As I type, there are two abandoned electric scooters from different companies sitting on sidewalks on my block. This is very common. I suspect just one person is leaving them around, but I don’t know, because we don’t have outside cameras (and I have no particular interest in putting them in).
One of these is sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house; it blew over in a storm yesterday and is now on its side, blocking the sidewalk. I notified the company several days ago and asked them to please pick it up, but I got no response. I discovered today that the company, named Spin, may be in financial difficulties and circling the drain.
I wonder if other municipalities have this kind of problem, and if any of them have introduced regulations. They may be ecologically friendly (may), but these scooters have multiple problems, as far as I’m concerned, including being ridden on sidewalks to the peril of pedestrians, and this business model that allows them to be left around at any location for days or even weeks. I would like to be able to give my local city representative some concrete ideas for curbing this menace.
Where I work is on some sort of geofence for them so we tend to see them abandoned in front of our property. In general, they’re gone within a few days, but I wish people would stop dumping them right there on the sidewalk or in our parking lot.
What really bugs me is that their answer for “what should I do if I find a scooter on my property” is “download the app, set up an account, scan the QR code on the scooter, enter the location etc”. Well, I’m not going to install your app on my phone and I’m certainly not going to scan a random QR code with it just so you can maybe come collect your junk.
I’m always tempted (but never done it and likely wouldn’t) to just chuck them in the dumpster when I find them on our property.
FWIW, I have no problem with the scooters themselves, I just wish the companies would figure out a way to make sure they’re not left in random places. I know they’ve tried a few things, but I have yet to see any actual results.
One suggestion I’d have is that the city should require the companies to pick up all scooters within a specific time frame (less than 24 hours) or the city picks them up and fines the company. If they’re not able to do that, they can hire more people or have less scooters in the area.
The company is supposed to be constantly moving them anyway, since random rides do not leave the scooters in optimal locations. There are some operations-research issues.
In some areas you can earn bucks by picking up the scooters (they show on a map in the app), recharge them and deliver them back to the company. I have seen YouTube videos of this.
In my experiecne they go too fast and that IMO increases the jerk ratio of users. I was in Denver recently and you had to keep your head on a swivel not to get run down
My neighborhood s about 6 blocks from the longest river in North America, with several bridges over it.
E-scooters littered in front of homeowners property tend to commit suicide by jumping into the river. Seems that the same is happening in Portland.
And expecting the owner companies to effectively pick them up, or the city doing so and fining these companies, just won’t work – the owner companies (the ones that haven’t already gone bankrupt) are in financial trouble and don’t have money to effectively pick up & re-distribute these e-scooters, or to pay fines. Given the track record, this doesn’t seem to be a viable business.
If the companies that own them can’t afford the manpower to pick them up to redistribute them, they really shouldn’t be operating a business like this. The city, if they pick them up themselves and the company that owns them can’t or won’t retrieve them, should sell them. Either to a scrapper if they have any scrap value or auction/sell them back to the general public for anyone that wants to take a shot at jail breaking them.
I think it would just take a few cities doing something like, as well as the threat of other cities doing the same thing, to force the hands of the scooter companies into dealing with these issues. Having your only assets taken away will rapidly accelerate a business’ decline so it’ll be in their best interest to keep the city (government and public) happy.
I have no idea about the finances, but am not sure why the companies ought not be expected to manage their externalities. I’m not certain what benefit the city derives from granting a franchise to a company that cannot manage its assets.
I’ve never used an e-scooter/bike. What are renters told at the point of rental? Can they just leave it anywhere? Or are they supposed to leave them at specific locations? And how are they paid for? Credit/debit card? E-payment? Would the company have a record that would allow them to bill the renter an additional charge if the device is left in a wrong location?
I dislike when people leave trash in front of my house, so I assume I would be even more displeased if it was an e-scooter. If it happened more than once, I imagine I might drag the device to the nearest public property - likely the school down the street - and leave it there. Admittedly not a great solution.
The problem is proving it. If you find a scooter I rented, laying across the sidewalk, did I leave it there or did I leave it where it belongs only for someone else to walk by and kick it over?
One solution would be to do the same thing as the rental bike companies. The bikes are locked in a rack, you pay a deposit to get one (plus whatever fees there are) and get the deposit back when you lock it back up at another bike rack near your destination. Granted, that kinda undercuts the idea of being able to take the scooter anywhere you need to go, but I also don’t see random rental bikes scattered across the city.
