Scooter Season Is Here Again—but Will It Be Less of a Menace This Time?
Cluttered sidewalks, careless riders, and avoidable accidents marred the introduction of e-scooters on city streets last summer. In order to keep the convenience and lose the chagrin, cities and scooter companies need to reach common ground.
During the early hours of April 26, the streets of Portland, Oregon, were suddenly blanketed in scooters, making it official: Scooter season is back. The previous summer, street corners and sidewalks in Portland and other test cities were besieged by the electric rides, but they disappeared as pilot sharing programs ended. But now a handful of metro areas like Portland, Seattle, and Knoxville, Tennessee, are seeing their return in even greater numbers, while other cities are introducing them for the first time—despite a host of complaints that surround the rapidly expanding industry.
The initial launches were full of growing pains—in addition to riders acting irresponsibly and scooters crowding sidewalks and streets, injuries quickly piled up. A recent study found that scooter-related injuries in the Dallas area generated $1.4 million in hospital costs since scooters were introduced there last year. There have been scooter-related fatalities in several cities. Every new market comes with its challenges, but as scooter season returns in force across the country, what’s going to be different?
According to Andrew Fox, who runs Charge, an e-scooter charging company, the focus moving forward is on infrastructure—at least, it should be if scooter companies want to see their businesses succeed. Charge creates docking/charging stations for e-scooters and e-bikes and works with cities and property managers to install them; Fox describes the service as an agnostic complement to the rides. “What I see as the future of a smart city is we need to have the infrastructure to support micro-mobility,” he says. “So we are building out that worldwide network to support the ambitions of micro-mobility.” Local governments, says Fox, need to figure out how to better incorporate e-scooters, but they need to do so without compromising the integrity of their cities. Fox points out that the earliest days of e-scooters were totally focused on volume; entrepreneurs needed to prove the value of the market to users and investors, and the way to do that was by high ride numbers—and not necessarily by proving how much the product actually benefited a given community. “In the process of trying to grow so quickly, all the equity, all the money, went into growing rides,” Fox says. “I think the vast majority of the cities haven’t gotten it right yet because the infrastructure is not in place.”
Dylan Rivera, the public information officer for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, believes Portland’s scooter strategy is one other cities could emulate. He’s impressed with the early results of Portland’s 120-day 2018 pilot program and optimistic about how the city’s system will continue to develop as it enters its second pilot, which will last an entire year. In large part, that optimism is thanks to lessons learned from Portland’s test run. “We required data from the companies at a level that no other city in the country required, and that allowed us to provide a report that explained how e-scooters were used last year at a level that no other city, perhaps in the world, has done,” says Rivera. That report found that most Portlanders viewed scooters positively as an alternative to driving and ride-sharing; last summer, there were more than 700,000 e-scooter trips on Portland streets. “Every other city is just kind of engaging blindly with these companies and reacting after the fact to create rules, or kick them out, or have this reactive stance to the whole industry,” says Rivera. Instead of fighting scooters or just allowing them to run wild, Portland hopes to create a more sustainable system that will work for everyone. In Portland, e-scooter companies such as Bird, Lime, and Skip are required to make their vehicles accessible for non-English speakers, lower-income customers, and people with disabilities. In short, Portland is trying to force scooter brands to become more inclusive.
On their end, scooter companies are making changes to the devices themselves. For example, a representative for Lime says its new scooter, the more durable Lime-S Generation 3, has bigger wheels, better suspension, improved braking, and better battery life (the scooter should be able to run for up to 30 miles). “The colored display screen has advanced technology capabilities that will also help Lime better communicate safe riding tips and proper parking etiquette,” says the Lime rep. Bird also has a new scooter, the Bird One, with increased battery life—and it’s selling it directly to consumers. The Bird One will replace the Bird Zero over the summer as the company phases out its original devices.
Scooter companies are also updating their business strategies. Fox believes the days of companies using guerilla tactics to cover the streets with scooters and hope for the best from users won’t last forever. They’ll need to figure out ways to make their fleets more efficient, more reliable, and better maintained, because that’s how they’ll reach profitability. That doesn’t mean scooter companies won’t fill the roads with scooters, regardless of the rules. But defying city regulations is not a viable long-term solution. This scooter season, Fox projects that the startups that stick around will be the ones tackling these larger issues versus driving ride numbers at any cost. “As some companies fall away, other companies will get stronger and will understand the processes better and be able to continue to reduce friction,” he says.
In April, Austin-based design firm Argodesign created a “provocation” for a new kind of scooter company that would address exactly this sort of friction. The concept, called Step, imagines scooters that fold up vertically and attach to poles, helping declutter sidewalks. The proposal also calls for the deployment of a public API that allows everyone to see and report unsafe incidents. While Step isn’t an actual product, Argodesign’s director of brand strategy Reid Evans says the company is ready and willing to work with any scooter companies interested in its ideas. (There haven’t been any takers yet, but here’s hoping.) The biggest changes Evans believe are coming to the market are about branding and philosophy. “I think what they’ve recognized is a misalignment between what the product was expected to do and who actually rode them, and what they did with them,” he says.
Scooters were supposed to be a last-mile solution that eased traffic congestion and helped people with long commutes to get to and from bus stops or park and rides. That isn’t exactly who the most popular user was, though. “I think what they’ve realized is that it’s college kids that are doing tricks on these, or young people that are playing with them,” says Evans. This created a bad reputation for e-scooters, which Evans contends are actually an incredible useful resource. “Identity plays a big role in this. If you get to a business meeting and you’ve taken a scooter, you’re going to give off a very different tone than if you’ve gotten out of a black car. A scooter makes a very poignant statement about who you are,” he says. Scooter companies are likely going to appeal to an older consumer in order to be taken seriously by the people who need them most, and more importantly, by local governments.
In Portland, companies who want to put more of their devices on the road have to follow rules the city has made for them—then, they’ll be afforded larger fleets. “Knowing that they’re interested in growing their market share,” says Rivera, “we’re trying to speak their language and say ‘We’ll let you double your market share here in Portland if you are able to show us some innovation that reduces sidewalk riding, [or that] makes you tech-accessible to people who don’t speak English well, or people who are not banked, or people who live in an automobile-centric part of the city.”
Scooters can’t just be for young urban-dwellers, they have to be for everyone. “The companies need to show city government officials and communities, the general public, that they can be good actors, that they can be trustworthy,” Rivera adds. “And that they are interested in providing an honest service to people who need it and that this is more than just a passing fad, that it actually can be a useful part of daily life in urban areas.” Portland requires scooter companies to entrust the city with data that they might not ordinarily share, but the city is saying it will only take the information that’s relevant and keep the rest secret. Offering up proprietary information is unusual for startups, but in this case, it’s the only way they may be able to successfully expand. Rivera mentions that Los Angeles has been proactive about requiring companies to provide it with data as well. L.A. wants to use this information to essentially “update” the city; it could help it decide where to put docking stations or what software to build. (It’s worth mentioning the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns this is overreaching and violates consumer privacy.)
Rivera says the city and scooter companies will continue educating the public on proper scooter etiquette, and that Portland will also start stricter law enforcement. That means people riding on sidewalks, ditching scooters incorrectly, or engaging in any other illegal scooter activity will be cited. Undercover officers will be waiting in plainclothes to ticket unsuspecting riders, and this information will also be handed over to scooter companies, which can choose to suspend or ban users. He also said geo-fencing will be used going forward to keep scooters out of parks.
The scooter brand that tries to create respectful, ritualistic behaviors will end up winning with local governments, as well as with consumers who don’t want to be associated with the scooter-bro clichés, says Evans. “If there’s an alternative that is not only safer but makes you seem more sophisticated and connected to your community, you’d rather be that person,” he says. “And I think that’s where sense of identity is really important—what does it mean to be associated with this brand?” Bottom line, this scooter season is shaping up to be bigger than last year, but there’s reason to believe this growth will happen parallel to a philosophical shift. “I think we really need the tech leadership to demonstrate a clear commitment to what their ultimate purpose is,” says Evans. “And that’s really offering the last mile to everyone, not just an 18-year-old, right?”
An earlier version of this piece referred to Charge CEO Andrew Fox as Andrew Benton.