There's important findings in here, but it also reminds me of reactions to Prius, Tesla, public buses, etc., where people latch on to any viable excuse to continue their wasteful status quo.
Scooters aren't perfect, just like everything else, but there's some interesting innovations happening in micromobility that encourage more walkable cities and greener commutes. I'm excited to see where the trends head, even if the immediate scooter to car eco comparison is muddy.
I saw a scooter traveling in a bike lane, and it seems like encouraging that combined with more bike lanes could be great. Traveling by car or transit with a bike to go the last few miles in the bay area is common, and I am honked at and cut off and pulled over almost every day on my bike and it could be better, as there is no economical bike path even between big cities on the peninsula just 5-10 miles apart... scooters could be used all along my daily path and bikes would instantly fill the lanes. Maids and landscapers could also switch to utility bikes if we connected wealthy and poor areas.
> There's important findings in here, but it also reminds me of reactions to Prius, Tesla, public buses, etc., where people latch on to any viable excuse to continue their wasteful status quo.
I think the point raised in here is that taking the bus or biking is generally more environmentally friendly. Existing solutions are already better for this particular metric.
The one thing this article hints at is that riders may have taken a more wasteful option had the scooters not been there. But it's only one survey.
> that encourage more walkable cities and greener commutes
People using a bike that lasts 20 year is much greener than a shared scooter that dies after 100 days of use.
Having more walkable communities start with removing cars from the streets, adding density, by planning our cities. There is no magic tech that will fix the status quo.
I bike to work, so a little sweat, I'm okay with. But, say, I needed to do a round-trip mile down on a warm afternoon in my work-clothes, biking is not really a viable option. But an e-scooter is, one that is competitive in price to a cab or uber, and without the parking hassle of driving your own car.
Early bikes probably had similar reliability problems. Once the scooter design stabilizes, we will see refurbished units and mass recycling of consumables.
There is nothing inherently wasteful or prone to rapid breakdown in scooters; the fact that there is economic reason to dump them after 100 days only points out how inefficient is everything else and how improperly we tax environmental damage.
The point more about a shared vehicle being more wasteful than a privately owned one:
Bikesharing in China resulted in many times more bikes being produced than ones owned privately. Even insurance and license demanding schemes like LiuBike (they rent electric 50cc equivalents) ran into that, despite their vehicles not being as "disposable" as flopped Mobike.
Time of life isn't important, duration and ridden distance are. If a bike you have for 20 years only moves you 100 miles (probably less for most bike owners due to low utilizatio ) but a shared scooter can make it ~500 miles in 100 days, the scooter is better.
Bikes are much better in general, especially electric. However, if we are comparing to usage today, a tiny tiny fraction of bike owners commute. Most adults will probably take it out for a ride less than 10 times a year, and for a super short rides. I don't have any stats, just based on observations.
I am all for shared micromobility everywhere. Would love to see a healthy mix of scooters, bikes, and mopeds on nearly every corner (in dedicated converted car parking spaces)
I'm considering the average American adult bicycle owner. You would very much be the exception. Biking is generally considered a leisure activity, not for commuting.
Everyone should be like you, but the infrastructure doesn't support it yet in most cities. Safety in a fully A -> B network is required. Driving more micromobility traffic will cause infrastructure changes in the long run
You have to compare a scooter being used 24/7 as a rental with a bike being used similarly. Pretty sure docked or dockless ride share bikes need a lot of maintenance too.
I think the main problem with these stand on scooters is their semi-disposability. The sit-on scooters (like the ones from Scoot/GenZe) are likely way more durable, people also likely treat them way better and overall have a better impact on environment. Moreover, they fit into traffic patterns a lot better (they fit well into traffic rules, whereas the stand on ones are often in a grey zone like sidewalks, etc).
People like new, shiny bikes more and companies who bet on making "unkillable" bicycles lost out as nobody wanted to ride grimey, dirty, squeaky, and generally worn out bicycles.
Ones who gained a lot were ones who bet on flimsy, but more frequently and cheaply replaceable bikes.
They're still 20-30lbs to drag around (up stairs, etc.) and anything you're dragging around becomes cumbersome on crowded trains/buses. In many places locking something expensive to a tree just means someone will steal it assuming it's even legal to lock it to that structure. People also go to more than just work and I suspect, for example, a stand up comedy club would frown upon you dragging your scooter in with you.
Do bikes and scooters not get stolen in europe? Literally everyone I know in the US who bikes in a city has gotten 1 or multiple bikes stolen. My oldest brother got 2 bikes stolen within 10 minutes of walking into a store and they were locked to a bike rack. My other brother got his bike stolen within a week of getting it and it was in a locked apartment garage! The guy I know from work in seattle who bikes everywhere has gotten 3 bikes stolen.
Admittedly, that's the only 3 people I know who bike but it's not very encouraging when you here about all of these thefts.
> Do bikes and scooters not get stolen in europe? Literally everyone I know in the US who bikes in a city has gotten 1 or multiple bikes stolen.
Depends on the place. In Munich, it's rare - Berlin however, commonplace. My personal advice, get a decent lock and a GPS tracer embedded in the frame if it's an expensive bike.
You don't have to carry the public scooter around with you, bring it home, charge it, or worry about it getting stolen. If you meet up with friends, they can rent one too. Once your city gets to a certain density threshold, public scooters are the way to go.
When it is done satisfying your temporary desire, you get to constructively toss it in the river. er, I mean responsibly place it somewhere out of the way to enable synergistic sharing between many other people who also lead enlightened green lifestyles.
So, based on your statement, you're saying that if you don't like cars that means you must love all alternatives and never ever point out any issues with them even if they are utterly legitimate?
You are comparing something that has laws and rules, a dedicated place to 'drive' and have billions of miles driven.
Right now in most places these scooters follow whatever laws they want (if faster in middle of street, it is there, if faster on sidewalk, it is there). People aren't accountable (no driver license, hard to track) and idiots.
I just wish people who are anti-scooter would interrogate their own opposition and understand its true genesis. It's not road safety. Road injuries are almost exclusively due, in various ways, to cars. So what is it, really, that's bothering them?
I bike to work in downtown SF in one of the areas with the most scooters. Often there are more scooters in bike lanes than bicycles. I have never seen an accident, so your anecdote is not my experience.
I do often see people scooting without a helmet on streets with no protected bike lane which makes me cringe, knowing how reckless with other’s lives many car drivers are. In these situations, I think it’s better for people to ride on the sidewalk. Nobody should have to sacrifice their lives for poor urban planning, and the bruises from a pedestrian/scooter collision are much less serious than the death or brain injury from a car/scooter collision.
The riders aren't exactly being safe either, in San Diego's case. I was at Seaport Village last weekend and a girl on an electric scooter almost knocked over my newborn's stroller since she was ripping and tearing around with no care to pedestrians. I've used the scooters so I think they're not a terrible idea but there needs to be some education and common sense around them I think.
A lot of cities have tons of these scooters but no bike lanes. I saw lots of really dangerous behavior on them in St Louis and there were a lot of collisions.
I’ve seen a few people go flying off of their scooter and I know one person who broke their wrist. I don’t know what the miles to death rate is. If you excluded the drunk people who’ve been killed in crashes they probably aren’t too dangerous.
I’ve been concerned by the number of children on them, and a huge number of adults with children who appear to be between 4 and 7 years old. Also I’ve seen a number of people riding on streets at night, sometimes against traffic.
In regards to specific dangers. You have small hard wheels and if the scooter hits a pothole at speed there just isn’t many ways out of a negative outcome on that.
> “The real impact comes largely from two areas: using other vehicles to collect and redistribute the scooters; and emissions related to producing the materials and components that go into each scooter.”
I think the first point can be drastically improved using city-wide electric docking for scooters and encouraging users, via pricing, to leave them in such points. Large vehicles will then be used to reshuffle scooters only to compensate for assymetric demand, much less important than charging.
The materials point can be improved by increasing reliability of the platform and mass recycling. Price competition and proper carbon and pollution taxing can optimize this automatically.
My dream would be an organized network of city sponsored docked electric scooters/bikes that would be accessible through already existing public transportation subscriptions.
But instead of that we have 10 different companies flooding cities with thousands of vehicles knowing very well they will never ever be profitable until there is only 1 left and they can finally increase their price.
Cities could even offer proper employment status and salary to the people taking care of the fleet instead of the current less than ideal reward system.
What makes you think city run scooters would be so much more effective? I agree payment should be standardized and unified. But competition is a strong motive for innovation. For example, it could push providers to increase the range, safety and reliability, we could have self driving scooters that slowly go to the charging locations by themselves.
> What makes you think city run scooters would be so much more effective?
No race to the bottom, no barely legal practices (through loopholes), stable prices, cheaper (or included in existing subscriptions), proper docks respecting the public space, local money not going to foreign companies which have a tendency to do everything to avoid paying their taxes, &c.
> For example, it could push providers to increase the range, safety and reliability
It's a scooter, 2 wheels, brakes, a few lights, boom done. Let the scooter manufacturers do the """innovation""", the company operating them doesn't have to create them. If they cared about safety they would have found a system to attach an helmet on the damn thing, which would probably take care of the majority of major injuries.
> we could have self driving scooters that slowly go to the charging locations by themselves.
I don't see that happening for so many reasons that I honestly fail to understand how someone could come up with that idea.
Self driving a 10Kg electric scooter on a dedicated lane to a nearby charging spot seems an orders of magnitude simpler problem than self driving 2 ton car in heavy traffic with people on board.
Probably you talk about America but quite a lot of cities in Europe are doing it.
Instead of dropping your bike randomly, the city is covered with connection points where you leave the machine. Like docks, where it locks and charges. Since you can't let every company build their own hubs everywhere randomly, it's city ran business.
Where I currently live it's covered if you have a monthly card for public transportation but you can buy or pay separately too, just more expensive.
I'm in Berlin and it's complete chaos, even more than usual since they introduced scooters a few months ago. We have at least 5 bicycle companies and 4 scooter ones.
Tartu in Estonia has one: https://visittartu.com/bike-share-system
70 stations for around 100k city with a lot of dedicated bicycle tracks is well covered. I also know that at least they are building something similar in Riga and some other eastern cities have them. Which is a bit surprising, would have guessed countries with less snow and stronger bicycle culture are gonna build these things first.
If scooters end up being used as a replacement for walking/cycling it certainly is not as green as those alternatives. I haven't seen a study as to what they are replacing, but I can't imagine for the mile or so trips that they are actually replacing cars.
> For example, taking the bus on a route with high ridership is usually more environmentally friendly than an e-scooter.
To be precise, as an individual making a choice how to get somewhere, taking the bus on a route with low ridership is also environmentally friendly.
The decision to run the low-ridership bus on that route in the first place was not too environmentally friendly (unless it's a long-term play to build up the bus system), but that decision has already been made and the emissions are a sunk cost. If you get on a bus that's running anyway, the additional emissions are basically negligible.
Obviously what they're trying to analyze is averages across a population, and they're right about that. But don't let it make you feel bad about riding a low-ridership bus.
There's also the fact that maybe you wouldn't take the high-ridership bus/train that the low-ridership bus connects you to, but instead just car directly to your destination, resulting in higher overall emissions.
You can hop on any scheduled flight and say that the plane was flying anyway so there was no added environmental cost in you getting a seat.
Low ridership buses can form part of a wider network where the busy parts of the network depend on the feeder services. Those feeder services also have to offer round the clock service if people are to be bothered using them.
In the UK we got rid of the minor branch lines of the railway network thinking people would drive to their nearest station and complete their journey by rail. It never happened, people stayed in their cars and rail passenger numbers declined.
You are never going to have a network with all seats filled at all times. Seen that way then a transport service is getting it wrong if it is always at 100% utilisation.
The airplane thing is interesting because planes are expensive (and airlines are for-profit), so they are careful about utilization and keep planes as close to full as practical. Which means if you board that plane, you are altering some stats that someone, somewhere is watching pretty closely. You could easily be helping to tip the balance toward adding another flight to that route or switching to a bigger plane for that flight.
I don't know the right math, but I would assume this averages out to something near 1-to-1. That is, if, in the steady state, 1000 people take extra seats on airplanes, presumably it averages out to about 1000 seats of extra capacity being added.
And I suppose the concept must apply to low-ridership bus lines. If you ride it, you could tip the balance toward keeping it going rather than canceling it or consolidating it together with other routes. Maybe this is a bit less than 1-to-1, though, because transit agencies aren't just following rider behavior but also trying to fulfill a mission to have good coverage of an area.
TLDR, maybe it does matter if you're near a utilization threshold that someone is really paying attention to.
Was anybody arguing we should ditch bikes for scooters?
Why are so many "urbanists" dunking on scooters? Article after article basically saying scooters are worse than cars, when the study doesn't say that and fails to account for the many negative car externalities, like all of the asphalt used to pave roads and parking spots, and the environmental opportunity cost of those spaces, as just one example.
Cars are the enemy here, and scooters are on our side. Yes, we need to make them last longer, and yes scooter companies should not be advertising as "carbon free", but that doesn't mean we should stymie their momentum and push the public back towards cars.
Most of the articles stemming from this study are horrible clickbait trash. It's unbelievable.
I know the paper is only looking at how "green" each option is without taking into consideration the value that they provide. Like when 7% of the responses said that they otherwise would not have taken the trip, do we really want to live in a society where simply don't move around?
I think we need to acknowledge that mobility is valuable and the answer to urban transport isn't staying put.
Electric scooters should be built and designers to be easily repaired and recycled. The current scooter designs looks like one time plastic garbage that will end on the when its ens of life.
66 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadScooters aren't perfect, just like everything else, but there's some interesting innovations happening in micromobility that encourage more walkable cities and greener commutes. I'm excited to see where the trends head, even if the immediate scooter to car eco comparison is muddy.
I was out with my stepson for a ride today and the UK is failing poorly on this one.
I think the point raised in here is that taking the bus or biking is generally more environmentally friendly. Existing solutions are already better for this particular metric.
The one thing this article hints at is that riders may have taken a more wasteful option had the scooters not been there. But it's only one survey.
People using a bike that lasts 20 year is much greener than a shared scooter that dies after 100 days of use.
Having more walkable communities start with removing cars from the streets, adding density, by planning our cities. There is no magic tech that will fix the status quo.
There is nothing inherently wasteful or prone to rapid breakdown in scooters; the fact that there is economic reason to dump them after 100 days only points out how inefficient is everything else and how improperly we tax environmental damage.
Scooters can last for years if kept inside and well cared for.
Bikesharing in China resulted in many times more bikes being produced than ones owned privately. Even insurance and license demanding schemes like LiuBike (they rent electric 50cc equivalents) ran into that, despite their vehicles not being as "disposable" as flopped Mobike.
I am all for shared micromobility everywhere. Would love to see a healthy mix of scooters, bikes, and mopeds on nearly every corner (in dedicated converted car parking spaces)
100 miles is just two weeks of a 5 mile commute =/
Everyone should be like you, but the infrastructure doesn't support it yet in most cities. Safety in a fully A -> B network is required. Driving more micromobility traffic will cause infrastructure changes in the long run
People like new, shiny bikes more and companies who bet on making "unkillable" bicycles lost out as nobody wanted to ride grimey, dirty, squeaky, and generally worn out bicycles.
Ones who gained a lot were ones who bet on flimsy, but more frequently and cheaply replaceable bikes.
Admittedly, that's the only 3 people I know who bike but it's not very encouraging when you here about all of these thefts.
Depends on the place. In Munich, it's rare - Berlin however, commonplace. My personal advice, get a decent lock and a GPS tracer embedded in the frame if it's an expensive bike.
I witness an accident a week and I do not spend much time around areas where there are scooters.
People don't obey the laws, too many ride doubled up and many ride on the sidewalk.
They ones affected most are blind and disabled people who get hit on the side walk.
You are comparing something that has laws and rules, a dedicated place to 'drive' and have billions of miles driven.
Right now in most places these scooters follow whatever laws they want (if faster in middle of street, it is there, if faster on sidewalk, it is there). People aren't accountable (no driver license, hard to track) and idiots.
(Which was annoying for me as I don’t have one because I always lived in cyclable cities in Europe)
I do often see people scooting without a helmet on streets with no protected bike lane which makes me cringe, knowing how reckless with other’s lives many car drivers are. In these situations, I think it’s better for people to ride on the sidewalk. Nobody should have to sacrifice their lives for poor urban planning, and the bruises from a pedestrian/scooter collision are much less serious than the death or brain injury from a car/scooter collision.
I was in San Diego last month, which has many times more scooters than San Francisco, and I saw several people fall (though not hurt) off scooters.
I’ve been concerned by the number of children on them, and a huge number of adults with children who appear to be between 4 and 7 years old. Also I’ve seen a number of people riding on streets at night, sometimes against traffic.
In regards to specific dangers. You have small hard wheels and if the scooter hits a pothole at speed there just isn’t many ways out of a negative outcome on that.
I think the first point can be drastically improved using city-wide electric docking for scooters and encouraging users, via pricing, to leave them in such points. Large vehicles will then be used to reshuffle scooters only to compensate for assymetric demand, much less important than charging.
The materials point can be improved by increasing reliability of the platform and mass recycling. Price competition and proper carbon and pollution taxing can optimize this automatically.
But instead of that we have 10 different companies flooding cities with thousands of vehicles knowing very well they will never ever be profitable until there is only 1 left and they can finally increase their price.
Cities could even offer proper employment status and salary to the people taking care of the fleet instead of the current less than ideal reward system.
No race to the bottom, no barely legal practices (through loopholes), stable prices, cheaper (or included in existing subscriptions), proper docks respecting the public space, local money not going to foreign companies which have a tendency to do everything to avoid paying their taxes, &c.
> For example, it could push providers to increase the range, safety and reliability
It's a scooter, 2 wheels, brakes, a few lights, boom done. Let the scooter manufacturers do the """innovation""", the company operating them doesn't have to create them. If they cared about safety they would have found a system to attach an helmet on the damn thing, which would probably take care of the majority of major injuries.
> we could have self driving scooters that slowly go to the charging locations by themselves.
I don't see that happening for so many reasons that I honestly fail to understand how someone could come up with that idea.
Instead of dropping your bike randomly, the city is covered with connection points where you leave the machine. Like docks, where it locks and charges. Since you can't let every company build their own hubs everywhere randomly, it's city ran business.
Where I currently live it's covered if you have a monthly card for public transportation but you can buy or pay separately too, just more expensive.
I'm in Berlin and it's complete chaos, even more than usual since they introduced scooters a few months ago. We have at least 5 bicycle companies and 4 scooter ones.
https://imgur.com/a/diAmFH9
To be precise, as an individual making a choice how to get somewhere, taking the bus on a route with low ridership is also environmentally friendly.
The decision to run the low-ridership bus on that route in the first place was not too environmentally friendly (unless it's a long-term play to build up the bus system), but that decision has already been made and the emissions are a sunk cost. If you get on a bus that's running anyway, the additional emissions are basically negligible.
Obviously what they're trying to analyze is averages across a population, and they're right about that. But don't let it make you feel bad about riding a low-ridership bus.
Low ridership buses can form part of a wider network where the busy parts of the network depend on the feeder services. Those feeder services also have to offer round the clock service if people are to be bothered using them.
In the UK we got rid of the minor branch lines of the railway network thinking people would drive to their nearest station and complete their journey by rail. It never happened, people stayed in their cars and rail passenger numbers declined.
You are never going to have a network with all seats filled at all times. Seen that way then a transport service is getting it wrong if it is always at 100% utilisation.
I don't know the right math, but I would assume this averages out to something near 1-to-1. That is, if, in the steady state, 1000 people take extra seats on airplanes, presumably it averages out to about 1000 seats of extra capacity being added.
And I suppose the concept must apply to low-ridership bus lines. If you ride it, you could tip the balance toward keeping it going rather than canceling it or consolidating it together with other routes. Maybe this is a bit less than 1-to-1, though, because transit agencies aren't just following rider behavior but also trying to fulfill a mission to have good coverage of an area.
TLDR, maybe it does matter if you're near a utilization threshold that someone is really paying attention to.
Why are so many "urbanists" dunking on scooters? Article after article basically saying scooters are worse than cars, when the study doesn't say that and fails to account for the many negative car externalities, like all of the asphalt used to pave roads and parking spots, and the environmental opportunity cost of those spaces, as just one example.
Cars are the enemy here, and scooters are on our side. Yes, we need to make them last longer, and yes scooter companies should not be advertising as "carbon free", but that doesn't mean we should stymie their momentum and push the public back towards cars.
Most of the articles stemming from this study are horrible clickbait trash. It's unbelievable.
I think we need to acknowledge that mobility is valuable and the answer to urban transport isn't staying put.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20599127
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20597711
I think we’ve found a winning theme that resonates on HN.