Electric scooter ban increased congestion by 10% in Atlanta

I wasn&#x27;t at all surprised to see the ban. The way electric scooters were handled in Atlanta was an absolute nightmare. They littered every sidewalk, blocking pedestrian traffic in already crowded streets. 100% of people riding them rode them on the sidewalk and collisions were pretty common. People were getting hurt, and were very afraid of getting hit.<p>It&#x27;s really unfortunate it went this way, because Atlanta badly needs alternative transpiration options. We would likely have been better off with heavy enforcement around proper storage and riding of scooters, but so many people absolutely hated them due to how it was handled that I&#x27;m not surprised to see a ban instead.<p>The poor handling of how they were rolled out did a lot of damage long term to fixing transportation. Now there will be an uphill battle against a ban passed in reaction to the mess they created. Disappointing all around.

Bought an electric scooter for my father (didn&#x27;t work out at all for him, too old), so I&#x27;ve inherited it. For about town (I live in a small town in the UK) it has meant I barely use the car now. I can get to a supermarket and back again in the time it would take me to walk there, I can get to my parents house and back to do some errand in the time it would take me to drive and park.<p>But it is illegal. Each time I take it out I run the risk of getting a fine - but for now I&#x27;ll take the risk as the benefit is too great for me. I&#x27;d love to buy a &#x27;legal&#x27; one and would happily pay whatever registration or insurance was required.

I remember living in NYC pre-Uber. If you were trying to hail a cab in a spot with other people also trying to get one, you had to resort to aggressively yelling &quot;Back the F@#$ off, that&#x27;s my cab!&quot;<p>Then Uber came and that largely went away b&#x2F;c why fight over a cab when you could call and Uber?<p>Then CitiBike came along. It was amazing that you could just get a bike and ride somewhere. That is, until you were riding it to a commuter bus or train station at evening rush hour. Suddenly, you have 5 mins to catch your train and you see one open slot in the bike return. Another person also sees that spot and you race towards it until you ave to say &quot;Back the F@#$ off, that&#x27;s my spot!&quot;<p>In other words, if cities want to have these options then should address directional supply and demand issues otherwise people are just going to say &quot;Not worth the hassle&quot;

Its like cities had zero controls on parking then just banned cars instead of building effective parking enforcement laws.<p>Simple solution:<p>1) Cities establish guidelines on legal parking &#x2F; riding. 2) Impose large fines for violations. 3) Scooter companies pass on those fines to the rider who parked illegally.<p>But instead we have a bunch of blue cities banning the most affordable, equity enhancing, zero emissions, last mile transportation solution.

Atlanta native; I haven&#x27;t dug into the design of the study, but I am supremely skeptical of these results. There is a huge influx of new residents right now (and likely for the foreseeable future). That in concert with a renewed push for working from the office likely accounts for any increase in congestion seen any time recently. The city yearns for more public transport, but it is hard to imagine that 10% of all the insane traffic is directly related to a ban on this relatively new mode of transport.

Just came back from Austin (way smaller than Dallas) and it was during a large event weekend (F1 weekend). We used the electric scooters pretty much the entire weekend to get around the city, it was really good, much faster and efficient than taking an Uber&#x2F;Lyft or driving. Most of the larger streets had a bike only lane and we never felt unsafe (my 70yo dad was riding with me on another scooter). Overall, I think that when combined with a good planning strategy from the city these types of micro transport could be something really good. I still think that good public transportation should be the goal here, but that requires way more infrastructure investment, and electric scooters or bikes could be the next best trade off.

The press release that went along with the study is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iac.gatech.edu&#x2F;electric-scooters-car-use-atlanta?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=Full%20Story%0A&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Digest%20-%20Oct.%2031%2C%202022" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iac.gatech.edu&#x2F;electric-scooters-car-use-atlanta?utm...</a>

The real solution to congestion is to shift cities away from having so much car infrastructure. If you build a car oriented city with gigantic box stores surrounded by lakes of parking lots as the only option then people will drive cars. Electric scooters are a terrible solution to a problem that really needs to be addressed.

I can see that. One need only look at traffic when raining and people revert to drier methods of transport.<p>In cambridge MA those electric scooters are quite everywhere. And they don&#x27;t know where they should go (they tend to go in the bike lane, which I think is correct, even though they annoy us bikers a bit, I think its the moving fast, but not working at it..). But non electrified scooters are back too, along with the occasional one wheel.<p>Bikes and scotters move you more quickly though certain routes than cars, as you tend to get through each light in just one clycle.

Amazes me how closely these forms of transportation are policed when the average hood height of pickup trucks I see everywhere equals or surpasses the height of most women I know. If you had to design a machine to optimally kill pedestrians I don&#x27;t know how you could do better, beyond appending a thresher to the front. The engineers who designed these should be ashamed of themselves. Living in Atlanta generally has really accelerated my deep dislike of car-centered urban design. It will take a lot more than unbanning electric scooters to change things, but at least it&#x27;s a step.

For my fellow french hackers: &quot;scooter&quot; is a trap word, it is actually a &quot;trotinette&quot;, not a motorbike

IMO the hardest part about rolling out other forms of public transportation like scooters is creating a <i>public ecosystem</i> that will properly support multiple modes.<p>The <i>public</i> part is important because an ecosystem is not one individual entity like Bird&#x2F;Lime&#x2F;etc where everything for particular mode of travel has to funnel through.<p>The escooter experiment has basically shown lacking an ecosystem causes problems. And the same thing would happen if “escooter” is replaced with “ebikes” or “eskateboards” or “emopeds”. They would still be scattered everywhere, get in people’s way, etc.<p>So far the only real ecosystem for transportation we have comes down to cars once again (unless you live in NYC with the subway). There’s not enough momentum to holistically address multi-mode transportation meshed in public life and not just think in terms of “cars and car alternatives”.

Adding my own anecdote: Minneapolis has tons of electric scooters and has done a nice job of providing infrastructure (dedicated parking, expanded bike lanes, etc), especially downtown. There’s also plenty of signage reminding people that they aren’t allowed on sidewalks. Despite all of that, there are tons of people riding recklessly through crosswalks, on sidewalks, etc, on top of the usual problem of scooters being scattered all over the sidewalk and blocking pedestrian traffic. The problem isn’t with scooters, or even necessarily with the reckless operators - it’s the complete lack of enforcement of the rules. People are going to do what’s most convenient, even if it’s dangerous, even if it’s technically prohibited, unless there are consequences.

Only issue i have is that they need to reduce the top speeds on the app based scooters. Way too many people flying around corners on the sidewalk and i have to peak around corners now in busy areas.

This type of reaction is completely what I expected by the haphazard and almost comical rollout of scooters a few years ago.<p>I had the opportunity to work with one of the scooter companies (which was underwritten by a large auto manufacturer) a couple of years ago and their organization was a mess and almost intentionally mismanaged.<p>I could only infer that the large auto company wanted these guys to flail about until local governments would ban this threat to automotive dominance.

This seems like a stretch--they are taking data collected from the effect of the <i>evening</i> scooter ban (after 9PM) and applying it to commute patterns. But people ride scooters in the evening to get to and from large events like Atlanta United games or concerts--it&#x27;s a very different context than commuting.

I&#x27;m fine with a 100% self-driven&#x2F;auto-piloted scooter&#x2F;bike .. I&#x27;m sorry, but there are far too many uncoordinated fools out there without the slightest concept of newton&#x27;s 2nd who are perpetually coming right up on my back for me to be cool with anything else (in an urban area at least).

We need self driving scooters. You can summon them and they return to doc on their own when done.

I think many cities will be caught off guard by how much cheap lithium-ion batteries are going to revolutionize transport in the next decade

This reminds me of when Cal Trans kicked the Priuses out of the carpool lane on I-880, and a UC study showed that it decreased the speed in all lanes, especially the carpool lane.<p>The outcome? Instead of widening the roads or eliminating the carpool lanes, they kicked even more cars out, converted additional lanes to carpool &#x2F; express lanes, and further snarled traffic.<p>There&#x27;s a state-wide mandate to reduce commute miles, and most cities have interpreted it to mean &quot;increase congestion&quot;, not &quot;improve public transit&quot;.

What about adult Heelys, can we normalize those rather than try this rent-and-litter startup scheme again?

These ppl are always looking for problems in their solutions.

I love e-scooters. They&#x27;re fun to ride around on and, when there are enough of them in an urban area, you can just rely on them being there for transit. I&#x27;ve been so disappointed by the public&#x27;s reaction to scooters, though. They don&#x27;t see how cars are significantly worse, in terms of the personal cost, public safety and destruction of urban spaces.<p>Like, just to put this in perspective, I did a bit of digging behind the Atlanta ban. It happened right after (and as a direct result of) these events:<p>- A 34 year old woman on an e-scooter was murdered* by a driver of a car, in a hit-and-run. [1]<p>- A 20 year old man on an e-scooter was killed by a negligent driver of an SUV who was charged with 2nd degree homicide. [2]<p>- A 37 year old man was killed by the driver of a bus who did not see him. Passengers on the bus say he was banging on the bus to alert the driver as he was crushed to death. I&#x27;m not able to find out if the bus driver was ever charged for this death. [3]<p>- A homeless man (of unknown age?) on an e-scooter was killed by a truck. In this case, it does look like the e-scooter ran a red light and the driver was not at fault. [4]<p>So in 2 out of 4 cases, clearly the car was at fault. The city reached first for not limiting cars in any way, but rather limiting scooters. I mean, I get it. There was no structure for doing anything to cars or the system that causes people to drive everywhere. And to be fair to Atlanta, the ban on scooters was only at night.<p>We know there are ways to structure cities and traffic laws to make safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. Bad saldy, here in America, we are so reluctant to reach for those options. We have so many parking lots, so many stroads, so few walkable spaces. Whenever there&#x27;s conflict between cars and people, we blame people. And then build extra lanes and extra parking lots and it just gets worse.<p>By the way, this problem with cars happens here in San Francisco too: My friends and I have all seen an explosion of bad behavior by drivers, including a friend of mine who struck last year in a hit-and-run, breaking his femur. This is not just anecdote: Pedestrian deaths are on the rise here, while citations plummet. [5]<p>1. * I am not sure if &quot;murder&quot; is legally applicable in this case, but to me, if you strike and kill someone in your car and then run, you&#x27;re a murderer. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;atlanta&#x2F;scooter-rider-hit-killed-by-car-in-midtown-atlanta-police-say&#x2F;972063999&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;atlanta&#x2F;scooter-rider-hit-k...</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bikelaw.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;driver-charged-in-death-of-e-scooter-rider&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bikelaw.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;driver-charged-in-death-of-e...</a><p>3. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;atlanta&#x2F;scooter-rider-hit-killed-by-bus-in-atlanta&#x2F;968035832&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;atlanta&#x2F;scooter-rider-hit-k...</a><p>4. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;south-fulton-county&#x2F;man-on-scooter-hit-killed-in-4th-scooter-related-death-in-metro-atlanta&#x2F;973874796" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsbtv.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;south-fulton-county&#x2F;man-on-...</a><p>5. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfbayca.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;05&#x2F;traffic-deaths-in-san-francisco-rise-as-citations-plummet&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfbayca.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;07&#x2F;05&#x2F;traffic-deaths-in-san-francis...</a>

…says a single study.

But how do you deal with the increased risk of chemical fires?<p>It was a thing when I was picking careers that they barely hired firefighters because the changes in building codes meant... much fewer fires.<p>Out in the townships, some went volunteer, and at the ones where it was paid a lot of them cross trained as EMTs or whatever.<p>I don&#x27;t think it registered over the years -- I never &quot;just got a job&quot; because everyone in the system -- from the Harvard doctor doing the surgery to the dad from cub scouts, who have known me since birth -- they wouldn&#x27;t lift a finger to help me if I didn&#x27;t show them the right card.<p>And they&#x27;re going to misunderstand me, on purpose, for the rest of my life, if I try to change that?<p>I <i>really</i> don&#x27;t like violence, but I have been bullied all my life, and some days I don&#x27;t feel like stripping out the emo bullshit and leaving the LinkedIn friendly HN post and I hate these scooter companies that put very real risks out there when many people still don&#x27;t even have a bank account let alone a smartphone to order up one of these... <i>things</i>.<p>If anyone has a suggestion on a good scooter model to permanently purchase and pair with a helmet, I think maybe someone should do a startup that rents out helmets instead of chemical fire factories to be thrown into the woods next to the cloud factory.<p>PS: Do not let Michael Chabon take you to a secondary location, even if it&#x27;s Halloween.

I can&#x27;t wait until the city wakes up, bans them, and starts handing out tickets to people riding them in the park, on sidewalks, and on the beltline.

As someone that lives in Atlanta, this is one of those things that is so obviously not true that it&#x27;s not worth spending the time to point out the flaws in the study.