decent amount of puns
Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#22Once said that the "too high fines" sounds like an excuse, I am not sure to understand the logic of the fines (i.e. the attributing them at least partially to the company). When you rent a car, the driver/renter pays all fines during the rent period, except maybe those related to the car itself not being fit for street use. Why is this different for these scooters?
The driver of a rented car pays things like speeding tickets, yes, but if they abandon the car in the middle of the road, the rental company is expected to retrieve it and will be fined if they don't. Same deal here.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#23Once said that the "too high fines" sounds like an excuse, I am not sure to understand the logic of the fines (i.e. the attributing them at least partially to the company). When you rent a car, the driver/renter pays all fines during the rent period, except maybe those related to the car itself not being fit for street use. Why is this different for these scooters?
The most obvious difference is that scooters companies typically do not provide a place to park their vehicles between rentals, whereas all car rentals do... even Zipcar.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#24Anecdotally, nobody likes these scooters and I can't imagine any normal person who isn't financially invested in their success would care when they leave. They are a very dangerous and gimmicky mode of transportation in a nation where we could all use to walk much more than we do.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#25I always thought S.F. would have made a great "city of the future" and ban cars and go full in on birds. Like https://culdesac.com/ (wow, when you look at the pictures from culdesac it looks like Sesame Street!)
God no, invest in building out the trains and public transit. Scooters are just toys. Get a public transit like the NYC subways and it will change the city forever.
Last mile problem exists even in NYC. Also, the geography and weather of SF isn't the same as NYC so you can't just cut-and-paste a solution from one to the other like a block of code from StackOverflow.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#26It seems in the US regulations seem to be spun as something negative by all major news outlets. For me this reads like sensible government policy at work. If the fines of cleanup eat into profits and are not just a minuscule cost of doing business, they set it just right instead of plain forbid it outright.
Sensible policy that driving a scooter on the sidewalk gets you 5x the fine that driving a car on the sidewalk would? Holding the companies responsible for users of rental scooters actions but not users of rental cars is sensible policy?
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#27Once said that the "too high fines" sounds like an excuse, I am not sure to understand the logic of the fines (i.e. the attributing them at least partially to the company). When you rent a car, the driver/renter pays all fines during the rent period, except maybe those related to the car itself not being fit for street use. Why is this different for these scooters?
The scooter return process typically involves taking a picture of where the scooter is parked. If it gets a parking ticket and the picture shows that the renter parked it illegally, I imagine the fine does get passed along to the renter.
Unlike cars, it's very easy for vandals to move a scooter without renting it, e.g. by picking it up. I've seen scooters thrown into bodies of water and inside fenced areas. Most jurisdictions require the owners to remove them from such locations in a timely manner.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all the second thing. The economics never made sense. It doesn't have one damned thing to do with "onerous regulations". It has to do with bird losing $300 million on revenues of $70 million.
I don’t know.. it’s a little bit of both. The scooters are super convenient when you can park it anywhere, the whole idea of micro-mobility actually works and is more convenient than taking an Uber or a Lyft. It’s also the most fun you can have with $3 in a city. In theory it cuts down on unnecessary car traffic, and you don’t have to get sweaty on a bicycle. The problem is, cities started forcing by the scooters to…
I remember not being able to drop one at a park. A pedestrian-friendly space with a huge bike rack where I could get the scooter in a location where it wouldn't obstruct the sidewalk. But some bureaucrat decided parks were off limits.
Had to drop it on the sidewalk next to said park.
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#29There’s no way to profitably run a company like Bird without foisting the externalities on someone else. Their model is literally to dump a bunch of electric scooters on the side of the road with QR codes on them and just hope for the best. Of course they’re going to get fined when their property is left blocking driveways, of course they’re going to be expected to clean up the piles of scooters that get thrown in th…
Not to mention the extra costs to the healthcare system. These things are not safe!
Re: Bird leaves S.F., blaming ‘the most onerous regulations’ in the world
#30There’s no way to profitably run a company like Bird without foisting the externalities on someone else. Their model is literally to dump a bunch of electric scooters on the side of the road with QR codes on them and just hope for the best. Of course they’re going to get fined when their property is left blocking driveways, of course they’re going to be expected to clean up the piles of scooters that get thrown in th…
There are places in the world where citizens have high levels of concientiousness.
Obviously there's a threshold problem in most of urban USA. There's sufficient pedestrian concientousness maybe in Salt Lake City or some small New England city. Definitely in Japan. Probably most Swiss communities, but beyond that there's just too many sketchy people. It only takes 1 in 100.