Unfortunately, the SF municipal government in all its wisdom has granted monopolies to certain e-scooter companies and capped the allowed number of scooters (the scooters were traumatizing rich aging hippies with their techie-ness). Prices are way higher here than most cities.

If people would stop leaving discharged scooters in the sidewalk, I might care less. As is, they're a nuisance building a business off of overusing a communal resource (sidewalks)

Reserving one parking space per block for scooters, bikes, and other small vehicles would benefit everyone and have little downside.

Other than people with cars complaining that there now isn't room for their one giant single-occupant vehicle compared to parking for 5-10 bikes and scooters.

Cities can solve this by enforcing geofencing to only allow locking the scooter in designated areas. Santa Monica for example paints scooter parking spots on a lot of street corners that would otherwise be pretty littered.

Southampton (UK) had a pilot scheme for Voi scooters and had geo-fencing in the app, for parking zones, speed restriction zones and no-go zones.

Theoretically a great thing, but at least one of the parking zones was slightly off, and the scooter would only lock in the middle of the road!

The worst offender for geofencing is honestly the city of beverly hills. Bird scooters don't work in their borders at all, but their borders aren't so clear when you are just riding the bird. Imagine going down a busy 6 lane road full of angry west LA drivers and your scooter just runs out of steam leaving you stranded in 50mph traffic that would rather see you laid out than make way for you. When I told the bird tech support I wanted my money back for them risking my life in this way, they informed me this was expected behavior.

Same issue in some other parts of town to a lesser extent, like on some parts of hollywood blvd. Gee, why is my scooter coming to a stop in the middle of a busy intersection? Oh, some local assholes must have complained to the city councilman and had this virtual bear trap installed in the middle of a busy road, lets hope I don't die trying to wheel this thing off.

Yeah that sounds downright dangerous.

In Southampton it was more like "you can only park here" or "you can't scoot in the public parks" or "this is a hospital zone so you're limited to half speed". That said, it was only a pilot, and I can see the exact same thing happening down the line.

I think the point of those things, at least for the ebikes, is to rip off the tourists to compensate for the locals who have a subscription?

Bright side for tourists: No windows to break in the rental.

I think these are intended more for transportation than riding around (unlike the BayWheels type stuff). I used to commute to work on my own scooter and it only takes 15 minutes or less to ride 4 miles on the road. My commute in the morning was just under 3 miles and downhill so I usually managed in 8 minutes.

That's just san fransisco effect. Everything is pricey there because it can be. For point of reference elsewhere in CA, I just rode a bird in LA. 5.2 miles, 23 minutes, it was $14.10 after tax. Rideshare would have been higher in my case and I would have had to wait around for who knows how long for a ride to happen, meanwhile the scooter was there already with a half dozen backups nearby.

But you had almost exactly the same cost as they did? As a quick bit of maths you'd have paid about $28 for 46 minutes (given $14 for 23 minutes) compared to their $30.

Lime and other scooters in SF used to have much less expensive subscription options, but they've all recently dropped them for much more expensive ones.

Bay Wheels bike annual subscription is worth it but only if you use them regularly (like commuting/weekends).