121–130 of 198 posts
"We don’t ask GM, Ford, or Toyota to solve car parking" A more apt comparison would be Avis, Hertz, etc but I think that would still be disingenuous. Car rental companies certainly penalize you for abandoning a rental car whereas these scooter/bike rental companies just let you dump them wherever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Yes, these scooters/bikes are making money. Are they? Are any of the companies public? It seems like a burn through cash to get a user base sort of thing but maybe these companies are older and more established than it seems to me.
Are you required to be public in order to make money ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Bird is paying (or offering to, at least) $1/scooter/day to SF. That's $365/scooter/year. I've heard Zipcar pays SF $1000-ish/year, so inch-for-inch it's certainly a good deal.
In the greater Boston area, I think I've only seen Zipcar spots on private property (though I'm not sure what the ownership is of the MBTA parking spaces) and I would expect the rate to be somewhat negotiable, based on supply & demand for the neighborhood.
If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public spac…
I don't have a counter-example for your very specific statement, but these are close:
* The car rental company "Rent a Wreck" in San Francisco drives between 5 and 20 of their camper vehicles off the lot and parks them in public parking spaces every morning around 7am and brings them back in in the evening. Reported to 311, "not enforceable".
* The Enterprise car rental branch at the Amtrak station in Emeryville, CA, routinely blocks a bike lane and public parking spots with rental vehicles. They also perform vehicle inspections and handovers there. No outrage, in fact Emeryville doesn't enforce parking in bike lanes or at red curbs, period.
* "Global Gourmet Catering" in San Francisco backs rental trucks into their loading bay such that the entire sidewalk, the entire bike lane, and up to half a traffic lane is blocked approximately every second day. In the evenings the same trucks are parked in public diagonal parking spots sized for passenger vehicles across the street, blocking the side walk and bike lane in the other direction. Reported to 311, forwarded to parking enforcement, won't enforce because blocked sidewalks and blocked bike lanes are handled by different people, and this involves both.
* "Enclosures International Corporation" in San Francisco basically runs a fulfillment operation with frequent forklift traffic on a public sidewalk and the bike lane. Super dangerous actually, because it forces cyclists to cross defunct train tracks in the traffic lane at a sharp angle. When the fork lifts aren't there, the Audi Q7 of one of their employees still blocks the sidewalk. Reported to 311, you can guess the outcome.
I asked @sf311 on Twitter why these things don't get enforced, but parking scooters on sidewalks does [0]. The answer:
> These scooters do not have a license plate. So it does not fall under SFMTA DPT.
> DPW BSM permits use of and enforces ordinances regarding public areas, as pertains to blocking items that don't have a license.
If Hertz or Avis attempted to use public space to park their inventory, local residents and city officials would pitch a fit. Public parking exists for the benefit of the public at large, not as a cost-saving measure for rental firms. The same is true of bicycles. You can store your private bicycle almost anywhere you like in public. But city fathers will naturally take a dim view of a business using that public spac…
This is just another case of people being blind to the convenience and privilege they already have and kicking off when other people attempt to get such convenience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the greater Boston area, I think I've only seen Zipcar spots on private property (though I'm not sure what the ownership is of the MBTA parking spaces) and I would expect the rate to be somewhat negotiable, based on supply & demand for the neighborhood.
Same in Philadelphia
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean... like Getaround and Zipcar already do? The streets are filled with companies using public spaces: Fedex deliveries blocking the road, sidewalk signs for bars, Getaround rentals, food carts, mailboxes, ATMs, parking meters, Scoot scooters, taxi lines, Lyft/Ubers, Redbox DVD rentals, annoying Greenpeace petition people, construction, billboards, etc. I don't think it's a cost-saving measure for scooter/bike…
Fedex deliveries blocking the road for a short time are generally considered preferable to removing a whack of on-street parking from every block in order to have an excess of loading zones, or not being able to have deliveries at all. sidewalk signs for bars are regulated, at least in my city. They have to leave (IIRC) 6' of clearance on the sidewalk so they don't obstruct pedestrian traffic. Whether those rules are…
You mean the way that the minor inconvenience of having a few scooters laying around is considered acceptable in return for having a cheap, efficient, green solution for last mile transportation?
Yes, blocked sidewalks is the issue. And while I'm glad the author suggests a remedy — of creating designated parking zones — this is essentially describing dockable bikes. In my experience, docked bikes do not solve the convenience and availability problem well enough.
I've used dockless bikes recently in both Europe and Asia, and in the cities of both, dockless bikes are being literally strewn about the place. Flower-beds, narrow sidewalks, pedestrian junctions, private grounds, etc. are all being used as dumping grounds for users' dockless bike destinations. I've even been on wild-goose-chases after multiple consecutive 'available' bikes, only to realise that they must be literally taken inside peoples' property and homes.
Why?
For the former, I'm pretty sure it's simply a 'not my problem / not my bike' issue. Private bike owners usually have to lock their bikes up somewhere out of the way, and generally seem more respectful of their bikes' surroundings. With dockless bikes, it's just to easy to dump your bike in the middle of the sidewalk and not have to deal with any consequences. Certain bike hire companies are trying to deal with this by incentivizing certain parking spaces; however, why would you bother getting +10.CoolBikeXP for going out of your way when you can chuck your bike on someone's lawn right outside your office?
And as for the latter, because people seem to be getting away with it. People are so lovely [/s] that they'd seriously consider just keeping a rental bike inside their home, thus ruining the service for nearby users.
I want dockless bikes to be the future, and I think they should be, but we really need to fix users' docking behaviour, or else we'll end up with tragedy-of-the-commons[0] type consequences once enough people start using them.
[0] — this is a tenuous analogy, but for lack of better phrasing, I'm referring to the ultimate widespread abuse of potential public / open docking spaces.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180418200143/http://haveago.ci...
> pick up their cars and drop them off _anywhere_ in the city
(emphasis mine)
Really? One may not park a car _anywhere_. There are typically laws dictating when, where, and for how long. Whether the laws are respected or enforced are a different matter.
Individuals inconsiderately stranding means of transportation across the city is patently unsafe. I can sure as hell see a car misparked on the sidewalk when walking and avoid it because it is big and in the field of view; but with a bikecycle or scooter there is no guarantee given its small size. Each day feels like game of Mario Kart: am I going to trip over a banana someone left in the streets? FFS.
I would be happy if the cities issued fines/citations to the individuals responsible for improperly discarding the conveyances. A protocol already exists for rental car companies; why not for rental scooters/bikes? This is perfectly solvable.
(I am no defender of automobiles and view even the most urban cities of the United States as hopelessly car-bound.)