A lay person reading about these new forms of mobility would think that an infestations or disease had hit their cities, with “scooters that have descended”on cities.

But they are not the problem. Not by a long shot.

What this sudden adoption reveals is two things:

Pent up latent demand of alternate mobility choices

Woefully inflexible city streets, tiny sidewalks, and bad urban planning

What is almost a mantra in American cities, “no one walks or bikes,” is actually the cause of low rates of walking/biking due to little to no attention given to good walk/bike infrastructure and mass transit. Resources for road “engineering” were (and still are) therefore almost exclusively dedicated to the automobile (from funds, to road space, to engineering talent), making it ridiculously difficult to actually get around most American cities without a car. This is the modern urban mobility self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, as soon as the convenience notch is turned up for alternatives, as dockless bikes/scooters are doing with electrification and round-the-corner access, people have started biking and scooting, exposing the myth that there is no demand.

The issues cities are having with bikes/scooters taking up sidewalk space is merely a symptom, not the actual problem. Inflexible streets, tiny sidewalks, and bad urban design are the real culprits. Streets have historically served dozens of purposes. They have always been space for walking, street vendors, festivals, hanging out, street performers, markets, outdoor cafes, etc. They are not single use highways for speeding for 4000 pound boxes.

So dockless bikes/scooters are also exposing just how inflexible cities have made their streets. As soon as a minor new technology is adopted, chaos seems to ensue. Real streets would not have blinked at this relatively small shift in mobility habits.

VC money did accelerate the adoption of bikes/scooters faster than anyone expected. Yet it laid bare the bad design and poor planning that was there all along.

Dockless caught cities with their pants down.