Edit: Bird announced today that they are adopting the helmet selfie. I haven’t heard anything from them, but good on ’em. https://www.bird.co/press/bird-offers-helmet-selfie/

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TL;DR — Scooters are a step forward for sustainable urban transportation, but they’re being used poorly. Fundamentally, it’s a design problem. The current proposed solutions are regressive and expensive — decreasing fleet sizes, requiring companies to hand out free helmets, fining riders for improper usage, and even banning scooters altogether. These are all negative, punitive measures. With design, we can encourage proper use in more positive ways — incentivizing proper use with economics, and creating UX to ensure safety for riders. By keeping scooters on the streets, we prompt local governments to make investments in sustainable transportation infrastructure that will move our cities towards a less car-centric future.

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I’m Chris, a designer, bicycle commuter, and Nashville resident. I got rid of my car a couple of months ago as a way to reduce my carbon footprint (11 years, y’all). When I’m not carpooling with my wife, I use a combination of my electric bicycle, dockless scooters, and the occasional ride-share to get around. While many consider scooters toys, I do not. It’s not just fun for me — it’s part of my transportation plan.

In Nashville, as in many other cities, the local government and scooter companies aren’t getting along. So much so that recently Mayor David Briley announced his intention to ban all scooters from the streets of Nashville, and today the metro council is voting on a scooter ban.

I think it’s a big step backwards for our city, but it makes sense why local governments feel this way. In April of this year, we’ve had 43 reported scooter-related injuries. And in May, we had our first scooter-related death. Unfortunately, though, this isn’t just a scooter issue, as pedestrians and cyclists are at risk, too. Last year, 23 pedestrians were killed while walking in Nashville (via Walk Bike Nashville).

Given that the city’s infrastructure isn’t set up to keep cyclists and pedestrians safe, I understand the local government’s uncertainty about whether scooters should join the mix. But I don’t believe the solution is banning scooters — they’re an important class of LEVs (light, electric vehicles) that help urban dwellers like myself make the choice to give up their cars. And I believe that over time, they’ll help urban populations live a more sustainable life.

Banning them isn’t the answer. And honestly, some of the other solutions that have been proposed aren’t much better. Many of these are negative, punitive measures that make it harder for residents to give up their cars. It pits cities against companies, and ultimately someone will lose.

We can design a better way. Here’s a look at the problems that scooters pose, the proposed solutions, and some alternate solutions that use design and economic incentives to solve these problems in a fast, scalable way.

Problem #1:

Dockless scooters are everywhere, and they’re an eyesore.

It’s true. Nashville’s most popular areas are being littered with scooters, many of them mangled and defunct. They are carelessly leaned against walls or tossed in the middle of sidewalks.

Current solutions:

Cap the number of scooters and hire squads of patrollers.

Cities are talking about capping the number of scooters each company is allowed to operate. Scooter companies have in turn pledged to hire scooter stewards to patrol the most popular routes and right the fallen scooters.

These ideas are just not scalable. Capping the number of scooters each company is allowed to operate might temporarily alleviate the congestion, but it isn’t a long term solution to the problem. Scooters serve a real need for urban dwellers — if a city does away with scooters, another class of light, electric vehicles will eventually replace them.

And no matter how many scooter stewards you hire, they will always be outnumbered by the masses of tourists. To put this into perspective, the nation of Japan received 30 million tourists in 2018. The city of Nashville received 15 million. Any proposed solutions to this problem need to scale along with this influx of people.

A better solution:

Create economic incentives for good parking, for riders and companies.

In the past few weeks, scooter “corrals” have started popping up in high traffic areas, like Nashville’s downtown. This is a brilliant idea, and companies like Bird have started offering incentives to their riders to park in these preferred parking areas. Parking in a designated scooter corral will automatically add credit to the rider’s account. If the app displayed the credit incentives of preferred parking on the map itself, it would be even more compelling.