Which is nuts - they were so popular and efficient. Was it the taxi companies who wanted them gone or uber? Uber I'm sure did a lot better business once you couldn't grab a scooter.
More often than not, they ended up in roads, across sidewalks blocking access, thrown in parking spots, in lakes rivers and other deep-enough bodies of water, thrown off parking structures, and more.
And in my city, both Bird and Lime came in the city on flatbed trucks between 4-5AM and offloaded them en masse. Where I come from, that's abandoning trash. Had they work with the city, this rollout couold have gone loads smoother and not start by trashing the public commons...
But in reality, thats what Silly-con valley companies do - they exfiltrate good will and good things like public commons and take it for themselves, all the while screaming that they're being wronged when people take, disassemble, throw in trash their littered goods.
Every time I read a comment like this, that seems to ignore the amount of space, noise, and danger cars bring to a city, I just can’t believe it was written in right faith.
1. Store private goods permanently on the public commons?
2. Hinder the use of the public commons for long-term?
3. Treat the public commons as a refuse-dump?
4. Privatize the gains while socialize the losses?
Do we need something better in terms of overall transport? Of course we do. But dumping them off a flatbed truck at 4AM and YOLO'ing is not how you do it either. But it is how you get myself and people like me loading them into dumpsters to be hauled away.
The amount of space in the "public commons" allocated to free car parking dwarfs the space taken up by these scooters.
What if instead of banning a new transportation paradigm, the city had decided to work with the companies to convert 1/4 of the public parking spaces to scooter storage areas?
This is so obvious especially if you also bike. Cars are dangerous, polluting (breathing inside a tunnel makes that obvious) and take up ridiculous space for 1 person and don't get shared / re-used!
Most of the issues with Bird and Lime were caused by the anti-scooter groups. Seriously, your office worker is not throwing them off into bodies of water and parking structures.
Another solution would be to arrest and prosecute these anti-social types trashing things. Just go all out against them. I routinely saw Limes and Birds being knocked over en masse by these idiots. It's why we can't have nice things.
More often than not, they ended up in roads, across sidewalks blocking access, thrown in parking spots, in lakes rivers and other deep-enough bodies of water, thrown off parking structures, and more.
And in my city, both Bird and Lime came in the city on flatbed trucks between 4-5AM and offloaded them en masse. Where I come from, that's abandoning trash. Had they work with the city, this rollout couold have gone loads smoother and not start by trashing the public commons...
But in reality, thats what Silly-con valley companies do - they exfiltrate good will and good things like public commons and take it for themselves, all the while screaming that they're being wronged when people take, disassemble, throw in trash their littered goods.