I see this at events and festivals in our town all the time and I think it’s a massive win. Every scooter you see is likely one less car clogging up our streets or taking up a parking spot. Plus, a lot of these riders are out-of-towners bringing business to our local shops and helping the economy. It’s a shame there are so many NIMBYs hating on them when the trade-off is clearly better for the town's bottom line. I’ll take a sidewalk with a few scooters over a gridlocked street any day. Plus they are super fun to ride.

Unless they're parked legally I just push them over, away from the sidewalk. And someone else has started as well! They do a decent job of coming to get them and put them somewhere allowed, all in a row. But the app requires you to take geostamped photos so they have proof their riders are just putting them in the middle of the sidewalk and walking away, and they don't care.

Flipside, they're hella nice to grab to work if my car is down or if it's just nice, and you could techically get across my entire city on them (stopping to swap I assume) so there's a bit of democratization about them, but you'd be dumb to try that.

They should be free if they're going to be letting them leave tomorrow's e-waste on our sidewalks. Maybe we could all pay for them together somehow idk

In Germany this went reaaaallly awesome. First, some years back we had this with the shit bikes and it turned out to be a burden on all and there are massive bike dumps in China.

Then a while later we allow the same with scooters.

And as usual, some people with shit asshole behavior messing it up for everyone.

The other thing I do not get in my head is using public space for business. If I can't just do that companies should be forbidden too.

Agree with your point, but cars are far worse…

I do believe that's a 2016-2019 Chevy volt in the first picture.

Thanks for your business. We'll just leave these externalities here for you to enjoy.

they find so many of these in our river

That kinda looks like a lot of cars not on the road. Sure, they should have designated drop off and pick up locations so you don't get this mess. However, I think these lime bikes are providing an alternative option to solo drivers.

We hage designated parking spots for these in Ottawa (Canada) that's not limited to any one company and it works pretty well. I own an e-scooter but I'll still often rent one if I dont want to park mine somewhere

How are they all aggregated together? I’ve never seen more than a handful in one place at a time. Does lime hire someone to gather them all into one place in some cities?

Each end of the spectrum a has its own issues.

A centrally managed economy can be great for making unpopular but necessary changes, but are prone to massive failures when the law of unintended consequences inevitably shows up to bite you in the ass.

Free market economies are great for letting complexities sort themselves out, but are terrible for quickly making necessary changes, and you end up with "death by 1000 cuts" instead of one but failure.

In the end, I think it's best to use the right tool for the right situation. As the goods/services are less critical, or the barriers to doing it yourself are low, a free market approach tends to work better. As the goods/services become more critical, and the do it yourself barriers are high, the free market approach becomes increasingly shitty for everyone but the owners.

The free market will solve you

It looks like that during sporting events and an hour after the event is over you won't find a single bike within a mile of the stadium.