When US companies started renting adult versions of plastic scooters for toddlers in 2017, the mini vehicles were a lightly used and often derided way to get around cities. But five years and one pandemic later, shared electric scooters are getting a second look and a chance to mend their bad reputation.
Electric scooters can also provide a blueprint for making technology fit our collective needs.
About five years ago, in some US cities, including San Francisco and San Diego, a number of fledgling companies began offering electric scooters that people could rent by the minute using a smartphone app.
Some people loved using the scooters for short trips through traffic-calmed areas of the city. Officials and other residents saw scooter companies as intruders with products inviting rights holders to mow over pedestrians or soil sidewalks with parked scooters. The scooter’s response was brutal.
But slowly the companies started working with cities to make the scooters safer, more reliable and less hated. They have also started testing new ideas, including automated speed limits, which some transportation experts would also like to see applied to cars.
No new mode of transportation will solve all the transportation problems in the world, and scooters certainly have drawbacks. But rented electric scooters may eventually find their place in cities seeking solutions to traffic, pollution, road hazards and the limitations of public transportation.
And if scooters catch on, it will be because many U.S. cities did something they didn’t or couldn’t do with on-demand ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft: They effectively regulated them to minimize the downsides and maximize the public good.
“Do we still do scooters?” asked a Bloomberg News headline last month. Yes, but it’s different from how we did scooters in the past.
Officials in many cities have responded to complaints by wading in to check how and where scooters work. Many cities have limited the number of scooters available, requiring companies to bolster their liability insurance, or requiring scooters to be available in lower-income neighborhoods.
In the Los Angeles area, scooters have built-in no-go zones that prevent people from using them in crowded areas like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Chicago is one of the places where people had to lock scooters to fixed objects like bike racks instead of leaving them somewhere. And New York has promised special lanes and parking zones to make it safer for people on bicycles and scooters.
Scooter companies have also responded to complaints about defective or short-lived scooters. Wayne Ting, the director of scooter and bike rental company Lime, told me that many rented scooters were the same models people bought for personal use. He said Lime was now on fourth-generation scooters designed to withstand the wear and tear of repeated rentals.
The pandemic has also changed people’s routines and disrupted public transportation. Americans seem to be increasingly interested in alternatives to get around, including rented and own electric scooters and bicycles.
Not everyone wants scooters, regardless of the changes. Some officials, including in Miami, have said scooters have no lawful place and have at least temporarily banned them.
On the other hand, some proponents of car transport alternatives say cities have overreacted to scooters, arguing that restrictions can make them too cumbersome to use and support the status quo of cars.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the 2022 scooter story is that it shows that private tech companies and governments can work together to make an emerging technology serve the public good.
Seleta Reynolds, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, told me she had learned lessons from past regulatory mistakes that stalled taxi service and prevented Uber and Lyft from tackling the ways they traffic and pollution worsened.
“I’m laying the groundwork here so I can welcome new innovations,” Reynolds said. “The way to do that is to not let them in and do whatever they want.”
Reynolds said the number of calls about scooters to the city’s public hotline had declined since the new rules went into effect, and that restrictions on the number of scooters in some areas of the Los Angeles area had not reduced passenger numbers. She said her goal was to make sure city officials weren’t blocking attractive alternatives to driving that Los Angeles needs, and to make sure tech companies address the downsides of their services.
The scooter approach, Reynolds said, is a model for how Los Angeles plans to integrate future transportation technologies, including driverless vehicles and flying cars.
It is not clear whether scooter rental will ever be an attractive transportation option for the masses or a financially viable business. But they show that to improve transportation, we may need as many alternatives to private cars as possible, and strict surveillance to make sure the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Before we go…
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Do newer driver assistance technologies make cars safer? There isn’t enough publicly available data to make an accurate assessment, my colleague Cade Metz reported. And yet, the biggest selling point for features like Autopilot, the Tesla system that automates some elements of driving, such as steering and braking, safety is safety.
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The double-edged sword of being online: MIT Technology Review wrote about the ways LGBTQ people in Malaysia have used social media to communicate and advocate for their rights in a country where same-sex relationships are a crime. But activists are also exposed to online threats, cyber attacks, government surveillance and prosecution. (A subscription may be required.)
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Why do I have so many chargers and cords for gadgets?! The European Union will require phones, tablets, portable speakers and many other electronics sold in the 27-nation bloc to use the same type of charger by 2024, my colleague Adam Satariano reported. Laptops will be included in that list in 2026.
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This one baby otters love their fish meal† Turn on the sound for a (slightly gross) sensory experience.
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