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Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

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Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#251

Post by gruez »

bradlys wrote: post #136
briandear wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helmets are important (I always wear one,) however, government ought not force people to wear them. Freedom still should matter. Grown adults should be able to make their own decisions. I support helmet laws for the under 18 crowd, but for grown adults? Too much nanny state for my liking.

One reason people might disagree is that you're pushing the externality of your own safety onto others. An example of an externality: those who don't wear helmets and crash are much more likely to have a brain injury (or death). This means that we all have to pay for your care now. In death (lack of taxes) or in financial damage. And in some cases like safety standards, people will also argue for emotional safety as…

>This means that we all have to pay for your care now

I'm not convinced. By that logic, we should also ban unhealthy foods, limit how many calories each person can eat, and mandate them to exercise for n hours per week. I'm sure that some of those will have a higher ROI than putting on helmets.

>In death (lack of taxes)

so we should ban emigration then? it has the exact same effects from a tax perspective.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#252

Post by superfrank »

justinator wrote: post #198
superfrank wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privately owning a bike comes with a ton of hassles though. - I live in a 570ft studio so storage space is limited. We have bike storage in my building, but it's $15 a month. - If I go somewhere and bring the bike with me, I have to bring it back. If it starts raining, I can't just choose to leave the bike and take an Uber home. - If I'm on a bike and I meet up with people that aren't, coordinating travel is a huge p…

I've used a bike for my primary transportation for the last 15 years. I'm not sure if your points are all real, or just what you imagine would be blocks. Let's go through some! - I live in a 570ft studio so storage space is limited. We have bike storage in my building, but it's $15 a month. Hang the bike up with a hook. - If I go somewhere and bring the bike with me, I have to bring it back. If it starts raining, I c…

Nah, all of these are real points from my life. I live in Seattle and live close enough to work that I can walk. When I moved up here I sold my car and as part of that, I looked into buying a decent bike to use as my main transportation and came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth it.

My original plan was a mix of walking and the bus, but now it's more walking and transportation sharing services (Uber/Lyft, Car2Go, and Lime).

Also, I'd like to give a rebuttal to a few of your answers.

> Hang the bike up with a hook.

I'm not saying I can't do that, but it would definitely be inconvenient. A mix of small elevators, an odd apartment layout (only one wall we could put a hook on), and a girlfriend who is picky about the decorations in our apartment makes that idea less than ideal.

> They make clothes specifically to be worn in the rain. Getting a little wet won't hurt ya.

You are right, but you still run into the issue of needing to plan ahead. If I leave my house on bike and it's sunny but it starts to rain later I'm going to get soaked. As you said, that won't kill me, but if I'm going from a bar to a party at a friends house, it would suck to show up soaked. Having the option to go from point A to B on bike and then B to C in a Lyft is a nice option to have.

> That, I agree! Goodness, that's a lot of traveling.

Hahaha agree with you there, I'm exhausted. This isn't my norm though, just had a friends birthday, a family event, and work travel happen to be back to back to back.

Just to kind of wrap my point up, I'm not trying to petition against people owning bikes. There are a lot of people who it makes sense for and if Bird/Lime weren't a thing, I would probably be one of them.

If I had no other options, I could definitely make it work, but for me, it's more convenient and less expensive to rent one when I need it.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#253

Post by anonytrary »

Uehreka wrote: post #225
anonytrary wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Baltimore used to have a bike share, but I've heard it's being shut down and even when it was up they had a hard time keeping bikes in all the stalls. Sorry if these are stupid questions, but isn't this a problem with Bird? I see random birds all over the place. Can someone explain why bikes can't be left around randomly like a bird can?

Not a stupid question! The bikes in the Baltimore bike share (and I think also the NYC bike share) had electric motors that would work with the rider to make peddling easier. Thus they had to be left in charging “yokes” when you were done with them. As for why a non-powered bike couldn’t just be left around, here are a few thoughts: - As some people have mentioned, bikes are just bigger, and take up way more sidewalk…

Thanks, this a great answer, and it makes sense now. The size matters because it enables the three-pronged business model: Suppliers-Riders-Chargers, and it would be infeasible to do such a thing with bulky bikes.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#254

Post by rcpt »

anonytrary wrote: post #209
hamandcheese wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a scooter is much smaller than a bike therefore less of a nuisance (though the last bit depends on who you ask/how much of a NIMBY you are). Also there are dockless bikes, see Jump in SF.

I've seen birds left around private property around campuses (e.g. businesses). Why would a business complain about a bike leaning against their wall but not a bird? They are both foreign objects leaning up against their wall. Is size really important here?

Shouldn't a business like having a signal attracting someone to their store?

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#255

Post by anonytrary »

s0rce wrote: post #240
Uehreka wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a stupid question! The bikes in the Baltimore bike share (and I think also the NYC bike share) had electric motors that would work with the rider to make peddling easier. Thus they had to be left in charging “yokes” when you were done with them. As for why a non-powered bike couldn’t just be left around, here are a few thoughts: - As some people have mentioned, bikes are just bigger, and take up way more sidewalk…

Dockless bike share is a thing. They had them all over the East SF bay area for a while but a contract with the existing docked bikes got rid of them in most of the areas. I think they still have them in SF. As you guessed, many people hate them but honestly, parked cars take 100x the space, just allocate some parking spaces to bikes, problem solved.

I suggested elsewhere in the thread, it'd be neat if they included a fourth class in the model: hub owners, in addition to the existing classes of supplier (Bird), riders (customers) and the chargers. The hub owners would register their places (private residence, business, campus, city area, etc.) as bird hubs, and people would only be allowed to ride birds between hubs. This would solve the "trash/get-off-my-lawn" problem.

The hub idea isn't feasible unless tons of people are already riding birds and creating a mess everywhere, because people probably wouldn't sign up as hub owners unless the demand was already deemed high. They are probably just ramping up usage right now until people start complaining, at which point Bird will be big enough to start issuing out hubs.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#256

Post by eli »

s0rce wrote: post #240
Uehreka wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a stupid question! The bikes in the Baltimore bike share (and I think also the NYC bike share) had electric motors that would work with the rider to make peddling easier. Thus they had to be left in charging “yokes” when you were done with them. As for why a non-powered bike couldn’t just be left around, here are a few thoughts: - As some people have mentioned, bikes are just bigger, and take up way more sidewalk…

Dockless bike share is a thing. They had them all over the East SF bay area for a while but a contract with the existing docked bikes got rid of them in most of the areas. I think they still have them in SF. As you guessed, many people hate them but honestly, parked cars take 100x the space, just allocate some parking spaces to bikes, problem solved.

Shameless plug: we've got a map of dockless scooters & bikes available in cities across the US over at https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-d...

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#257

Post by zeendo »

sonofaplum wrote: post #47

Full disclosure, I'm anti scooter. People drive them on the sidewalks, leave them in front of my front door, and I genuinely hope that both of these companies, specifically, fail. With that disclosure, was anyone else horrified that the lifespan of these scooters is only 3 months? Are they really removing enough vehicle trips to make these a net positive from an environmental standpoint?

I'm also a cyclist but am pro-scooter...but, yes, I found that super disturbing. In fairness, the lifespan is 4 months. 3 months of profitability. Either way, it sounds crazy wasteful. Obvious questions arise (and answers are alluded to in the article): How much of old scooters are reclaimed? Obviously some scooters are stolen / utterly destroyed...but for the ones that break down, is some percentage re-used?

Also, are there planned improvements to the lifespan? These companies have been operating for a crazy short amount of time considering their growth...so hopefully they can improve this as they bring the scooter design in-house.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#258

Post by jayd16 »

numair wrote: post #60

I have spent a lot of time observing this phenomenon in Venice; here are some of my thoughts. What these scooters have done for SM-Venice is, they’ve gotten people to park farther away and spend less time in cars. Especially the tourists. What does that mean for locals? Well, for one, it means that the nuisance of having to drive slow past people on these things, rather than the nightmare of sitting in standstill tra…

>not sure how I feel about seeing them in piles outside of public schools

Kids treat them like shit but what is there to do?

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#259

Post by anonytrary »

rcpt wrote: post #254
anonytrary wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen birds left around private property around campuses (e.g. businesses). Why would a business complain about a bike leaning against their wall but not a bird? They are both foreign objects leaning up against their wall. Is size really important here?

Shouldn't a business like having a signal attracting someone to their store?

I can't tell if this is sarcasm. You don't get to decide what goes on someone else's property, it's simply not your property.

Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly

#260

Post by blhack »

askaboutit wrote: post #7

Stand up scooters feel so unstable. Why not just add a seat and allow a seated scooter that’s foldable. The problem with last mile transport is that the laws in many countries need electric bikes to have peddles and peddle assistance. Just let people have a certain power and max speed and they will drop the car and replace it with a powered scooter. Aka, China.

Razor has these in Tempe, AZ. Basically a scooter with a seat on it.
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