E-Scooters: Public Menace and Destroyer of Sidewalks! (...and also a good idea?)

Lime e-scooters in Washington, DC (@joeflood via Twitter)

By Josh Linden

Cards on the table -- my transportation preferences are biased. I firmly believe that motor vehicles should not dominate our streets and public spaces. In fact, I’ll go even further: urban and even suburban areas should actively discourage motor vehicle use. You can make this argument for environmental, economic, public health, or even aesthetic reasons. But a personal preference is certainly no match for decades of intentional development that responded to -- and in turn, prioritized -- the automobile. To the extent that more people and policymakers are acknowledging our misguided development patterns, retrofitting our cities to accommodate other modes is no easy task, even when new innovations could address some of our challenges. Look no further than the ongoing experiment with e-scooters to understand why. 

Backed by millions in venture capital, e-scooters -- the shared, electric mobility devices that surged into cities over the past year -- are billed as a convenient, affordable, and reasonably accessible way to move around an urban space. Users can locate a nearby scooter with a smartphone, unlock it for a set price (typically $1), ride it on a cost-per-minute basis (typically 15 cents/minute), and leave the scooter anywhere within the designated home area. E-scooter companies and advocates celebrate the mobility technology as an attractive, zero-emissions option to nudge people away from cars for short trips -- a potentially valuable goal, since research indicates that replacing motor vehicle trips of less than 3 miles with other modes can substantially reduce emissions. Advocates also view e-scooters as a first-mile / last-mile solution to strengthen connections with transit. In short, they claim e-scooters are a welcome addition to the alternative transportation landscape to help reduce the dominance -- and negative externalities -- of automobiles. And with private financing, e-scooters could provide these benefits without enormous public capital investments.

Despite limited data, some recent evidence supports these arguments. As part of its recent pilot, Portland’s Bureau of Transportation conducted a survey of e-scooter users and found that 34% of all riders would have otherwise driven a personal vehicle or taken a taxi/Uber/Lyft. Moreover, nearly half of all e-scooter riders reported “never biking” and 78% had never used Biketown, Portland’s bikeshare system -- suggesting that e-scooters are bringing new users to alternative transportation and not simply replacing bicycle trips. PBOT reports nearly 600,000 e-scooter trips during its 4-month pilot, covering a total distance of more than 700,000 miles -- or 1.2 miles per trip, roughly in line with the target distance that advocates view as a sweet-spot for active transportation. Indeed, almost half of all Portland riders chose e-scooters because it was the fastest and most reliable mode for their particular trip. Other studies have found that e-scooters are far more popular than dockless bicycles (another recent experiment in shared micro-mobility), which suggests, again, that e-scooters may have a broad appeal. Favorability data backs this up as well. PBOT’s survey found that 85% of Portland users were likely to recommend e-scooters to a friend, and a study from Populus reported that more than two-thirds of citizens across multiple cities had a positive view of e-scooters, with a high of 79% in Atlanta. Only San Francisco was far below this level -- and even there, favorability was still above water at 52%.

So, e-scooters are broadly popular, useful, relatively affordable, a complement to other active transportation options, and successful in reducing motor vehicle trips. Great! But if that’s all true, why are cities like Portland ending a pilot period by concluding that we’re not yet ready for a full program? And why are cities like Washington, DC proposing new regulations to make scooters slower (i.e. less convenient) and cap overall numbers (i.e. limit accessibility and exacerbate equity issues)?

The answer -- or part of the answer -- may come back to our path-dependent narrative: most American cities were designed for motor vehicles, with prescribed uses for different public spaces that, over time, generated deeply ingrained habits and preferences for how those spaces should be used (and by whom). For example, many e-scooter riders use sidewalk space for parking and occasionally for riding. Some city residents find this objectionable. Why? Because cities built sidewalks to accommodate pedestrians and separate them from vehicle traffic. We gave pedestrians a dedicated place to be, and we developed a variety of rules and regulations to support that use. In some places, bicycles aren’t allowed to be on the sidewalk. In all places, sidewalks (or at least new sidewalks) must conform with federal requirements to ensure accessibility for all pedestrian users, including those with disabilities. Accommodating and supporting people of all abilities is undoubtedly important. But the net effect is to reinforce, time and again, that sidewalks are for pedestrians. This directly flows from decades of car-driven urban design.

So when e-scooters use neighborhood sidewalks, it provokes a strong reaction from many neighborhood residents -- even though many of those residents presumably support the goals that e-scooters may help achieve. It provokes a much stronger reaction than technologically related transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft, even though these TNCs are likely exacerbating urban congestion and perhaps siphoning people away from public transit. Most cities do not limit the number of Uber of Lyft vehicles that can operate in a city, or limit their speed, or fine them for illegal or dangerous behavior, or force them to complete multiple pilot programs under heavy scrutiny before allowing them to operate in urban areas. Uber and Lyft are compatible with our existing urban infrastructure, and therefore present fewer questions about they might fit into our fabric of transportation options. The same goes for car sharing services -- the company Free2Move, for example, just deployed 600 new cars in Washington, DC without any discussion or pilot restrictions.

E-scooters, on the other hand, live in grey area. They could use bike lanes, but some cyclists -- for whom those lanes were originally designed to, again, separate them from motor vehicles -- may find them disruptive. They could use sidewalks, but some pedestrians may feel less safe as they pass. They could operate in mixed street traffic -- but their limited speed may prevent users from keeping up with traffic, which could make riders feel more exposed and less safe. This means that despite the overall popularity of e-scooters and their demonstrated utility, their perceived (and mild) disruption to some users of existing spaces is enough to trigger cities to view them with suspicion rather than optimism.

This is not to argue that cities should welcome non-automobile innovations in transportation without due diligence, or cede all regulatory responsibility. E-scooters use our public spaces and they should be accountable for their operations and behavior. But the scrutiny toward e-scooters is disproportionately high, particularly given the balance of their potential benefits to actual costs. If we are serious about reducing motor vehicle use, then our cities should welcome e-scooters -- or at least, welcome like-minded innovations that appreciably contribute to long-term goals -- and find ways to help them become an abundant and safe part of our urban environment.