anecdotally ofc, but you see a lot of people using them. There are not as many Bird scooters yet though.

Where I see the niche is medium distances were the metro is not a fast solution but if scooters are ubiquitously available for these situations, I see value in them.

And yeah, Tourists seem to love them.

[keerthiko]

I know they are popular in a variety of places, but I think transit options that are disproportionately popular with tourists compared to the locals are a glaring indicator of being long-term inefficient (and potentially harmful to the development of the better options already present in the city). To me SF's tendency to celebrate random experimental transit is the main reason public transit is so underdeveloped here. Do you think there are potentially better solutions for the niche filled by scooters in Paris that could integrate more fluidly with existing transit or are scooters the global maxima with existing tech?

[dreamcompiler]

I tried a Lime in Paris last fall and it was terrifying. Being 3 feet away from cars going 25 kph, one slight mistake and you're dead. Never again. Bikes feel a lot safer.

[justboxing]

> I doubt this will reach the same level of popularity in cities/countries with great public transit, highly walkable streets,

I hope you are right. The littering / parking isn't the biggest problem or nuisance. It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. Forget the fact that it's illegal[1] in most states to ride a motorized vehicle (other than disability vehicles) on the sidewalks, almost all of these lyme, scoot, bird riders ignore it and routinely cause collisions in San Francisco.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters

> A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk.

Related: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-i...

[qudat]

> It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians.

It's more dangerous to ride them on streets, even on bike paths. Who cares if it's illegal? I'd rather ride on the sidewalk then get hit by a car trying to pass me at 45 mph.

[foob]

> Who cares if it's illegal?

The pedestrians that are endangered by relatively high speed motorized vehicles riding on sidewalks care. It's totally reasonable for you to not want to ride a scooter on the street, but that doesn't entitle you to break the law and make sidewalks less safe for others.

[bestnameever]

I really haven't seen scooter riding on the sidewalk as a problem out in my area. People already ride bikes and skateboards and everything else, plus, a lot of sidewalks are under utilized with very few pedestrians as it is.

[baroffoos]

And what entitles drivers to make the streets very unsafe for everyone?

[lmm]

The democratic law of the land. I don't like it any more than you do - I'm all for increased penalties when drivers kill people, and/or banning cars from city-center streets - but society functions when people follow the democratic process to change laws they disagree with rather than just breaking them.

[baroffoos]

Breaking laws is almost always the first stage of having them fixed. People can now see there is a demand for electric scooters and they need a safe way to ride them. Without riding them on the footpath there would never be any visible demand for them and everyone would just continue driving to work.

[Fricken]

It's the cars that kill and maim pedestrians and drive scooter riders to the sidewalks. They're your real enemy.

[btrettel]

At least for bikes, it's fairly well accepted that riding on the sidewalk is less safe than riding on the road: http://bicyclesafe.com/#crosswalk

The chance of getting hit from behind likely decreases on the sidewalk, but the chance of getting hit from turning vehicles increases greatly. The chance of being hit by turning vehicles is higher in general as far as I remember, too.

[masonic]

  It's more dangerous to ride them on streets, even on bike paths. Who cares if it's illegal?

The same would apply to motorcycles. It's clearly safer for the motorcyclist to ride on the sidewalk than on the road, in the mix with cars.

Who cares if it's illegal? Pretty much everyone else.

[derekdahmer]

FWIW I sometimes use a Lime to get to work in Oakland on a straight-shot road, with a bike lane, that already has a bus doing that exact route.

I use the scooter because its faster than the bus for about the same price ~$3. And super fun.

[megy]

I don't agree, London and Paris really took to their bike share systems. This will appeal to even more people.

[dreamcompiler]

The Paris bike share system became completely dysfunctional last year when they changed the contractor. It's a huge embarrassment for the city, because it had worked well before. I hope they fix it.

[baby]

Oh boy, the Velov' of Lyon (which I believe were the very first iteration of these bike share systems) are completely broken since they changed them. Now you can't get one from a station without the app, and the app doesn't work for most people. It's a shit show.

[yread]

I wish you were right, but there are people with deep pockets who believe otherwise:

https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/

Amsterdam-based e-scooter startup dott raises €20 million to expand across European cities

[yardie]

Lime and Bird are pretty popular in Paris. A city with great public transit.

[shereadsthenews]

Americans will try literally anything as long as it is neither sensible land use nor proven transportation schemes. This scooter stuff is extremely appealing to the American mind.

[RobLach]

What about the American mind makes electric scooters so alluring? That statement sounds ridiculous.

[shereadsthenews]

I don’t know and I can’t explain it. If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”

[baroffoos]

I have noticed the same thing just in general society unrelated to Americans. When you propose an alternative that works 95% of the time people will find that edge case where it doesn't work and refuse to acknowledge the solution.

A similar related event was when stop lights got converted to LEDs. In some areas in some times of the year there would be snow that covers up the light which now no longer runs hot enough to melt it. News at the time sensationalized this issue making it seem like the LED stop lights were bad despite the obvious solution being to just put a heater on the light to run in those areas on those few days where it is needed.

When people suggest getting to work by bike they don't expect you to only ever use a bike for the rest of your life but to cut out the needless car trips that could be done by bike and leave the car until it is needed. The money you save on not using a car multiple times a day would easily pay for a taxi in the rare case you need it.

[RobLach]

All these statements are nonsense.

There are train lines from Miami to Seattle, and the US rail system is the most efficient in the world for metrics it cares about: $/ton and on-time.

Miami to Seattle is ~4400km, which would be 11 hours at 400 km/h without making any stops, or 4 hours longer than a flight.

Many cities were built with automobiles as assumed modes of transport, so walking with groceries would be silly as you're expected to purchase more than you can carry from a more centralized store. The tradeoff for being reliant on a car is the cost of goods are lower in bulk. People walk home with groceries all the time in cities built before the automotive age. For example, everyone walks home with groceries in Manhattan.

People cycle all the time in rain/snow in northern US cycling friendly cities. Actually the best cycling cities in the US include Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and New York, which all have very rainy/snowy seasons.

No one is building hyperloops seriously. They're fun projects for bored wealth.

[michaelt]

  I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

Have you, by any chance, seen most of these conversations happening on the internet?

It's my experience that you can say something 99% of people agree with, the 99% don't feel the need to reply with their support. But the 1% who disagree do feel the need to say so. And forums will validate this, with upvotes for well-reasoned discussion (i.e. disagreement), and downvotes for 'me too' comments.

If you posted "The bald eagle is a majestic creature" I'd get downvoted for replying "This! You tell 'em" but I'd get upvoted for replying "Bald eagles are much smaller than wedge-tailed eagles, and they have a call so sickly film makers use the call of the red tailed hawk instead"

[_2d30]

> I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.

[keerthiko]

Although I disagree with GP's original phrasing, the parent comment: > If you mention a train to an American they will start talking about how far it is from Miami to Seattle as if that matters and despite the fact that Ohio is more densely populated than Spain. If you bring up walking someone will ask how you can walk home from the grocery store, apparently unaware of the fact that 95% of people bring home their food by foot. If you talk about biking Americans will wonder about rain and snow, as if nobody bikes in Netherlands and Finland. It’s a strange, willful ignorance that allows Americans to look around and say “what this town needs is a hyperloop.”

...describes a very real experience they had at least anecdotal experience with, which I too can relate to (getting those responses to those suggestions from Americans). I have some hypotheses for these, but honestly they have also been beaten to death by transit advocates elsewhere.