Beset by Homelessness, Rising Rents, SF Cracks Down on Dockless Scooters

https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/26/beset-by-homelessness-rising-rents-night

by Fins • 8 years ago

29 30 8 years ago

physcab• 8 years ago

Good. I’m all for better and more eco-friendly forms of transport, but after seeing a number of scooters thrown into the street haphazardly, this could not make me happier. People don’t seem to respect property that isn’t theirs.

matte_black• 8 years ago

Respect isn’t necessary. You paid for it, had your way with it, and moved on. This isn’t charity, it’s business. If the owner has a problem with how the scooters are used they should be using docks.

Retric• 8 years ago

Scooters that become a traffic hazard are more than just the company's problem.

So, the dockless part is a problem because when not secured to something they really do end up in the street.

namlem• 8 years ago

The sidewalk belongs to everyone. It's a public space.

modbait2• 8 years ago

Vehicles on sidewalks are a menace. Do it in the street, hipsters!

toephu2• 8 years ago

Poop and needles are not a menace?

Personally I think poop & noodle cleanup should be a higher priority than dockless scooters.

modbait2• 8 years ago

By all means, hipsters should also police up their poop and needles. But given the choice, I'd rather deal with that--at least it isn't usually moving toward me at high speed.

fffernan• 8 years ago

Can we add "roads worse than 3rd world countries" to the list?

ganeshkrishnan• 8 years ago

You haven't seen third world countries' roads, have you?

cft• 8 years ago

I have: I just drove from SF to Merida, Yucatan. San Francisco's roads are on par or often worse that most Mexican state capitals.

godzillabrennus• 8 years ago

These scooters are amazing. Wish the city would focus on the drug addicts running around defecating on sidewalks and not try to regulate these convenient scooters.

cbhl• 8 years ago

We really need to organize "how to write letters in support of nice things" sessions for techies.

It really would not take many of us (maybe fifty or a hundred) writing letters to city hall to drown out the voices of these anti-tech activists.

nmca• 8 years ago

This is actually an awesome idea.

sundaeofshock• 8 years ago

Why is this a tech issue? There are plenty of folks who work in the tech industry who would like to see these scooter vendors take at least minimal steps to play nice.

OrganicMSG2• 8 years ago

Could even go full social techno-utopia and make the scooters free for registered addicts to use on rides to any municipal sanitation facilities.

sp332• 8 years ago

You'd have to build some of those first.

rhizome• 8 years ago

The scooters are left scattered on the sidewalk like so many turds, your critique is misplaced.

OrganicMSG2• 8 years ago

In the middle of a city, a pile of scooters is considered by most people to be a less pressing problem than a pile of human shit, both in risk and aesthetic. If either pile gets big enough it will solve itself economically, however the difference in inconvenience while waiting for that to occur is not close.

dahdum• 8 years ago

You can’t charge the drug addicts fees.

This program is moving so quickly because it is both a revenue and bureaucratic expansion opportunity.

ffumarola4• 8 years ago

Meanwhile, dockless cars park wherever they want, block sidewalks, inhabit large swaths of the city without paying to do so, etc.

What a weird world where "scooters" are the problem.

Fins3• 8 years ago

Don't cars generally park in designated locations, pay large amount of money in taxes, often also in parking fees. Even in SF I think you are more likely to walk into a pile of excrement or scooters in a middle of a sidewalk than into a car...

ffumarola4• 8 years ago

Parking fees, tolls, taxes, etc aren't market rate.

Also, visit any of the neighborhoods on the western half of San Francisco and you'll discover that it's de facto not allowed to be handicapped or pushing a stroller due to cars owning the sidewalks.

JustSomeNobody• 8 years ago

Because you can only focus on fixing one thing at a time?

srinivasan• 8 years ago

As an SF resident, I love these things and regularly use them instead of calling an Uber. Requiring helmets (as the draft regulation does) is a bad idea; it would drastically reduce usage and push people back into cars.

One problem that some of these scooters have is that they seem to be easy to sabotage. I’ve seen vandals pulling on the brake cables near the front wheel, which would probably weaken the brakes or make them not function.

swang• 8 years ago

_you can only fix one of these things!_

seriously the reason scooters were addressed was because 3 companies decided to dump all of them sometime near the end of march and they had no legislation against it. and it was causing problems with pedestrians.

i find these articles annoying, why not harass midwestern cities with large opioid problems about doing X, when they haven't "solved" the opioid issue first.

Beset by Homelessness, Rising Rents, SF Cracks Down on Dockless Scooters

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