9/10 times, I'm moving from one location with many other people in it to another location with many other people. I would prefer not needing to own any medium in order to move between them, but instead be able to use a public service to do so. Bus, tram, metro, citybike, scooter. I'd really rather not own stuff with really high capital costs, like cars.
At this point, the only reason to own anything more expensive than a bike is bad city planning and infrastructure.
For a 10 minute commute daily commute, the break even point for buying a scooter vs renting one comes in less than 60 days.
Look up the boots theory of sociological unfairness. You're able to save money this way because you can afford something sturdy and reliable, whereas poor folks, if they buy something, buy something that is cheap and will break quickly. They'll need to do this over and over again, which in the end causes them to spend considerably more money than you.
Rental scooters (and bikes and e-bikes) may feel like they're more expensive in the end, but they're generally much cheaper, when you consider repairs or replacement, and especially when you consider theft (which will be covered by your insurance, but poor folks don't have that).
Also, most scooter/bike rental companies have outreach programs for poor communities, which drastically lower the cost, or provide service for free.
I can assure you I've spent far less not owning a car, even with every Uber ride, car rental, scooter rental, transit, and taxi ride.
Additionally, depreciation is not linear. I drive an older vehicle, it has already mostly depreciated as far as it will go.
Only if you have an alternate way to get to work like good public transportation. Otherwise buying a depreciating asset like a car is the only way to survive in many places. It's like paying rent. Perhaps not ideal, but it is a practical reality for many.
Either we need to figure out how to drop off and pickup passengers at speed, or penalize individualized transport that is space inefficient (like cars). Good luck pursuing the latter in the US; punitive measure seem to work elsewhere.
I think the way forward is compact private transport, like bikes, scooters, walking, etc, augmented by a robust mass public transit. Unfortunately, that mix implies a expensive re-configuring of most American cities.
This isn't true if you are in a dense city with good public transit. This is currently mid day (3 PM), and it's about 30% faster (21 minutes vs 29 minutes) to go from my current location in Manhattan to a bar I enjoy hanging out in Brooklyn via public transit than car, according to Google Maps. It would be even better around rush hour.
I don't see how it is 'inherently' the slowest, especially given the traffic patterns that inherently result from private transit options.
>> I have no desire to make 10 stops before I get where I'm going.
The point of public transit in the form of e-scooters and e-bikes is to make your door-to-door commute one trip.
>> I also have zero desire to rent my modes, as that encourages literally rent seeking behavior.
Most people just care about convenience and price. Shared mobility options like e-bikes and e-scooters check both boxes if they can reach scale.
In a lot of cities, driving is not faster. It's just sometimes the only option.
This is certainly true where I live -- public transit is the slowest by a large margin. Driving is generally the next slowest, depending on the exact trip. Bicycling tends to be the quickest.
I lives in Vietnam, where scooters are dominant. It is even less compact than car on the road.
This is even more confusing for companies like "scoot" that rent both "scooters" and "kick scooters"
Then in 1917 it was used to refer to the children's toy.
Source: printed OED.
The German sister-in-law can get everything into a backpack and midsized rolling suitcase to bring my niece along for the train ride to her parents at the other end of Germany.
The American sister-in-law traded in her Tahoe for a Suburban when my nephew was born and manages to fill the cargo compartment for a week at her parents, where she still has her own room.
99% of all our family journeys begin and end at our home. Happily we own two (ICE) vehicles, they're sitting outside the house right now ready to be used tomorrow.
(As an aside) I've just booked a flight for Sunday (o/w flight $46 including all taxes and fees). I'm flying the best part of 600mi, so I've booked a rental car at the destination airport. It's going to cost me $72 for three days rental, including all taxes and fees.
None of this stuff is new...
Source: european
Meanwhile I find "well designed city" environment bad to my mental health. Who (or what?) is it "well designed" for?
Moving away from downtown to outskirts worked pretty well to my mental health.
Obviously different people have different needs. And even same human being have different needs in different stages of his life. But I find it hard to call something "well designed" if it works only for some people in some walks of life.
It would work better for individual transport if there was balanced multidirectional flow around the clock. Instead we have mostly-unidirectional flow centered around narrow times of day.
I don't. 9/10 times, despite zero net displacement my commutes are asymmetrical — on my way there I'm in a rush, but on the way back I'm not. So I'll often take a high cost, high speed option like a scooter towards a destination, then take a more leisurely, generally free option like walking or transit back home. As a bonus, I never have to deal with storing my vehicle while I'm at my destination, or with taking it with me if I add an intermediate stop nearby before returning home.
When I ask people if they would commute to work on public transit, the biggest thing they worry about is, "What if I have to ____?" They don't like the thought of being useless when their partner asks them to run an errand, or left out when their friends plan something after work. Even if 95% of their workdays would be nothing but catching the bus or train downtown, working and patronizing businesses in a small walkable area, and then taking the bus or train home again, and even if it's significantly less burdensome than driving, a lot of people will still drive because they can't give up the feeling of being able to deal with contingencies. Rental and on-demand transportation options address that without forcing people to keep their own vehicle on hand every day even though they rarely need it.
I think this is an important factor for making public transit attractive to people who are accustomed to the advantages of driving everywhere. Right now, car-based services like Uber and Lyft are sufficient for that, but as city centers back away from the massive accommodations they've made for car traffic, bikes and scooters will become more important.
The value proposition of a scooter service is ad hoc last mile transport where you don’t have to have brought the scooter with you to use it.
There may still be issues with the model. It might be that isn’t a demand profile that has the right scale to support much of a business (but could be useful for municipalities to provide, like some do with bikeshares). And I find rideshares are price competitive for last mile stuff (though it’s well known that’s only because ride costs are subsidized with investor cash, so maybe all scooter shares have to do to find their market niche is hold out til that stops). Or maybe most people feel safer with other forms of transport.
But the basic “summon something better than walking without having to carry it with you” idea does make some fundamental sense.
For me, a scooter is much more affordable than say, a hotel. I am willing to pay a small premium in rent over buying the hotel for the convenience and flexibility of not having to own a hotel.
I am fortunate enough that there's no way a lime makes any sort of financial sense for commuting last mile in a place I live. I can buy a scooter for $500; I will break even on Lime/Bird in less than 3 months. For tourists, great, for denizens, not so much.
The simple fact is, unless you want to pay for the luxury of having to walk to a scooter you pilot yourself, owning your own things has always made more sense. The ability to semi-summon an object on command is great when you need, and can afford, the option. However, we should be optimizing infrastructure for everyone, not just those who can pay for it.
Scooter shares may indeed not make much sense for commutes. That's the sort of predictable and regular need that it makes sense to optimize for time or money or both, as you've said. But then again, rideshares are rarely going to help with such optimization (probably true as long as funding a driver is part the whole thing). Personal vehicles, or public transport, or even workplace carpools make much more sense there. And yet rideshares do well enough because it turns out there's a whole class of ad hoc transport needs where summoning a ride on demand is awfully convenient.
Acquiring a scooter on demand has the same possibilities, especially if it can be economically competitive.
Finding places to park and lock and worry about it not getting stolen is just way too much.
Relevant: I've owned 4 $1000+ bike over the past 10 years, one of which is stolen right outside home, another is almost stolen (moved then found after a frantic search).
However, doing it on a day to day basis you can quickly spend more in a couple of months then just buying a scooter. The only benefit is not having to lug it with you, but not sure if that offsets the higher costs of non-ownership.
However, this doesn't help much with the larger model. Cars have insurance for example, and that more or less works out, right?
We have to fully admit that, all else equal, being responsible for the security and maintenance of a scooter is worse than offloading that to Lime/Lyft/Bird.
The only reason I bought a scooter is because I wanted to go over 30mph with suspension (i.e. new features). I use mine for joyriding and secure it in my apartment.
there are a lot of reasons, but here are the two big ones. unlike any rental car I've seen at an avis lot, my car is actually fun to drive. you'll never see a car with a manual transmission for rent in america, unless you go on turo. second, I take much better care of my car than most people. after seeing how people treat vehicles they actually own, I don't want to rent a vehicle that hasn't been thoroughly cleaned and inspected after the previous driver.
Basically, a large operation could have economies of scale (in house mechanics, only two models of car to choose from, own the fuel stations...) but the utilization of the vehicles probably would not change dramatically from the utilization of the private "fleet" we have today.
Last year I moved to a small city in Northern California with no Uber/Lyft, & I don't own a car because of money shortage, I had a bike from Walmart for $150 which was stolen before I moved from Bay Area. I looked at some of the scooters equivalent to Bird or Lime ones, starting from $800 upwards.
I found a good one from Walmart Thanksgiving sale for $250; but it was not good enough for that money; & I returned it & returned to walking around. So, I would live Bird or Lime coming here; & no, the cost is not low enough for all of us.
Taxis exist despite most people owning a car.
The use-case for scooter rentals is different though. I use them sometimes when I need to go to a different unknown place. A bar for example, where it would be inconvenient to bring my own transportation and deal with parking
Why build another search engine people? Alta Vista etc. have already solved the problem.
Not to say that ideas don't fail, but don't count the chickens before they have hatched and there are a few approaches still left to try.
Storing things that are smaller than cars is really tough, and scaling a business like this nationally is fairly capital and operationally expensive.
If the scooters were street legal, this would be a great localized business.
[1] https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-other-electric-vehicle...
With this pattern, you want some form of transit that will reliably be there for you in the morning, every morning.
Owning your own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter works for that. It's yours so it will be there for you whenever you want.
Public transit can also work, if there are stops or stations near enough to your home and work and it operates on a schedule that fits yours.
His point is that transportation services like Lime, where you pick up scooters from whatever semi-random place the last user left it and you are supposed to stay within some specified area don't work well for the home => office => home cycle. There may not be a scooter near your home in the morning, even if you happened to have left one there the night before. For a lot of people, home will also be outside the service area, so taking one home would incur penalties.
But if you have you own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter, and you have to use that to go to work, then using that for all your other transportation while in the city is probably going to make more sense than renting a Lime scooter.
I think he's being a little too pessimistic about the market for something like Lime. I've worked at places where I've driven my own car in, but would have been happy to have something like Lime while at the office for things like going out for lunch, because lunchtime traffic was pretty bad around the office but there weren't any good lunch places in easy walking distance.
9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the medium I'm using to move. Bike, car, scooter etc. Only exception is stuff with really high capital costs, like planes and trains, in which case I pay a small fee to avoid owning a railway or airline.
For scooters, there are no high capitals costs; the cost of a scooter is laughably low. It's sold as a quicker-than-walking, less-hassle-than-a-car last mile solution, but again, 9/10 of my trips are 0 displacement, so, why not just buy the scooter outright? Cheaper, safer, faster (I know where it is, no need to walk to it, etc).
They only way Lime, Bird etc survive is by legislation. Lobby for scooter licensure, buy up all the licenses, and become the taxi industry (except for scooters, and you have to drive!)
What an ironic loop.
At this point, the only reason to fund these guys is FOMO.