It is very frustrating that, even in this otherwise-good @verge overview of the past and future of shared micromobility in the wake of Bird's bankruptcy, that there is zero mention of the completely-unresolved issue of blocking sidewalks and rendering them inaccessible. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24010902/bird-bankrupt-electric-scooter-micromobility-ridership-future
@bikepedantic @verge Did anyone take the trouble to quantify "blocking sidewalks"? I visited San Diego when they had rental e-scooters there, they had plenty, I used one, and while out and about I looked for blocked sidewalks. Out of roughly 100 scooters (most of these I saw in designated scooter parking, a big help) I saw one that was blocking a sidewalk, which I picked up and leaned against the building in a not-sidewalk blocking way.
@bikepedantic @verge this is a problem that would be super-easy to measure, so if people are making noise but not providing metrics, I default to skeptical.
Those yellow-green rental bikes, we had those in Belmont for a bit, those were in fact often parked abominably (partly because we provide very little space for non-abominable bike parking) and I have pictures. It was far worse than 1%. OTOH, our sidewalks, where they exist, were abominable before, and remain so today.
@bikepedantic @verge also-also, to mitigate this problem, we could require dropoffs in designated areas with GPS, DonkeyBike does this in Copenhagen. That still leaves the intermediate problem of stops-on-the-way where there may be no good place to park a bike, so a bad place gets used instead, but that's true for personal bikes/scooters, too.
@bikepedantic @verge Shorthand, sorry. I make noise, too. But if there are easy metrics, I want metrics, I want to be sure that this is not just another case of plastic straws.