When first arriving in Santa Monica, the city seems like a vision of the future depicted in Sci-Fi films, with people zipping about on electric scooters in the California sun.

One of the companies behind the scooters, Bird, has recently begun lobbying Toronto city councillors and the mayor’s office, so this future may be on its way to Toronto and other Canadian cities.

Recently I rode a scooter in Santa Monica, a city dubbed “The E-Scooter Capital of the World” as there are multiple start-up companies populating the oceanside city’s sidewalks. City administrators there have been willing to pilot them while other jurisdictions have not.

I downloaded the app for Lime, one brand of scooters, but I could have also used my Uber or Lyft apps as those ride-hailing companies have also started providing e-scooters. Once registered, the app provides a map showing the nearest scooters and how much farther they can go before running out of power.

When first stepping on one it doesn’t start by simply squeezing the throttle: it requires a little push with your leg before the motor starts. It’s like a reminder that able-bodied people can get around on their own power, as we’ve done forever. When the motor does kick in it really zips.

Since riders stand upright on scooters the closest equivalent might be standing on an escalator or moving sidewalk, but those move much slower. With top speeds of around 23 kilometres per hour, the speed is substantial so there’s volatility to riding them, though that feeling probably fades with more experience.

The scooter wheels are quite small though and I felt all the bumps even though Santa Monica streets, free of salt and snowploughs, are quite smooth. As any cyclist knows, Toronto streets are often jarring, with potholes that can sprain wrists and streetcar tracks that can catch even a conscientious rider at the wrong angle, so the experience here will be quite different.

Toronto skateboarders seem to manage all right but they’re a hearty bunch and, most importantly, self-propelled. With e-scooters a lot of casual riders will be on these motorized devices. Predictably, in some places scooters are being piloted, injuries are way up.

As a mobility device, I can’t envision many older folks using them, or anybody even a little nervous about moving around quickly while standing upright. Admittedly I did feel a little old riding one as there’s something infantilizing about these scooters, perhaps because they look so much like the kind kids ride. This is a subjective feeling of course, perhaps as wrong as opponents of bicycles who say they are just for kids.

Santa Monica has some rules for scooters that include no sidewalk riding and a requirement for helmets, though there was much flaunting of them.

Even when they’re not moving, you see the scooters everywhere. Sometimes they’re lined up orderly on the sidewalk inside painted boxes the city has reserved for them. More often than not though they’re haphazardly parked on sidewalks, sometimes lying on their sides in a pile with others. Occasionally, they’re in bushes and on lawns.

At one point I saw a man leave his battery-depleted scooter on the wheelchair ramp that led down to the beach in a place that would prove troublesome for anybody trying to use the ramp for its intended purpose. Any random person can also easily move a locked scooter, so keeping them corralled will be difficult.

This is where the futuristic feeling of the scooters gives way to annoyance at all the clutter. With a few exceptions, Toronto has notoriously narrow sidewalks so it’s easy to envision e-scooters immediately blocking them here.

There’s also the unseen issue of how the scooters are charged up. Like with Uber or food delivery companies, there’s an army of contract workers who collect depleted scooters in their car, take them home, charge them up and return them to designated spots. Though there are reports of it being a lucrative part-time job for high school students, it’s yet another aspect of the precarious “gig” economy that is marketed as urban infrastructure.

Riding the scooters was undeniably fun and a single 30-minute, 3.7-km ride around Santa Monica cost me US $6.39, but is it a mobility solution to some of Toronto’s problems?

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Our streets and sidewalks here are already so crowded that another mode of transportation vying for the scarce real estate seems destined for problems. Walking is community and built-in exercise, but human nature will usually pick the easier way to get around. Those who do walk also face the prospect of people moving much faster than them sharing the same or nearby space.

Finding a balance for e-scooters in the city will be a challenge.