Professional and Career Topics

It is not uncommon to see in the news how scooters are showing up in cities across the country.

Milwaukee seeks your feedback on dockless scooters, whether you ride them or not

There could be up to 10,000 scooters on D.C. streets come January

Portland increases electric scooter fleet to nearly 3,000

Currently where I live we do not have them, but they are a topic of discussion with young professionals and our local governments are trying to establish an agreement across municipalities on how they will operate in our greater community.

Are you an individual that lives in city or have you visited a city with scooters? What is your experience? Do you love them or hate them?

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Kenneth Mika, PE M.ASCE
kmika@...
Green Bay, WI
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In Providence, we had Jump bikes.  Electric bikes available for public use with the app.  At the end of summer a group of 100 teenagers (about 50 were on unlocked Jump bikes) rampaged through the city.  And that is why we can't have nice things.  They have all been pulled from the streets.  The irony was the Jump bikes were sponsored by the local hospital.

The scooters were delivered to the city streets unannounced.  The city removed them until they were able to come to an agreement with the scooter company to tax/regulate them.  Different scooter companies have arrived and left since then.  


The scooters have a tendency to be thrown in the river (lithium battery and all).  Then the city is responsible for fishing them out or getting the scooter company to pay for their recovery.


I was in DC recently and had to make my way over 2 miles across the National Mall.  My coworker suggested I take a scooter.  I downloaded the app, looked at uploading a photo of my license and giving my credit card info.  I stopped and thought better of it.  I had my heavy backpack and knew that walking might be some effort, but decided that scooting might not be worth the risk of being unbalanced.  It took me longer, but I got my exercise.


The National Mall is packed with public scooters and bikes.  Teenagers buzzing by memorials.  They are sometimes thrown in the reflecting pools.  Is it disrespectful?  I believe it is. I think mostly because the scooters are left where ever.  Less supply and more centralized docking stations/racks would likely improve the problem.  The cities need rules that are enforceable.  It is far different from a stroller or moped rental where there is a vendor with a storefront.  In those cases, there is an actual face to who is responsible.  

From a transportation perspective, the scooters fill the need of completing the journey from the Metro station to the final destination.  In most cases it is walkable.  The city needs to look at locations that are underserviced so that this is not an issue.  Complete the commute with a shuttle/trolley/streetcar.  San Francisco has a system that has worked for over 100 years (although it is swamped by tourists such as myself).

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Chad Morrison P.E., M.ASCE
Professional Engineer
Greenville RI
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In Tulsa, OK we have the scooters.
There are pros and cons to having them in the area.

The biggest benefit I see is it has attracted more younger people to the downtown area which began a period of ongoing rejuvenation in the last decade or so.
1- Allow people to park their car in one place or leave it at home and quickly access businesses or events
2- Typically less costly than the bike rentals and you don't have to find a station to return them

There are a few major frustrations from my perspective
1- Unlike the bike rental stations, the scooters are left just about anywhere, often blocking accessible pathways. 
2- Even though they aren't supposed to be ridden on the sidewalks, they often are. I understand riding them on the sidewalk because in areas with heavy car traffic and little walking traffic, it is safer for the scooter rider. However, it isn't fun to come walking around a corner or out of a door and almost be wiped out by a guy on a scooter going 15 mph.
3- Most people are not carrying a helmet around with them, and there have been some crashes with severe injury from someone hopping on without safety gear and getting thrown off.

They are beneficial but also have consequences that need to be assessed. Overall, I tend to be of the opinion that the downsides outweigh the benefits from the perspective of the overall community. A teenager getting across downtown with his friends faster isn't as critical as keeping accessible routes open.

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Heidi Wallace EI, A.M.ASCE
Engineer Intern
Tulsa OK
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Hi Ken,

Yes, here in Milwaukee Bird Scooter entered the marketplace last year without any city guidelines in place. The Bublr rental bike company worked with the City and DPW when they first started several years back and have been very successful. They have since successfully expanded to several other adjacent communities. This necessitated cooperation between city governments and the company to succeed. Obviously, their infrastructure of parking docks and kiosks require defined public space and bikes already have established bike lanes where they typically ride thanks to larger bike rider community. 

Outside of this new rental market there never was a scooter community or laws regarding how and where they ride. There is a growing skateboard community but the market for scooters is completely different. Before scooters I have seen quite a variety of powered devices like electric skateboards, single wheel segways, and others that sometimes used public walks and sometimes used street bike lanes. There never was a large enough population with larger problems that required city governments to establish laws.

Bird immediately saturated the downtown and east side areas without trying to establish any rules. These electric scooters don't require defined areas to park and it wasn't clear where they should ride. The target market was college students and younger people who really took to the scooters to get around. However, they didn't care where they rode them and where they parked them. Driving scooters on the sidewalks became a problem and they were typically left anywhere when the rider was finished. This was many times in the middle of a public walk. Sometimes they were left at bus stops making it difficult for bus riders to get out of the bus because they blocked the way. Currently there are three competing companies operating in Milwaukee.

It is important that the companies work with the municipalities prior to being allowed to operate. Rules need to be adapted to their specific use and the infrastructure has to be adapted to fit them in. I think some high-use areas would be served to have parking pads dedicated to scooters. Especially in areas where there may not have been space for them. The companies should be required to pay for these pads - they are, after all, benefiting monetarily from the use of public space. Perhaps the annual permit cost should include a cost of several thousand dollars to cover these pads? The companies should be required to share their geographical ridership data with the cities so that the city can identify what particular areas need to be improved to better handle the parking issue.

Riding on public walks should not be allowed. These things are fast and the riders are typically not experienced enough to slow down for pedestrians. I think these scooters fill a need and shouldn't be banned but, the companies need to understand that there are impacts that their use will have that need to be addressed.

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Yance Marti P.E., M.ASCE
Civil Engineer IV
City of Milwaukee
Milwaukee WI
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The main issue with scooters in my opinion is the lack of respect many users have with parking them on sidewalks, and out of the way of people walking. Dockless bikes, which were the rage a couple of years ago in some cities, at least were generally near bike racks and were easier to avoid, especially at night.

I have a personal kick scooter I store at work to get some exercise during lunch, as well as an electric Razor I purchased off eBay to run short errands around home. I generally ride them in the bike lane or on low traveled streets in my suburban neighborhood. In areas without adequate bike infrastructure they can be scary to ride due to vehicles traveling too fast.

One issue with the rental scooters is maintenance and quality. Many of the for rent scooters break down easily and the braking capacity of the scooters is always questionable. Scooters operate in a weird in between area where they can be too slow on streets, especially arterials, but too fast on sidewalks. The higher end, purchase scooters that cost $1,000 and up can go 20-25 mph and the riders generally respect that speed by wearing helmets and operating like a vehicle. In that sense they are like confident bicyclists who choose to take the lane. At 10 or 15 mph very few riders are confident to take the lane, yet they would be too fast on sidewalks. 

Overall with climate change looming, we need to move to bicycles, neighborhood electric vehicles, and similar modes of transport in our cities. They are quieter and take up less space. But I am skeptical about the utility of scooters, especially compared to e-bicycles which have better stability and rideability, especially on potholed streets, more cargo capacity (scooters don't have racks), and are more durable than the e-scooter.

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Hank Fung P.E., M.ASCE
Pomona CA
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Last December (2018) Bird dumped 200 scooters throughout my city, Bakersfield, CA, without permission from the City, basically strong-arming the city into making a deal with them.  Unfortunately, it worked.  Everyday driving around here I see the scooters littering the sidewalks chained to street lights, signs, traffic signals, etc.  Sometimes they are just left unchained in the middle of the sidewalks, parking lots or even in the bike lanes in the street.  The negatives have already been well-described by Chad Morrison and Heidi Wallace and they are exactly what I've observed.  The part that bugs me the most about it is where they ride - on the sidewalk, zipping around pedestrians, or in the street in the bike lane.  I understand they are pretty much limited to these areas, but both places are dangerous either for pedestrians or the scooter riders themselves.

Company surprises Bakersfield by dropping 200 electric scooters on city streets overnight

One big negative thing I would like to add is that we have a nice BIKE path that runs along the river from the west side of our city to east.  The main purpose of the path is for the commuting and recreational use of bicycles.  Bikes have the right of way and the path can also be used for running and walking but motorized vehicles are explicitly not allowed on the path (or in the river bed as the river is mostly dry during dry years) and there are many signs stating so.  There were already problems with motorized scooters, bicycles, dirt bikes (motorcycles) and skate boards (yes, they've found a way to motorized those, too).  However, add in the Bird scooters that anyone can rent anywhere and they can really congest the bike path.  Not to mention the attitude the riders usually have, casually zig-zagging back & forth from one edge to the other, making it hazardous for the cyclists (of which I must disclose that I am one).  I've also seen them left in the river, both when it's wet and dry, and in the middle of the path.  The best part is when cyclists point out to them that they can't have motorized scooters on the path they usually retort with "It's not motorized!"

I apologize for the bit of a rant, but I don't care for them one bit.  It is my recommendation to keep them out of the community.  And if one of the companies dumps off a bunch in your city without prior approval, urge the city leaders to make the company pick them up.  Otherwise the City will pick them up and impound them, charging the company for everyday they are left in the impound yard.



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Aaron Meyer P.E., M.ASCE
Meyer Civil Engineering, Inc
Bakersfield, CA
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We have scooters here in OKC and I think they're an asset for any community. As a newer mode of transportation, sure, there will be growing pains (look at the turn of the 20th Century to see how difficult it was for communities to adapt to the emergence of automobiles). Scooters, however, have many more upsides than down compared to the automobile. One of the biggest struggles for pedestrians in general (and by pedestrian I reference any non-motorist) is the fact that so much of our infrastructure has been built for the car and not for people. Thus, we have inadequate sidewalks that barely accommodate able-bodied walkers, much less people with disabilities or other methods of locomotion. And we have streets that, instead of accommodating ALL users, are designed for the automobile almost exclusively, intimidating anything that isn't 4,000+ lbs, encased in steel, and rocketing at 30+ mph. The reality is, a scooter on a sidewalk doing 15 mph has the smallest of possibilities of killing a person on foot if they collide. Are scooter operators injured when they take a spill? Sure, it happens. But how many deaths have resulted? Now let's compare both of those scenarios (colliding with a person on foot and single-vehicle crashes) to automobiles: Tens of THOUSANDS of people are killed every year by the automobile, and that's DESPITE our designing nearly ALL of our infrastructure for the safety of the car. Automobile-related deaths are so common place that someone going to the hospital after a scooter crash is more likely to make the evening news than the several people who die from automobile collisions EVERY DAY. As engineers, we have a responsibility to build safe infrastructure for ALL users, not just motorists. The fact that we have FAILED in this over the past century is a stain on our profession; one that we need to work tirelessly to address NOW.

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Joel Dixon P.E., M.ASCE
Project Manager
Oklahoma City OK
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To keep the conversation going, check out the latest episode of ASCE's podcast "Plot Points" on dockless scooters at https://news.asce.org/asce-plot-points-season-2-episode-5-kick-push-coast/

Great work to @Heidi Wallace and @Yance Marti whose answers are featured in this episode! If anyone in this thread has any comments about this podcast episode or more about the scooter revolution in general, I would love to hear them.

​​

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Danielle Schroeder EIT, A.M.ASCE
Associate Engineer
Pennoni Associates
Philadelphia PA
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-25-2019 11:29
From: Joel Dixon
Subject: Scooter Revolution

We have scooters here in OKC and I think they're an asset for any community. As a newer mode of transportation, sure, there will be growing pains (look at the turn of the 20th Century to see how difficult it was for communities to adapt to the emergence of automobiles). Scooters, however, have many more upsides than down compared to the automobile. One of the biggest struggles for pedestrians in general (and by pedestrian I reference any non-motorist) is the fact that so much of our infrastructure has been built for the car and not for people. Thus, we have inadequate sidewalks that barely accommodate able-bodied walkers, much less people with disabilities or other methods of locomotion. And we have streets that, instead of accommodating ALL users, are designed for the automobile almost exclusively, intimidating anything that isn't 4,000+ lbs, encased in steel, and rocketing at 30+ mph. The reality is, a scooter on a sidewalk doing 15 mph has the smallest of possibilities of killing a person on foot if they collide. Are scooter operators injured when they take a spill? Sure, it happens. But how many deaths have resulted? Now let's compare both of those scenarios (colliding with a person on foot and single-vehicle crashes) to automobiles: Tens of THOUSANDS of people are killed every year by the automobile, and that's DESPITE our designing nearly ALL of our infrastructure for the safety of the car. Automobile-related deaths are so common place that someone going to the hospital after a scooter crash is more likely to make the evening news than the several people who die from automobile collisions EVERY DAY. As engineers, we have a responsibility to build safe infrastructure for ALL users, not just motorists. The fact that we have FAILED in this over the past century is a stain on our profession; one that we need to work tirelessly to address NOW.

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Joel Dixon P.E., M.ASCE
Project Manager
Oklahoma City OK
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