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
There are no shared micromobility fleets in Camberville (except public docked Bluebikes), but plenty of micromobility devices out and about, and sidewalks are still accessible. Private ownership of micromobility devices should be the policy goal.
@bikepedantic I dunno if anyone’s crunched the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if private ownership of micromobility is actually better from an emissions standpoint than shared fleet services, somewhat counterintuitively
@dx seems likely to me - no battery swapping or rebalancing operations
@bikepedantic @dx definitely operational emissions saved, the big variable is ICE car trips displaced from SMM availability. I'm skeptical that would be enough to offset operational emissions despite some dubiously head-turning survey results about trip displacement. Plus, many power users mode switching will buy their own. How do you quantify the value of the pathway from casual SMM user to individual radical mode shift? I'm not sure it's worth it to get too much in the weeds of that.
@bikepedantic @dx I will say that I've been emphasizing recently the flexibility value to the transportation system SMM provides. Important in places without docked bikeshare, especially with traditional transit struggling so much with service cuts. You can't ask someone to buy a bike/scooter if their car doesn't start at 8:20am on a beautiful May morning, but they might grab a shared one.
@alexkgellis @dx Sure. But i'm damn tired of saying that sort of stuff to people sending me pictures of people using wheelchairs who can't use the sidewalks in their communities. That's the seemingly permanent tradeoff.
@bikepedantic @dx We're taking the leap next season in Providence after a couple years tearing our hair out about this to requiring SMM to park in daylighting zone corrals in the areas with highest density of devices. If it's still a problem we could expand to citywide. Also right-sizing our total devices after a few years of fleet size inflation driven by politics instead of policy/market demand. We'll see if it works!
@alexkgellis @bikepedantic @dx I want to see Providence join BlueBikes, let people use it on both ends of the commuter rail
@DemonHusky @bikepedantic @dx I want to see that too! Let me know if you have an in with the BCBSRI execs.
@alexkgellis @bikepedantic @dx Would BCBS be who matters? I would think it would be the city first. I think most of the organization is done at the MAPC level, which Providence isn't a part of and would make things a little harder, but can't be much harder than Salem joining the system.
@DemonHusky @bikepedantic @dx Well with Bird ch11 (which will definitely not affect Spin, promise), Superpedestrian pulling out of US, and Lyft trying to get out of the biz altogether, maybe 2024 will see us scramble to not rely on fully private dockless operators anymore. Not sure we're ready to make that change without big disruption in service but this world is a rollercoaster so 🙃
@alexkgellis @bikepedantic @dx Lyft is kinda weird. My understanding is bikeshare is actually profitable for them, but like, only a little and no way to make it more so, which Wall St. doesn't like.
But if they do sell off Motivate, I'd love to see the different cities that they operate buy up Motivate and run a national non-profit bikeshare operator. It seems good to have the same hardware everywhere to save on design and get better economies of scale.
Co-sign this. Motivate actually still exists as a standalone company (Lyft spun out the boots-on-the-ground ops because they wanted to get rid of all union workers). Have them buy the former Motivate system IP, have the brilliant former NiceRide management team who know it inside and out run it.
@DemonHusky @alexkgellis @dx Baltimore made some brief exciting noise about joining Capital Bikeshare years ago, would have been exactly that awesomeness
@bikepedantic @alexkgellis @dx I have a dream that all major stops along the commuter rail and all rail-trails (looking at you Bedofrd Depot and Lynn Marketbasket) join BB
@DemonHusky @alexkgellis @dx MBTA Communities 2.0
@dx @bikepedantic as long as it’s not a low quality scooter that breaks down after a few rides and is impossible to repair then I bet that’s likely the case. Unfortunately I think a lot of those privately owned scooters are cheap and unreliable.
On the other hand dockless scooter companies usually have people in ICE vans replacing batteries, that probably undoes a lot of the benefits.
@bikepedantic what are your thoughts about mixed scooter/bike municipal share systems?
@DemonHusky no experience or observations of any
@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 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.
@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.
@dr2chase @bikepedantic @verge San Diego is actually particularly good in this area because of those designated parking spots. Most cities where dockless scooters operate don’t have designated spots and the companies don’t enforce parking rules if they’re not required to by law. That’s how you get people complaining about it even though in San Diego it seems fine, it’s because they’re regulating it and most cities don’t.
@bikepedantic @verge when I visited San Diego I felt like the designated scooter parking spots pretty much solved the problem. They needed more of them, but that’s the story with all non-car infrastructure. I wouldn’t want scooter/bike shares to go away though, they fill a need for me that would otherwise be filled by an Uber.
@bikepedantic @verge I own my own scooter and e-bike but sometimes when I’m out and transit fails me and I don’t have a bike or scoot with me I will rent a scooter to get home. Without scooter shares when my train home is cancelled my option would be waiting 20-40 min for the next one or calling an Uber, and the Uber would win.
My contrarian take: It's good actually that these companies had a good multiyear run and are now flaming out. People who tried them, like them, and use them frequently will buy their own devices.