The concept of e-scooters is as old as electric cars, with clear evidence going back to the early 1900s.
It’s worth pointing history out because if anyone ever really thought e-scooters were a good idea, there would have been evidence of them in Paris for 100 years already surviving tests, like the metro lines.
Alas, no e-scooters are associated with Paris history because… they are a bad idea.
…the problem may have had to do with the need for the device, which was more expensive than a bicycle but didn’t offer the seated comfort of a motorcycle.
Cost, comfort and safety.
Short stop momentum and falling off a stand-up scooter makes sense only when you are 12 or younger.
There’s a tendency of young men (and increasingly women) in America to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for a really, awful bad idea and think this alone makes it turn into a good one.
It’s the Wall Street “if people pay, it must be ok” moral code.
Fortunately the world isn’t as shallow and coin operated. And if more Americans studied history, they would have quite easily predicted how Uber, Lyft, Lime, Tier, Bolt, Bird… and all these ignorant new companies expensively rehashing very, very old concepts would not suddenly have a different outcome.
So here we are looking at 90% of people in Paris voting to ban the annoyingly ill-concieved and pathetically implemented e-scooters.
From September 1, e-scooters will be banned in Paris. As a result, 15,000 vehicles will need to be collected from the streets and squares of the French capital.
Other cities in Europe are now afraid that the heavy sidewalk-blocking garbage e-scooters removed from Paris could end up fouling their environments instead.
Bottom line, e-scooters failed to account for even basic transit design/risks and never should have been so aggressively funded.
Lime clearly operated as a crime,
while Bird landed like a turd.
No cheer was given to Tier in time,
but Bolt ended up in revolt.
or
In Lime’s transgressions, ugly shadows apace,
Bird’s descending, a tarnished grace,
Tier’s sucking, a silent space,
Bolt’s revolting, a lack of embrace.
or
In Lime’s transgressions, shadows near,
Bird descends, grace marred, I fear,
Tier’s absence, silence draws its lace,
Bolt’s revolt, devoid of love’s embrace.