tandempower

You don't think people in local government are responsive to all the business people who make their money off ubiquitous car ownership, including mechanics, tire/wheel shops, car dealerships, insurance agents, and gas stations? You don't think those businesses and their subsidiaries are interested in restricting and suppressing bike/scooter sharing from giving people an alternative to buying/maintaining/insuring/fueling a car?

Somehow transportation biking has been put in its place, so they're not worried about more than a select minority of people getting around by bike. This is because people don't want to buy expensive bikes and leave them locked at a transit stop, so bike/scooter shares make it a lot more convenient to combine transit and bikes/scooters, so that is as much of a threat as ride-sharing was, and so there is logically a similar level of resistance to it.

The automotive culture only resists alternatives until they are established as minoritarian. People are willing to tolerate some people biking for transportation or using scooters as long as they can be dismissed as fringe divergents, which allows them to be used as cultural deterrents, e.g. tell your kids that if they don't drive cars they'll end up like the bums who bike around instead of driving. But whenever some form of alternative transportation looks like it could actually grow into something viable for a large segment of the population, the culture police step in a start ridiculing and attacking the new transportation form in every way possible, from vandalism to regulation. It's all for the sake of protecting established business patterns.

They don't care about the environmental future, only the economic status quo.

jon c. 

No, I don't think that's true.

First of all, there's no reason to think they care or would be concerned about this. We've had a couple of years to observe these short tern rental 'businesses' and the few that are even moderately successful still require some form of subsidization. Nothing on the horizon indicates that this may change. The whole concept of the "last mile" solution may be a solution in search of a problem. Unless such rentals significantly increased the number of people taking alternative transportation to reach that last mile, bike and scooter rentals are not going to have any appreciable impact on auto traffic. Billions would need to be invested to improve train and bus services in order to get people to that last mile and even if that were done we have no evidence nor really any reason to believe many commuters would choose to ride a scooter for that last mile.

Secondly, although business certainly has influence on government, the kind of shadowy conspiracies you are hypothesizing would require the agreement of too many people who can never agree on anything. To forge consensus and then keep the whole conspiracy hidden from view would be an impossible task given the vagaries of human nature.

I-Like-To-Bike

Bottom Line:

Not much point trying to have a rational discussion with anyone obsessed with his own theories of devilish conspiracies driving any disagreement with the viability of his favorite schemes.

The only response is more conspiracy theory and P&R ranting.

tandempower

Traffic congestion has been a known problem for decades, if not since the inception of the automobile as mass transit. If public transportation is not the solution, what is? Ever more lanes and highways? If you can acknowledge, rationally, that public transit is necessary to consolidate traffic into multi-passenger vehicles, then you have the problem of making transit routes efficient by limiting the number of stops and detours. That means people have to go some distance to a transit stop and not expect transit to weave around through the city and stop at every block. That is the reason for the last-mile problem.

Now, there is another problem which is getting people to admit sprawl and congestion are problems instead of denying it. That's a harder problem because it goes to the very core of the issue of humans either admitting the truth or fighting to deny it in order to avoid change. That is a bigger problem that can't be solved except by dismissing false premises like the idea that ever-more lanes and highways can eliminate the need to consolidate traffic into multi-passenger public transit routes.

No one says you have to use share bikes/scooters in conjunction with transit. I am a person who would ride a share bike/scooter many miles if I had the time rather than combining it with transit, but some people prefer to sit and read, so there are buses and rail vehicles for them. Also, if you have to go more than a few miles, it helps to have some kind of train or bus that can go 40mph or more over a longer distance.

It's an open conspiracy. It's just politics. If/when people react to a market offering from the POV of it killing jobs/business instead of embracing it as a more affordable alternative to something else, that is all it takes to motivate disruptive/obstructive resistance against the new technology. People don't just stand by and let more affordable technologies replace more expensive ones, i.e. because they expect to get more money from the sales of the more expensive ones than misery from them.

Mobile 155

tandempower

You're just not capable of understanding that things go beyond the people that think/talk about them. Sprawl and congestion are inevitable problems of everyone driving and parking cars and trucks wherever they go. That has been a problem since before the vast majority of people alive today were born. It is a physical/geographical problem. Not one that can be wished away by the human mind, whether it is part of a majoritarian culture or not.

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I-Like-To-Bike

Doncha know that those problems and this thread has everything to do with the so-called automotivists' conspiracy with the pavement pouring, tree cutting villains of the "majoritarian culture" inflicting their dreaded sprawl on the twee-ish lambs of the imaginary "LCF movement."

Mobile 155

tandempower

I started the thread because I noticed an upsurge in scooter share popularity relative to bike share popularity. It occurred to me that there might be many people who prefer scooters to bikes as car-free transportation. The thread was only meant to compare scooters to bikes in terms of popularity as car-free vehicles for people who aren't already avid transportation cyclists, like some of us in this subforum of BIKEforums are.

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tandempower

It's not that equal of a comparison and you know it.

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Dahon.Steve

The scooter companies are using investor capital money to operate and like Uber, most are losing money. However, the challenge today is developing an electric scooter built heavy duty for commercial purposes with long battery life. The current ones in use are prone to breakage which is why the business model does not work.

The last mile is a real issue in cities where you'll ONLY find electric scooters. Those living the burbs will simply have to watch because the electric scooter will never reach them.

On a different subject, I was thinking how the success of electric scooters opened the eyes of thousands (of adults) on how useful they can be. I've know for YEARS the benefit of regular kick scooters regarding last mile transport. We can only hope the electric kick scooter will increase the number of adults using non-electric kick scooters.

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Walter S

Trying to win over hearts and minds I see

Walter S

Wow a tandempower guarantee! You "guarantee" truths you obviously know nothing specific about and just assume it happens "on some level". Jeez The smudge of tp intellect I see continues to ooze at bf.

StarBiker

They have become to popular. People do seem to be aware thankfully, but in big cities people are all over the place on these. Especially in the warmer months. You could get plowed quite easily if someone is not paying attention.

Let me get out of here, I get a headache in this sub forum.

tandempower

That is a good point. The bigger picture, however, is that people need to be stimulated to think creatively about going outside the box of buying and driving cars. A scooter might be portable enough that you can carry it on a bus or train, but a bicycle is typically too big for more than two per bus. So bike shares definitely make more sense than everyone hoping they get one of the two possible bike-rack spots on the bus. But then for some reason scooter shares have become more popular than bike shares, maybe as an attack on bike shares, idk.

Whatever the case, it is good to have a broad range of option so that people will begin to realize there are viable options besides driving. That way when they are dealing with the issue of climate reforms, economic reforms, personal geographical issues of where to live and work, etc. they won't plan their lives around the assumption of car-ownership and driving.

jon c. 

I don't know if scooter rentals really are more popular. They're getting a ton of of press right now, but I haven't seen evidence that they're actually very popular. Indeed, a lot of the problems seem to come from supply greatly exceeding demand. From what I've read, the few places where scooters are seeing much demand it seems to be largely recreational. Time will tell whether either actually prove to be popular enough to be viable, but I suspect bikes have a better chance in the commuter market. If scooters are more than a fad, their future may be more in the leisure market.

tandempower

From a totally utilitarian POV, e-scooters are the smallest electric vehicle possible. In terms of lane space and parking space, they have the smallest-possible footprint of any vehicle that can carry a human adult besides roller skates.

So if humans really want to have motorized transportation, it makes sense to have something closer to an escooter than a car, unless they want to take multi-passenger vehicles as public transit, carpooling, ride-sharing, etc. The most irrational transportation choice is to drive the largest-possible vehicle with the least number of people in it; e.g. everyone driving around in SUVs or even larger vehicles. That irrationality/waste scenario is the best possible outcome for business and growth, because more spending on larger vehicles per capita results in more steel purchased, more fuel, more paving, etc. etc.

More of everything per capita amounts to more work and spending per capita, which amounts to more economic activity, growth, and jobs. It is the terrible irrationality of the business-growth orientation, but too many people subscribe to it over the more sane values of efficiency, sustainability, and environmental impact reduction.

So escooters are the smallest-possible electric vehicle, but larger version, more like mopeds, could gain popularity instead, even covered-mopeds. Bicycles are really the most efficient sit-down vehicle, i.e. because they are human-powered and humans want to get as much speed out of their pedaling as possible, but there's no reason everyone needs to drive around in a big 4-wheeled motorized car, even if it's just a sub-compact; because even sub-compacts require a lot more pavement for driving and parking than a bicycle or scooter.

Mobile 155

Taking a look at the slant of this thread there are some obvious questions.
1. Scooters do not have the range or capacity of a bicycle.
2. Some are suggesting they are an answer to the last mile question.
a. The last mile applies to people already using mass transit or that live within a mile of where they want to be.
b. If they had an impact on the last mile they would impact walking and cycling.
c. Car owners are not concerned with last mile problems.
3. Bicycles have gained some acceptance for commuting to work but they are still less popular than walking, mass transit and working from home.
4. Scooters are not even on the list of ways people commute to work.
5. Scooters aren't part of the equation to commuting by car so they would have little or any impact on car ownership due to last mile concerns.

tandempower

The last mile problem applies to the prospect of expanding mass transit ridership and thus increasing the reach of mass transit lines. If more people are willing to use it, it can be expanded and more people will be able to go more places using it.

I suspect you are one of the people who wants to limit the reach of mass transit because you see it as posing a threat of bringing urban density into areas that don't want such density. If so, you should consider other possibilities for preventing density in those places besides averting accessibility by mass transit.

Car ownership is not a realistic option for everyone. Too many people have been overreaching their economic means for too long by driving because of the inadequacy they perceive in LCF lifestyles available to them.

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I-Like-To-Bike

Unlikely that a credible study would show any measurable reduction in miles driven by car owning scooter riders; perhaps they might reduce by a few miles those taken by taxi and other (so-called) ride share rental vehicles or public transit.