
Uber Will Rent Scooters Through Its App in Partnership with Lime - venturis_voice
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-09/uber-will-rent-scooters-through-its-app-in-partnership-with-lime
======
bit_logic
I was thinking about the debate on scooters and it made me realize something:

Bike lanes are a disaster, probably one of the biggest mistakes in road design
and planning.

The basic idea was sound, but it was done the wrong way. Everywhere you see a
bike lane, that should've been the concrete sidewalk extended into that area
with a painted stripe separating pedestrians and bicycles. Go to a beach and
you can see the correct implementation. Our sidewalks are simply not wide
enough.

What we have now is a cheap and bad solution. Nobody on bikes, scooter, etc.
wants to be just a thin painted stripe away from cars that can kill them. But
they are forbidden from sidewalks because they are too narrow.

The right way to add bike lanes would've been to extend the sidewalks into the
road (where the current bike lanes are) by pouring concrete there. Full
protection from cars, wide enough for pedestrians and bicycles, scooters, etc.

It's not too late to fix this, the bike lanes are there. Cities just need to
spend the money to expand the sidewalks there. If they do this, there's
potential for a true revolution in non-car mobility in the US.

~~~
whelchel
There is some merit to that idea but I think you may be missing a few things.
Often, parking is placed between a bike lane and the side walk. Bikes need to
be able to cross lanes, often in cities, to make left turns. How can they do
that when they're up on a curb to start, but additionally, with potential
street parking in the way?

I think technically in many jurisdictions, bikes are to be treated as
vehicles. Whether or not they're always treated that way is up for debate (and
vice versa), but it may explain also partially why things were done that way.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Put the parking between the road and the bike lane/sidewalk instead. That's
how most city streets are laid out in Copenhagen, af it provides a good safety
buffer of parked cars.

~~~
azernik
Also how Oakland does it on Telegraph. San Francisco has switched to this
solution on some streets (Folsom and Howard).

This doesn't include putting the bikes on the same grade as the sidewalk, but
that's a relatively minor difference once you already have parked cars
separating you from car traffic.

------
probe
This partnership could also allow Uber driver partners to basically have
another source of income - rebalancing the scooter/bike network and helping
with charging (ex. someone drives for Uber Eats, drops off a scooter at pickup
restaurant to charge). Current Lime freelance chargers are making ~$1400
earnings per month[1] so this could start being substantial and help the
growth for both companies

[1] [https://www.axios.com/how-lime-is-pitching-its-
bike-a-152949...](https://www.axios.com/how-lime-is-pitching-its-
bike-a-1529492063-f32aac78-caf6-4455-a7f1-215cc4bf4552.html)

~~~
wpietri
That $1400/month number strikes me as dubious. They mention the charger earns
$30-50/day. Assuming a standard 22-day work month, $1400 would have to be
$63/day. A more realistic number seems to be $40 * 22 days, or $880/month.
Which is not a lot of money in the expensive cities Lime is active in.

~~~
cheeze
Man... $880 a month to drive around Seattle sounds miserable.

~~~
ewjordan
What else can you do in Seattle with absolutely zero skill or qualifications
and no willingness to commit that pays that well?

Not a joke question. I'd have loved any fraction of $880 a month when I was in
college and was otherwise worth nothing and couldn't get a traditional shitty
part time job because I had unpredictable hours due to school.

~~~
scrumbledober
valet parking or catering

------
paulpauper
I think it's time for someone to invent Uber Walk: someone physically picks
you up and carries you to your destination

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Yes, but eventually Uber Walk would be rebranded Uber Walk Premium and a new
service under the old Uber Walk name would be started where you get a 50%
discount for walking yourself.

~~~
Camillo
You can save even more money with Uber Walk Express, but you have to walk
three blocks away from your destination.

------
tweedledee
Why not keep the scooters in the cars. Grab one on the way out, leave it
behind when you get home. Request an uber with a scooter in it. There will
have to be some leveling between cars but that’s surely easier than blanketing
the city.

~~~
kevinmgranger
I think docked bike shares had the following problems:

\- they were spaced too far apart

\- they weren't in residential areas

The dockless bikes, and scooters, were a response to that. We could go back to
using docks if we solved those two problems.

Or what if there was a hybrid approach, incentivising users who brought their
bike / scooter to a dock by making the ride cheaper or free?

~~~
jonlucc
In my city, the docked bikes are $8 for a day pass. That's way too high an
entry point for me to ride to lunch a little farther than I can walk. Not to
mention that I might get on a bike and find my destination rack full,
therefore having to go to the next nearest dock to try to end my ride (and
walk that distance on foot). A more economical choice is the $80/yr pass, but
that's also a very steep entry point.

~~~
walshemj
Your probably not the market in London its mostly commuters where $80 is
trivial compared to the several k that your season ticket

~~~
chii
You could just buy a bike for 80 bucks (albeit a poor quality one).

~~~
tomjakubowski
And then you have to keep it somewhere whenever you ride it some place.

~~~
walshemj
As its only £80 just park it on the street with a couple of decent locks.

------
kipdotcom
Taxify already has a rider feature in Nairobi, Kenya, called Boda within their
app. It's insanely cheap and the ability to circumvent traffic is a huge plus.
I'm happy this is coming to Uber as well.

------
tingletech
These scooters are a menace in Oakland -- people are riding them down crowded
sidewalks at 20 MPH

~~~
rockostrich
I don't know about Oakland, but in Boston these wouldn't be legal to ride on
the sidewalk. Hell, they're barely legal to ride in the bike lane (only
motorized vehicles that can't exceed 35 mph and that make a motor smaller than
a certain size). Combine that with the fact that most riders won't be wearing
helmets and it's a potentially deadly accident waiting to happen.

~~~
sisk
For the curious, the maximum motor size to ride in the bike lanes in Boston is
50cc.

~~~
xanderjanz
cc is a measurement of displacement, only useful for combustion engines.

Equivalent for electric motors would be Wattage.

------
ProAm
It sort of looks like litter when I see all the bikes and scooters just left
on sidewalks all over town.

~~~
znull
Just the bikes and scooters? Not, say, the idle cars left on streets all over
town?

~~~
edaemon
Cars are at least parked in designated spots/areas. Dockless bikes and
scooters don't have a designated space to park in; they have to be left on the
sidewalk, and they can be dropped anywhere.

~~~
blhack
This is such a boondoggle. I _rarely_ see any birds, lime bikes, orange bikes,
ofos, etc. parked in places other than off to the side of the sidewalk, or in
a bike rack. When I do, I move them.

Most people, generally speaking, are good people. They put bikes where they're
supposed to be, they put scooters where they're supposed to be etc. It isn't
just enlightened tech commenters who know that a bike should go in a bike
rack.

~~~
SilasX
I'm surprised they don't have a technical solution -- like, say, have it take
a photo from the scooter when you log out to validate you put it in a good
spot. (Or gps if they have drop-off points, etc.)

~~~
Arubis
Lime starting doing _exactly_ this in Denver before pulling out at the behest
of the police department.

------
tapatio
Well, that's going to kill Bird.

~~~
ThomPete
We will see. Been "workating" with my family in LA for a few weeks and we
ended up using Bird much more especially because it looks like Lime require
you to pay in bundles (10usd) and there are just way more Birds available than
Limes. It might change now that Uber is involved but they would have to
increase their scooters fleet quite a lot I think.

Been interesting because in New York Bird isn't something people talk about
where as here it was everywhere (didn't hurt we lived at Venice beach either).

One thing I realized is how much the ability to just leave your bird/lime
anywhere and just pick it up where it is, affects your desire to use it.

We will see the same uptick in bicycles in NY I think once you are not
required to park them at specific places.

It's a little bit of a mess though especially down on the beach promenae but I
think there are plenty of ways to encourage good behavior.

~~~
ageitgey
Where I live (San Diego), Lime and Bird have swapped places a couple of times
for who has the most scooters on the street. They are both being really
aggressive in increasing the number of units. It's not uncommon to see 10 of
each lined up on a sidewalk.

It's also been fun to watch both companies experiment and revise their
hardware. The original Lime scooters were slow and the Bird scooters were much
stronger. With the v2 of each, it is reversed.

But from what I've heard second hand, increasing the number of units on the
street isn't that expensive. I've heard that the units cost them in bulk ~$250
each and they quickly (< 3 months) earn that back. So the investment to
blanket a city with scooters is way less than you'd expect and not the main
barrier to entry. Of course that's second hand, so I could be totally wrong.

~~~
kylehotchkiss
I love riding them at mission beach! I was sort of sad about the version 2. It
had a speedometer but only would go 10mph, and the brake was so weird. The
version 1s are much better.

------
gringoDan
Once again a successful prediction from Ben Thompson.

~~~
fwdpropaganda
Link please.

~~~
gringoDan
[https://stratechery.com/2018/the-scooter-
economy/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-scooter-economy/)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284094)

------
foobar1962
From the article: >Lime said its service, which lets customers rent scooters
scattered around cities and leave them on the sidewalk for the next person to
pick up

I now look for a "Tragedy of the Common" errors in business models. That's it
right there: they freely exploit a public resource without care or
consequence. The fallacy is evident when we ask "What if everybody does this?"

~~~
jonlucc
I guess I'm not sure I understand how this relates. Everybody already _does_
do this. You are allowed to drop your bike off at a bike rack or on the
sidewalk out of the way of traffic if you're brave (or have more faith in your
neighbors than I do).

~~~
foobar1962
> I guess I'm not sure I understand how this relates. Everybody already does
> do this. You are allowed to drop your bike off at a bike rack...

Scenario: go to park your personal bike at the public bike rack only you
discover it's full of bikes from some company who wants to make a buck out of
it.

A lot of these business models take advantage of resources that are "free" but
have really cost a lot of money to set up and maintain, usually by the public.

I'm in Sydney and am now starting to see share bikes littering the landscape.
One had been dumped in a public ocean bath (at Balmoral).

~~~
Steltek
You'll probably saturate the market before you run out of parking. One car
space converted to bike racks would hold 20 bikes and if bike share is truly
that popular, it's an entirely viable option.

~~~
foobar1962
> One car space converted to bike racks would hold 20 bikes...

In a city CBD, what would one car space be worth? In Sydney some car parks
charge $23 an hour. Should this space just be given to some bike share company
that decides to set up shop?

------
crb
I read that in early June, scooter hire was halted in San Francisco and
companies had to apply for licenses, which were expected to be issued by the
end of the month. Any update on what is happening there?

------
dayaz36
Why doesn't Uber just provide their own scooters?

~~~
ikeyany
The same reason they currently don't provide their own cars.

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benjlang
Who here is charging for them?

------
microdrum
Scooters: a (small) feature within a large global mobility company.

NOT a business unto itself.

~~~
randyrand
same with taxi companies?

------
eridius
Well, I guess it's time to delete the Lime app from my phone. Good thing there
are multiple competitors.

------
arcaster
Scooters are ruining Austin.

Fuck The Scooters!

~~~
gaahrdner
No they aren't, they're probably saving downtown Austin's transportation woes.
Decades of failed resolutions by the city council to provide expanded public
transportations for an extremely high growth city have brought us to this
point, one where the market had to come up with a solution. I'd imagine more
regulations are probably due in the near future.

~~~
hobbyjogger
The scooters definitely aren't "ruining Austin" but they're not "saving" it
from transportation woes either. The percentage of drivers who live close
enough to downtown to hop on a scooter instead of taking car is pretty small.

For example, only 4% of Austin commuters live within 2 miles of their
workplace [0]. Commuters in Westlake and P-Ville, etc. are definitely NOT
trading in their cars to get on a scooter (if you could even find one) and
then riding it down the highway for 30 minutes. Especially in 100 degree heat.

[0]
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8eBZN5u...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8eBZN5uyROoJ:www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/bhat/REPORTS/Austin_commuter_survey_report.doc+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
woolvalley
You don't understand marginal improvements and how they ramp up?

~~~
hobbyjogger
(marginally) improving traffic (a bit) ≠ saving us from our transportation
woes

Austin still has a long, long way to go.

