For 08/22 & 08/23 updates & 08/28 updates, pls see below
Am a devoted pedestrian/jogger, and have spoken out about the evidently unregulated bike/scooter invasion on DC sidewalks/parks.
(If it is indeed unregulated, I -- no lawyer -- plead ignorance, and would appreciate additional information).
image from
I do hope another "option" for "public" transportation will be found that goes beyond me-me-me and my/my/my bike/scooter/leave it wherever I want will be found.
How about gov-approved organized racks for bikes/scooters in designated areas?
Am especially concerned, as an individual of a certain age, about handicapped persons on sidewalks helpless before reckless (rackless?) me-me-me-get-the f..k-out-of-my-way bikers/scooterers.
Not to speak of how our public parks have become ecologically violated by the use of "parking" places (untaxed?) for me-me-me bikers/scooterers evidently off the regulatory/tax hook.
Some of these venerable, I presume non-air-polluting citizens, leave their "me-me-me thing" wherever they choose in a public park; e.g., Rock Creek Park, where I (granted, selfishly) have the privilege as a taxpayer to stretch my legs on a near-daily basis so as to enjoy the refreshing beauty and inspiration of nature.
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By the way (BTW): On my "jogging" (my neighbors, when they bear to see me in an "athletic" gear, diplomatically say "enjoy your walk") on the way to Rock Creek Park, I pick up trash (plastic/glass bottles, aluminum cans, used sticky condoms, you name your favorite litter; "abandoned" bicycles are too bulky for me to dispose of) ...
Meanwhile, as I dutifully seek to diminish our 21st century detritus on a "local" basis, I keep on venturing on my two-legged non-pedaled slow-go, inspired by the verse of Walt Whitman: "Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road."
After such a "keep-us-litter-free" exercise, I place the litter (contained in a "Giant" grocery store bag that costs me ten cents) in a Rock Creek Park public receptacle near where I live (Porter Street/Connecticut Avenue).
Thus far have not been arrested ... :)
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(08/14). On negative reactions in California to the scooters, see.
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(08/22)LA to send cease and desist letters to scooter companies ‘as soon as next week’
la.curbed.com
But will companies actually remove the vehicles?
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A city official says the transportation department will start issuing cease and desist letters to companies placing dockless scooters in areas where they haven’t been given explicit permission to operate.
“We can do that as soon as next week,” Marcel Porras, chief sustainability officer with the city’s transportation department, told the Los Angeles City Council’s public safety committee on Wednesday.
Porras committed to sending the letters after getting grilled by committee chair Mitchell Englander about why the department has only issued a single cease and desist letter to Bird—in spite of a motion calling for a citywide moratorium on the vehicles that the council approved earlier this year.
“We’ve asked the department to do this for months,” Englander said Wednesday. “I don’t know why we have to go back and forth.”
That motion effectively bans dockless bikes and scooters—which have proliferated on city streets and sidewalks in the past year—in areas that haven’t been approved for pilot programs testing the technology.
But enforcement of those rules has been almost nonexistent. As the Los Angeles Times has reported, there’s even been confusion about whether the moratorium applied to scooters—or just dockless bikes.
In June, the transportation department sent a cease and desist letter to Bird after the electric scooter company began putting scooters in Downtown LA. Bird quickly removed the vehicles, but its scooters can still be found in neighborhoods throughout the city, including Venice, Fairfax, and Hollywood.
Porras told the committee that enforcing the policy has been difficult, because transportation staffers cannot impound vehicles; that task is the responsibility of the city’s sanitation department. He asked for further guidance from the City Council on how to enforce the city’s dockless rules as officials consider new regulations governing the vehicles.
It seems unlikely that the bikes and scooters will disappear from city streets and sidewalks entirely. The committee also unanimously rejected a stricter ban on electric scooters Wednesday.
Proposed last month by Councilmember Paul Koretz, the ban would have fined companies for leaving scooters on city sidewalks and empowered police to ticket riders violating state safety rules.
“I want to be known as a city that invites and embraces new technology, not bans it,” said Councilmember Joe Buscaino.
At the same time, the City Council is also considering regulations on dockless bikes and scooters. The rules, as drafted, would impose safety requirements on the vehicles, including speed limits and tail light requirements. The rules could be approved before the end of the month, but it would take time for them to go into effect.
In the meantime, under conditions approved earlier this month by the council’s transportation committee, scooter companies would have to apply for temporary permits from the transportation department.
Committee members say the regulations would address many of the concerns that residents have raised about the safety of scooters and the tendency of riders to leave them in places where pedestrians can easily trip over the vehicles.
Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell even offered to take on enforcement responsibilities himself.
“If I see one blocking the sidewalk or street, it’s going to end up in the trunk of my car,” he said.
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Courtesy MK -- Many thanks!
Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.
In my 40 Comments last month, I noted that Arlington County Transportation spokesperson Eric Baillet had told ARLnow that “county government plans a [dockless vehicle pilot] framework for County Board review in September.” Board member John Vihstadt stated he’d be “broadly receptive to clearing the way for more dockless vehicles to become available around Arlington.”
I then suggested that Arlington familiarize itself with the details of the dockless vehicle pilot programs already begun or completed in other localities, citing Washington D.C., and Denver as examples.
Although I don’t agree with all its features, the Denver dockless vehicle pilot program has addressed many of the issues that Arlington is likely to face. Arlington should focus particularly on how Denver has handled those issues.
Arlington’s dockless vehicle pilot program should adopt these features
Each dockless vehicle permit holder should be required to:
- provide indemnification, liability, and insurance coverages similar to Denver’s
- provide a unique vehicle identifier on each vehicle
- adopt an equity program, as in Denver, by submitting a plan outlining how its services will be available to those without smart phones
- have each user sign a form providing critical information (e.g., “rules of the road”, including “do’s and don’ts” regarding where and where not to operate the dockless vehicle, and where and where not to leave the dockless vehicle after the user finishes)
Note that the Denver rules of the road prohibit the use of E-scooters in bike lanes. I believe that all dockless vehicles, including E-scooters, should be permitted to use bike lanes.
- share certain categories of data with Arlington
The Denver data-sharing requirements include but are not limited to: utilization rates; total downloads, active users & repeat user information; total trips by day of week, time of day; origin & destination information for all trips; trips per bike by day of week, time of day; average trip distance; incidents of bike theft and vandalism; complaints; accident/crash information.
- pay a dockless vehicle permit fee
The Denver dockless vehicle permit fee schedule seems fair and reasonable:
- Bicycles/E-Bicycles: application fee: $150 per permit application; permit fee: $15,000; performance bond: $20 per vehicle deployed
- E-scooters/Other Approved Dockless Vehicles: application fee: $150 per permit application; permit fee: $15,000; performance bond: $30 per vehicle deployed
In any event, the permit fee schedule that Arlington adopts for its pilot program should represent Arlington County’s best estimate of amounts sufficient fully to recapture all costs which the County might incur to retrieve dockless vehicles left in locations that are prohibited on the form that each user has to sign.
Conclusion
Quite a few of the other pilot programs include regulatory features that I believe Arlington should reject — at least when it comes to choosing the final regulatory framework after the pilot program ends.
For example, for that final regulatory framework, Arlington County staff should not be picking, choosing, or limiting to any arbitrary number:
- how many dockless vehicle permit holders there are
- how many bikes and/or scooters each dockless vehicle permit holder can operate
- how many total bikes and/or scooters all dockless vehicle permit holders can operate
The marketplace should sort that out over time.
Dockless vehicles have great potential, but also pose significant risks. Arlington should adopt a pilot program (and regulatory framework) that maximizes the potential and minimizes the risks.
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Local Perspective
The electric scooters swarming our city won’t solve our commuting calamity, The Washington Post (08/28)
By Petula Dvorak
Columnist
August 27 at 3:00 PM
What we really want are jet packs and flying cars, okay?
We need to George Jetson and Marty McFly our way out of our traffic and commuting calamity. Light rail, Mag-Lev, even a reliable Metro would work, too.
The electric scooters swarming our city this summer?
Not the answer.
They’re like what happens if my son’s fifth grade squad took over the city planning commission and PeeWee Herman was their board chairman.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve tried the scooters, and they’re totally fun, cheap and effective. They are perfect answer to what used to be a sweaty, five-block walk in between meetings in downtown D.C.
But many of the 65 or so U.S. cities — from Washington to San Francisco — are confounded by what to do with the traffic newcomer. Should the motorized scooters be regulated like cars? Bikes? Or pedestrians?
Government folks, who love a good committee hearing, are miffed by the way the new economy goes about these things. The main scooter companies — born in the West Coast’s tech sector — soft open their product by dropping the scooters in cities, then negotiating with frazzled city councils later.
It’s the ethos borrowed from one of the tech world’s earliest disrupters, computer programmer and Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who famously said “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
So here they are, thousands of whizzing electric scooters, dropped on cities with little planning. Drivers hate seeing them flit into streets, pedestrians get jangled when one whizzes by close enough to ruffle arm hairs.
They are various shades of legal just about everywhere.
New York City is trying to regulate them before the companies release them into the wild.
In Maryland, Montgomery County launched a preemptive bill to avoid the guerrilla launch that is the hallmark of the dockless ride industry.
In Virginia, Arlington County was forced to draft something last month when the scooters showed up without warning. D.C. has a pilot program allowing a certain number of the dockless scooters that ends this week.
I’m not cheezed off they’re being left in the middle of sidewalks and streets, though Twitter is filled with photos of folks unhappy Washington suddenly looks like my living room. I have boys, so I’m constantly dodging flying objects and stepping over things.
And this isn’t another old-person rant about being buzzed by one on the sidewalk — though that did happen to me three times in one 10-minute trip last week, first by a scooter, then by a dude in a black helmet and a motorized skateboard, then by a guy on something that looked like a Robotic vacuum cleaner he rode like the cave man in the B.C. comic strip.
That’s not my beef with these things. Here’s my problem: the variety of devices on our streets — combined with the epic and enduring bikes-versus-pedestrians saga — will keep sucking the air out of a transportation conversation that has to become more urgent.
Scooters are a tiny solution for a tiny population.
The very first scooters I saw were flying manbuns.
The method of transportation is largely the arena of the hoodie and backpack crowd, though I have seen more tourists jumping on over the past few weeks.
A recent survey of 7,000 scooter riders in 10 cities showed the scooter crowd is growing a bit more diverse, with women renting scooters more than they used bike shares and low-income folks becoming more frequent users, according to transportation think tank Populus.
Maybe. But the way it looks from the road, they are primarily being used by mobile, agile young folks who can no longer be bothered with Metro or bus schedules or walking. They’re not taking a car off the road, they’re taking a rider out of public transportation.
And who could blame them? I’ve ditched Metro dozens of times because I needed to be on time. To make massive scooter use feasible, we need California weather 365 days a year and infrastructure — lanes — to safely support all those riders. Isn’t it more humane to work on bigger solutions instead?
The world of electric scooters does little for the construction workers, hospitality workers, janitors, maids and nurses who live in cheaper housing outside the city and have to crawl through pre-dawn gridlock to drop the kids at day care and get to work or take three buses each way to their jobs.
I don’t see secretaries from Germantown, teachers from Bowie or paralegals from Falls Church solving all their commuting woes by scootering to work.
Great fun and hoorah for a whole generation of young workers who will never know the experience of being groped or hounded on Metro, but the personal wheels are a zero for real change.
This debate began years ago with Segways. Then people lost their minds over where to put BikeShare racks. Here we are, a decade later, bickering over scooters on sidewalks while Metro still struggles.
The energy spent on micromanaging the street toys of the young needs to go into real infrastructure and development.
We used to be a nation of builders, of movement and innovation. Our decaying public transportation is becoming a joke while cowboy entrepreneurs — Uber and Lyft among them — come in with innovative solutions that fix a hole, but do little for an entire system.
“The change reflects deliberate choices in public policy. During the Obama years, Republicans fought fiercely against any increase in public investment in mass transit and advanced rail systems,” wrote Ronald A. Klain, a former Obama and Clinton White House adviser in a Washington Post opinion piece in June. “In 2016, decrying the crumbling state of our public infrastructure, President Trump promised that he would pass the largest infrastructure bill in U.S. history during his first 100 days in office. More than 500 days into his presidency, the bill still hasn’t even been drafted.”
Instead, we’re supposed to fix traffic with techbro scooters at 15 cents a minute.
Twitter: @petulad
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via MS -- Many thanks!
As scooters, bikes, and transit startups flood the streets, cities need to control the curb
With dockless scooters and other transit startups expanding, cities need to realize the value of the infrastructure they already control
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Forget New York City’s crumbling subway system—the flood of dockless electric scooters is shaping up to be the key urban transportation story of 2018 as citizens in San Francisco and elsewhere become enraged over another example of tech companies barging in and begging for forgiveness instead of asking for permission (or simply waiting for regulations).
In just the past week, local leaders in both Santa Monica, California, the market where billion-dollar startup Bird first launched, and San Francisco, introduced ordinances to restrict and regulate scooter usage. Both initially proposed capping the number dockless vehicles these companies can place on the road, and have been met with pushback by the startups. A Bird spokesperson initially told Curbed the proposed regulations “will severely undercut our ability to serve all of the neighborhoods and residents of Santa Monica.”
The debate over restricting scooters may be a sign cities are finally beginning to catch up with transit startups, which often entered markets before any regulations were in place. But read the Santa Monica regulations, which were just approved, more closely, and signs of a more profound and important shift may be evident. Cities and planners are, more and more, seeing the immense value of controlling the curb.
With more options that ever for getting around cities, and finite space, the question of how we use this infrastructure, and who controls it, is more important than ever. By regulating how these new transportation options evolve, cities can potentially bring about a more sustainable, multimodal, and less car-centric transit future.
“The curb is an increasingly contested piece of urban real estate,” according to “The Shared-Use City: Managing the Curb,” a new report by the International Transport Forum. It’s where companies, citizens, and the government are jockeying for space for transportation, commerce, and delivery. Cities built and maintain the curb, and need to reassert ownership.
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The curb, an increasingly contested piece of urban real estate
Venture capitalists and startups see a convergence around different mobility options in cities. Scooters and dockless bikes have arrived just as this larger transportation transition, started by ridehailing, is beginning to pick up momentum. There’s value in providing simpler, cost-effective, and car-free ways to get around. The new flock of transit startups seems poised to make a lot of money, if all these rosy valuations and the ridership projections behind them add up.
The tech world certainly sees a lot of dollar signs when it comes to dockless mobility and bikeshare. After scooter startup Bird became a unicorn two weeks ago, announcing a new round of funding that would give it a $1 billion valuation, it recently announced plans to seek a $2 billion valuation. Competitors Lime and Spin are also flush with cash, especially after Google Ventures just invested $250 million in Lime. After reports suggested Lyft wanted to acquire Motivate, the national bikeshare operator that runs New York’s CitiBike system, other stories suggested Uber, which already purchased the electric bikeshare company Jump, is also interested in Motivate.
What’s left out of these billion-dollar deals? Cities.
Most of these transit companies don’t have plans to pay for street maintenance, enforce safety rules, or share the ridership data that cities could use to plan better and more efficient transportation systems. Yet cities are paying for and providing the public infrastructure—roads, sidewalks, and curbs—underpinning this private gain. Last year, many of the country’s biggest cities passed measures worth hundreds of millions of dollars to update and fix streets and sidewalks.
But with the widespread adoption of mobile technology and GPS, the possibilities of a “self-adjusting curb” allow cities even more potential to shape and direct this rise in curbside traffic. Some cities have already had success with tests and trials that regulate access.
“Santa Monica is a multi-modal city focused on carbon reduction,” a Santa Monica city spokerperson told Curbed. “We’re supportive of...the concept of Bird. They just need to operate lawfully and safely.”
Washington, D.C., launched a successful trial in 2017 to regulate pick-up and drop-offs around the busy DuPont Circle area. San Francisco has used geo-fencing tools to “nudge” riders of Uber and Lyft to request pick-ups and drop-offs in designated zones to reduce congestion.
These concepts, referred to as “flex-zones” by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) or Shared-Use Mobility Zones by the Eno Transportation Foundation, envision cities using rules and technology to give different transit options priority.
For example, Seattle has adopted proposed guidelines for design that follows a flex zone framework. First, designate transit stops, transit lanes, and bikeways. Then, find spaces for bike share stations, commercials loading, perhaps geo-fenced areas for dockless vehicles. Then, fill in the blanks with parklets and pick-up and drop-off spaces for ridehailing and private vehicles. Finally, include an array of short-term car storage options via parking regulations.
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Why Santa Monica scooter regulations may be about more than scooters
By laying out criteria for dockless mobility partners, and introducing user fees for fleet operators, Santa Monica’s pilot program show that transportation planners there are thinking about the quid pro quo of this new transit world. The document detailing the arrangement repeatedly underscores that the city wants an “open and productive partnership,” recognizing that scooters and other dockless vehicles can help the city achieve sustainability goals and offer a highly desired option for shorter trips.
Companies vying for a spot in Santa Monica’s 16-month pilot program for shared mobility devices will be evaluated on a number of criteria, including safety, operations requirements, and data sharing. Each of the seven categories has minimum and recommended benchmarks.
Taken as a whole, the recommended benchmarks read like a model for the kind of partnership that could allow technology to evolve while giving public transit officials the ability to oversee, analyze, and regulate. Operators are encouraged to offer low-income and multilingual options, create a system that recognizes geo-fenced parking areas dedicated to decreasing vehicle clutter, and provide real-time fleet info to the city. After some debate, the city approved a dynamic model for capping scooters based on vehicle utilization; both Bird and Lime issued statements praising the new framework.
Other cities, looking to control traffic and fund the infrastructure used by these companies, have started to levy fees and rules on tech companies. A new fee Chicago officials added to Uber and Lyft rides will direct millions of dollars towards public transit investment, while designated drop-off spots are being tested in other cities to help avoid congestion.
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As these new mobility companies invest in larger fleets—and make private car ownership, a massive municipal revenue source, less attractive—cities will find more and more financial reasons to take control of the curb. The “Managing the Curb” report says cities need to prepare for the shift, and figure out how to price curb use to both control traffic and make up for any lost parking revenue (the top 25 U.S. cities made $2.8 billion on parking fines and fees in 2016).
“Curb use will resemble dynamic, highly flexible, self-solving puzzles,” says the report, as our urban areas move from what it calls “parking cities” to “pick-up and drop-off cities”.
Creating incentives creates a better system for all
Regulations that stifle and kill these mobility innovations would be tragic. But wise rules that recognize the potential and pitfalls of these new forms of transit, and how they can make existing systems better, would be a huge benefit.
Take two recent studies analyzing how ridehailing companies like Uber and Lyft impact urban traffic. The first report, released last October by University of California Davis transportation researcher Dr. Regina Clewlow, found that while widespread usage of these services may be decreasing the number of miles users drive themselves, it appears to increase the total miles driven in cities. The research found that 49 to 61 percent of ride-hailing trips “would not have been made at all, or made by walking, biking, or transit.”
Last month, a study by Masabi, a mobile ticketing service that works with transit systems as well as companies such as Uber and Lyft, found that more than one-third of respondents said they were combining ridesharing with public transit on an occasional basis.
Better coordination between public and private, and added incentives to steer riders towards this kind of shared system, can potentially work wonders when it comes to reducing congestion and decreasing car travel. When Chicago introduced its proposed tax increase on ridehailing companies, an Uber spokesperson said that the “future of urban transportation will be a mix of public transit and ride-sharing.”
Many cities are already subsidizing Uber and Lyft rides, testing to see if the service can function as a first/last mile connection to existing transit systems. And scores of new planning apps have made it easier to plot trips that bounce between different modes, including dockless bikes.
In addition, a shift in fees towards curb-access, as opposed to parking, can help cities monitor and control traffic. New York City and others havestruggled to introduce congestion pricing. Why not just update existing parking laws to account to all the new mobility options on the road right now?
To paraphrase the Santa Monica regulations, cities need to find good partners. In a healthy relationship, that usually means being upfront about boundaries and not being afraid to ask for what you need.
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Cities need to own the curb
With so many new and developing transit options, it may seem like city streets are flooded with choices, as well as vehicles. There are extensive regulatory and safety issues at play to get all of these different ways of getting around to work together in a more cohesive manner. And while it may seem overwhelming, there is evidence that, if introduced with proper investment and oversight, these new options can work wonders.
Just look at the success of traditional bikesharing, which in five years, went from unknown to a backbone of the transit system in New York City. The system racked up impressive ridership and safety stats because, according to a recent NACTO report, “as these systems were implemented, they were accompanied by policy decisions from city leaders and transportation engineers to ensure that cycling infrastructure improved to match their investments.”
Dockless systems, for all the complaints that they’re unruly or disorderly, can work if properly regulated. According to an Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) report that analyzed both station-based and dockless bike systems, dockless bikeshare isn’t always the “disruptor” people make it out to be.
“The best transit innovations—especially those that are privately operated—offer riders convenient, affordable options for getting where they need to go,” the report reads. “Local governments that have viewed dockless bikeshare as an extension of their transit systems and introduced some form of regulation have seen ridership flourish as a result.”
Cities have a chance to do the same with the current influx of scooters and dockless systems and invest in more car-free travel lanes while regulating curb access.
Many companies seem at least willing to work with cities toward these goals. Uber, Lyft, and many dockless bike companies signed a Livable Cities Pledge, promising to support the shared and efficient use of “vehicles, lanes, curbed, and land,” as well as push for open data and fair user fees. Bird promoted a Save Our Sidewalks pledge that even suggested the companies should pay a per-vehicle fee to fund infrastructure improvements, and after the recent Santa Monica vote, Lime spokeswoman Mary Caroline Pruitt said the company remains “committed to partnering together to promote safe riding, proper parking etiquette, and accessible sidewalks.” A recent app redesign from Lyft seeks to promote shared rides, and the company’s new goal to have shared rides account for half of all trips on the platform by 2020.
These pledges and plans move in the right direction. But cities shouldn’t wait for transit companies. As urban mobility continues to rapidly evolve, it’s an asset that should be firmly in public hands, and used for the public good.