E-scooters - saving cities or ruining them?

E-scooters. These little buggers started filling streets of our cities in a rapid pace. For some, they are godsent, letting people move around quickly and efficiently, avoiding heavy car traffic. For others, they are a disgrace, clogging city streets and cluttering cityscape. Some US cities started regulating scooters, essentially trying to figure out where to place them among cars and bicycles.

Cars registered in San Francisco: 500,000+ Scooters allowed in SF: 1,250 with potential to go to 2,500 at some point in the future after they understand the impact of scooters on safety and where to park them. Meanwhile, this happened in SF today pic.twitter.com/ftC1Yphown

— James Gross (@James_Gross) November 27, 2018

Interestingly, bicycle advocates quickly realized that scooter companies could be potential allies. The advocates have been asking for a better cycling infrastructure for years, often to be left with some bits and pieces of randomly disconnected bike lanes. But then came the scooters and their companies started pushing for more space to ride or for a less-restrictive helmet laws. Sometimes it worked - New York finally decided to move towards legalizing e-bikes and e-scooters:

Live from New York, it’s a press conference introducing a bill that would legalize e-scooters and throttle e-bikes pic.twitter.com/lI1j1ubAIQ

— Good Idea Dave (@DaveCoIon) November 28, 2018

Following such news, I would expect most bike-lovers to like scooters as well. Then, to my surprise, I bumped into this tweet from Mikael Colville-Andersen, a well-know advocate for cycling for transport and building livable cities:

I'll take 10,000 #scooters over 10,000 cars in the city anytime.

— bostonbybike (@bostonbybike) November 24, 2018

As you can tell, my response was straightforward - scooters over cars! To which he replied:

Excellent! We'll send our cars to Copenhagen then. 😀

— bostonbybike (@bostonbybike) November 30, 2018

I admit I didn't fully understand his hostility towards this simple, alternative way of transportation, but now I think that he's against scooters in the city because he sees them as a threat to bicycles, not cars.

You see, Mikael is a Dane, living in Copenhagen - a city where bicycles are a normal mode of transport. Actually, in the downtown of Copenhagen bicycles are likely the dominant mode!

This is in stark contrast to all American cities where most people drive, some take public transport and very few travel by bikes. As such, the arrival of scooters in US cities was mostly well-received by many bike advocates as these small, simple electric vehicles could help reducing our dependency on cars and eventually move people onto bicycles as well.

But not in Copenhagen. There, bikes are prevalent and few people would prefer to drive into the downtown. As such, electrically-powered scooters present a threat to bicycles and have to compete with them for space on city streets. That explains why Mikael would rather see people to use their bikes instead of switching to scooters.

Whether e-scooters are just a temporary fashion or they stay here for longer, they may persuade some people to leave their cars in the driveway. It won't be easy though. The struggle for prying American butts off driver seats is going to be a difficult one.

Your commute sucks and you love it that way

How was your commute last night? If you live in New England or at least on northern East Coast, it was probably miserable. We were getting first snow of this season, which meant "full panic mode on" for most drivers. And since most people in America drive to work, we are stuck with the inefficient system that fails us in such "panic mode" situations.

Or, as Doug Gordon put it - the system is working as designed:

The system is working as designed. pic.twitter.com/9ZI81lDZzS

— Doug Gordon (@BrooklynSpoke) November 15, 2018

Exactly. The system is designed for drivers and drivers only. Public transport in suburbs is nearly nonexistent and even in city centers it lacks severely in reliability.

The situation around New York City last night was particularly bad, but even here in Boston it looked much worse than usual. It seemed that nearly everyone decided to leave work at the exactly same time and as such, on my way back home, pretty much every intersection was gridlocked and cars barely moved.

It didn't bother me at all. I was on my bike and I actually liked that heavy traffic. You see, there are only 2 situations where roads with no protected bike lanes are very safe for cyclists:

1. When roads are completely empty and there is no traffic at all.
2. When roads are completely gridlocked and cars can't move.

In both these cases speed of cars equals zero. In all other situations cyclists and pedestrians are in danger. Therefore, we should build separated infrastructure for those road users: sidewalks for pedestrians and protected bike lanes for cyclists.

We should, but we rarely do. America loves to drive... and getting stuck in traffic, just like the last night in New York. In the recent commuting study done by esurance.com New York ended up as one of the worst states (#47) rated by the overall commuting experience. Massachusetts was about in the middle of the pack (#36), while among the best states we find Alaska (#1), Montana (#3) and Wyoming (#5). That's probably not surprising. All of these 3 states have more bears than people and as far as I know, bears don't drive to work.

What's more surprising is how bad those few drivers in Wyoming and Montana are. They scored #41 and #43 respectively. Maybe there are bears driving cars over there after all?

Florida scored last, which is not surprising given that the average driver's age in Florida must be around 75 ;)

Here in Massachusetts on the other hand, we can be proud to lead the country (#2, next to Hawaii being #1) in "alternative transportation" options. Yes, this means riding bikes to work. You see, it's 2018 but the idea of riding a bicycle to office is still so bizarre in America that we call it "alternative". Still, it's great seeing Massachusetts being #2. If they can do it in sunny Hawaii, we can do it here, where we "enjoy" likely the lousiest weather in the United States (freezing and snowy winters and hot and humid summers anyone?).

So you see, my fellow Americans, if you don't want to be stuck in traffic anymore, something must be done. And that something means - we need to give up our cars. Now, before your blood boils and head explodes - let me clarify that. I don't mean we have to give up our cars completely (that's a bit too Utopian for now), but we really need to reduce our dependence on them. Fortunately, more and more people seem to understand that. Unfortunately, these people are not our politicians (at least not many of them).

We had election last week and according to media we witnessed a "blue wave" - many Democrats retaking positions in the government. You would think, these progressive politicians, who understand risks of climate change and necessity of efficient public transportation would propose solutions such as congestion pricing or market-driven parking fees. But no. I didn't hear any Democrats proposing this. While it's entirely possible that I simply missed that, I think that these ideas are still too radical (and thus unacceptable) even for the most progressive Americans.

The change may come however, from another direction. It turns out that younger generations are less excited about owning a car and driving it. Millenials seem to have different life goals than their parents and buying an suburban house with large driveway is just not one of them.