By contrast, at least in the early stages, rideshare was almost invisible to anyone who wasn't actively using it. That left a much longer runway for the "break rules and then get forgiveness" strategy.
As it is though, my bike isn't even safe chained up in a locked garage.
And one place that people land after they fall through the cracks of society is petty theft. In the US, we just have bigger cracks than many other wealthy developed countries. I don't like the theft anymore than anyone else, but I'd rather we not fix it by further criminalizing people through an even harsher police state than we already have, and becoming like even more authoritarian countries.
It's funny that we constantly ask this (very fair) question about common theft, but don't as often express such incredulity at the existence of extreme wealth. These two are connected in many ways.
If you stole 10 dollars from a bank, you can bet you are prosecuted. Bikes are just not defended as private property for some reason.
It is much harder to prove that a thief is responsible for 1000 individual bike thefts, because you’d need evidence for each bike.
You can steal a car priced lower than a bike and get a year in jail. ITs not about the cost of proving anything, it's about the willingness of the institution to enforce it.
bikes are a particularly easy target. most people seem to use those U-locks that can only go through the frame and one wheel at most. the thief then pops off the other wheel and either pawns it or sells it for scrap. even if you secure the frame and both wheels, people will still strip the shifters and brakes off of it. people can also just cut the lock itself if they bring the appropriate equipment.
finally, nice bikes tend to really stick out. if you lock your $1000 schwinn alongside a bunch of shitty bikes, the thief will go for your bike every time.
- Bikes are high value but not extremely so, unlike a car, and most police forces do not take bike theft seriously
- Walking around with a stolen bike is a lot less conspicuous than walking around with, say, a stolen TV
And it's amazing how strong a theft deterrent crap like stickers can be - it takes 5 seconds with a dremel for a bike thief to grind the serial numbers off a frame so it can't be traced, but the time it takes to scrub stickers off a frame to get it in resellable condition, divided by a cheap frame's resale value, easily works out to an even lower wage than driving for Uber.
Anecdotally, I make my bike up to look like bits are held on with duct tape (they aren't), and in 25 years I've never had a bike stolen. My theory is that thieves aren't looking close enough to figure out that it isn't actually a hoopty bike.
If it's close to 5km, are you really going to take the kids on scooters?
If it's closer to 1km, how about simply walking? Reality check: we have two (of three) kids in school, their walk to school is just over half a mile, they both walk more or less every single day, in summer and winter and in the rain and the snow.
Oddly they really like walking to school in the snow :)
Plenty of places have undocked bicycles, so a fair comparison is possible.
They certainly do: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-J_4_SQmUNQo/Wuwwsp5w6BI/A...
They're a fun novelty, but not a solution to public transit.
About a year ago ebikes were around in Beijing but not many of them. While I enjoyed riding them (beats traffic here over low single digit KM range and faster than a bike) it was frustrating to have to hunt for them. So while I opportunistically used them when convenient it wasn’t frequent.
Fast forward to now, there are enough of them around that I can pretty much always find one on the current block. Now I use them as my primary mode of transportation ever short distances.
This isn’t necessarily applicable to a rental market, but as far as personal ownership the e-scooter is just vastly more convenient in a major city with high rates of bicycle theft.
The for-hire e-scooter market continues to seem to me like a novelty more than a realistic transportation option. My city's recent e-scooter pilot program hasn't done much to dispel that notion. People used them quite a bit in the first few weeks, but, by the end, most the scooters were obviously going all day without being used.
Also, the whole "last mile" argument started seeming a lot more hollow once I realized that, by the time I got to the busy areas where e-scooters were being placed in the mornings, I was already 75% of the way to the train station. More like "last block". And, at least when they were being used, I'd have to walk well out of my way to find one to use on the way home, too, because they were scattered all over the neighborhood as a result of their normal and intended usage pattern. So, they didn't seem to be much of an effort saver going in either direction.
All that said, I'm guessing that they were being highly valued because of the very low barrier to entry for the market. A fleet of e-scooters is presumably quite a bit less expensive to purchase and maintain than a fleet of docked rental bikes. What got lost in the shuffle was the fact that the dock, while it might seem like an unnecessary annoyance, is actually a big part of what makes those rental bikes pleasant to use.