How’s the e-scooter launch going?

I rode the Bird scooter on July 27. I LIKE it. Pretty slick. Easy to use.

1. Download the app from https://www.bird.co/
2. Scan or input (a) your drivers license number, (b) a credit card number, and (c) scan the scooter’s bar code on its handle bar.
3. It automatically unlocked the scooter. Ready to go.

You give it a kick with your feet, get going then twist the throttle. It topped out at 15 mph, a speed that seemed just right. I’m 69 yrs old and it didn’t take me a minute to master. My ride lasted 8 minutes and I travelled .8 miles (about the distance to the Max Line from Hayden Island). It cost me $2.05. I guess you can use BIRDPDX for a free $5 on the first ride.

When I was done with the ride I clicked the “lock” button on the phone app, and it was ready for someone else. The scooter was on Killingsworth and Interstate. I found it using the app map. I hope a cluster will be assigned to Hayden Island, where I live. There are NO Biketown bikes in Kenton, St Johns, Bridgeton, Delta Park, or Expo Center, since it’s outside Biketown’s service area.

Bird uses the Xiaomi M365 electric scooter ($500 on Amazon). http://a.co/bElAhy1 I weigh 300 lbs, and it worked okay for me.

In November, they may issue longer permits to scooter companies. Goat Scooters will let anyone buy a scooter ($600-$1200) then keep the profits (less 15%). I think that could be a good business for hotels and the Jantzen Beach mall on the island, since there’s no Max service here.

https://www.bird.co/
https://www.limebike.com/
https://skipscooters.com/
https://www.ridegoat.com/

I thought scooters are supposed to be deployed to East Portland? No Bird scooters there per app.

Seems like almost a nonstarter with the all-ages helmet law. It’s one thing owning a scooter and using a helmet, but for a “last mile connection” type device, that’s not going to work in practice for most people.

Down market Segways

I rode from downtown, over the Tilikum, and into inner southeast. It would’ve cost $4.45 without the free credit. It’s kinda fun but even the big tires aren’t quite soft enough for me. My knee was aching a bit after the ride. There definitely wasn’t enough power to get me up hills without providing some kick assistance. On smoother, flatter surfaces it was enjoyable.

Biketown would’ve been much cheaper for the same ride. TriMet would’ve been potentially a few minutes quicker, assuming no wait for the bus (unlikely). And 55 cents more would mean I get to do all the bus and MAX riding I want for the rest of the night.

What ever happened to walking that last 1/2 mile? Our society is quickly circling the drain. Yay for fewer cars, but come on now. Walk a little.

Other than the demo in Pioneer Square I’ve only seen one scooter in use downtown as the rider was grazing the front end of a car on Taylor after he shot out into the road, wrong way & downhill on a one-way cross street, and the driver slammed on the brakes to minimize the collision.

God I sound like a cager complaining about “those crazy bikers”. I’m sure most of the scooter users are riding reasonably, although it does seem like they might attract a lot of idiots.

Been fine so far. I’ve only seen a few people riding them and nothing blocking sidewalks or bike lanes yet. I anticipate this will not be the case when all 2,500 are in use, however.

Those birds are seriously fun. I rode my bike to BonB, then spent a bit of time trying to find a Bird. Much like the early Biketown implementation, the first 4 locations on the map did not have scooters. So, I hopped on a Biketown and finally found one in a nest by Wells Fargo.

I rode the scooter down 4th and back to the Hawthorne, and it was a blast! Anyone skeptical about its utility should take one for a spin. They may be slower than a bike, but after pushing off I didn’t put a foot down once. I fully plan to ride it again.

PBOT made a very poor decision about a Twitter post

Considering that the tweet was not deleted and is receiving positive national media attention, I don’t think PBOT regrets it at all.

And despite PBOT’s suggestion that I’m a “tech bro”, I hate the fact that PBOT and the city council are so oriented to capitalism that they cannot fund public bike- and scooter-share systems. Depending on the “largesse” of venture capital “unicorns” and predatory multinational corporations is a poor decision.

In fact, this is what I posted on FB the day before my infamous “tech bro” tweet:

“It annoys me that these are being funded by venture capital but status quo car culture is even more capitalist. (“Fordism” is one of the major mechanism by which capitalism came to dominate our culture.)”

(not posting a direct link to keep the person whose timeline I posted on anonymous)

I should also note that I do not identify as a bro and my pronouns are they and them.

So the pros: you live in a city with crummy public transportation aka most of the U.S. You have slow to react city planners to get multi-mode transport options in place. The free market pushes scooters and bike share, not bad. This launched in Detroit, ideal location as the public transit there is slow and not throughly connected.

Portland through? Come on.
The bad: Does anyone walk 1/2 or even 1/8 of a mile anymore? Nice to have choices, rather its a battery powered floatation device so you no longer need your limbs to swim. I am waiting for the battery powered fork and spoon to feed me for every meal. Let me know when thats available for $2 a minute.

I expect the results to be somewhere between “sky falling” and “savior.”

What’s to stop people from just picking these things up and stripping these things of there batteries and stuff in a dark ally?

Yes they are pretty fun. It was worth a quick spin to give it a try. But Its expensive! Going any farther then a few blocks can rack up quite the charge.
These seem Ok for now, but I expect once two companies with full fleets trying to outdo each other, the streets sidewalks and bike lanes will get overrun. I’m a fan today, but I can’t see how our launch will be any different then every other city who has tried them then subsequently banned them. Likely won’t be a fan in a week.

I hope this results in the State of Oregon finally giving a legal vehicular status to scooters and other freewheel vehicles. The helmet requirement also needs to be removed. E-scoots need to be held to the same standards as bicycles but should not be required to go further.

I’m not in Portland at the moment, but coincidentally our Lime scooters also launched in Minneapolis this week. Bird scooters have been available in Mpls and St. Paul for 2-3 weeks, and I think both have also launched in a handful of suburbs.

At least in the core of the city, I’m almost constantly seeing people riding these scooters, even though not that many are available. I think a lot of people are checking them out and enjoying the joyrides, since they’re a fun new toy. So today it was my turn to try one out.

I’d ridden LimeBikes before, in Seattle, so I was familiar with the program. Already had the Lime app and account, so it was just a matter of finding a scooter using the app, scanning the QR code and riding away. Actually, giving it a couple kicks, then riding it away. A few observations about the riding experience.
– Acceleration isn’t super fast, which is probably a good thing.
– The large rubber tires handle curb bumps, small potholes and other urban pavement problems pretty readily. I already have a Razor A5 (large-wheel, adult size) scooter, and these seem noticeably more capable on rough stuff. Still, I’d hate to misjudge and crash one of these at speed.
– Speed is deceptive once you really get going. If the speedometer is accurate, mine topped out at around 18 mph on flat ground, dropping only about 1mph in a significant headwind. At first I thought the speedometer was optimistic, but later I noticed myself gaining on and passing bikes with the thing.
– Slows down a lot on inclines. On a couple of 5-7% grades I quickly found the speed sagging down to around 5 mph. Giving a kick every few seconds (something I’m used to on my own non-electric scooter) allowed me to get back up towards 8-10 mph.
– Coasts fairly well. The “throttle” is strictly on-off and the scooter will want to travel in the mid to high teens if you just hold it on, but if you don’t mind some on-off jerkiness you can pulse and glide the thing (classic hypermiling technique, BTW) and maintain a lower average speed, presumably with huge battery savings. This can be useful on rough pavement or in tight conditions. You don’t want to be going 18 mph all the time.

I did about a 4 mile loop from Minneapolis’ downtown East area, over to the UofM on the Dinkytown greenway, back to the West Bank area on the Washington Avenue bridge, then back downtown.

I personally like walking and wouldn’t use one of these to go less than half a mile or a mile unless I was in a big hurry to catch a bus or something. But for 1-5 mile trips it would really shine. The riding experience was great. But THEN I had some serious check-in problems, which I’ll describe in a separate post.

I nearly got run down by a “bird-bro” waiting for a bus at 6th & Main: on sidewalk at 15 mi/hr and busting all traffic signals. No helmet.

It does look like he was having “serious fun,” though.

Next time that happens we’ll find out he likes an elbow in the gut followed by a face plant.

I foresee antifas on escoots in conflict with police hanging off their big riot van.

after one day of working downtown (im a bike messenger, so im out and about a fair bit in the central core) – my anecdotal, non-scientific, and hopefully not-to-confirmation-biased (full disclosure: ive been dreading the arrival of the e-scooters) observations:

– saw only a few in the morning, and numbers built through the afternoon. i thought i was seeing scoots from 2 companies (one of which, by the lime green highlights, im assuming to be lime. the other two might have similar-looking dark grey/black scoots)

– *maybe* 10% wearing helmets, which i thought were required by law? (regardless, a pretty laughable requirement, filed under “yeah right”) also plenty of cops downtown, as always. they seemed unconcerned at this point.

– lower incidence of sidewalk-riding than expected, probably around 20%. fully expecting this to increase. of those riding on sidewalk, though, there was a high incidence of full throttle.

– lots of wrong-way riding, stop sign running and other lack-of-awareness violations.

– i dont believe for a second that these things are speed-limited to 15mph. no way, no how. i know what 15mph is, and i got blown past while riding 15mph on multiple occasions.

– there definitely seemed to be several packs of riders who were on e-scoots all day, which to my eye were people likely in the employ of the scoot companies, riding them around for visibility/advertising purposes. not wearing helmets, throttles wide open. at least they werent on the sidewalk, though.

– only had one cut me off dangerously. surprised that it wasnt more, but give it time.

– extremely high incidence of e-scoot riders wearing flip-flops. this will not end well.

not the apocalypse yet, but ill reserve judgement on that until they reach plague-of-locusts numbers.

I’m pro scooter, but I was disappointed to see quite a bit of bad behavior on my ride home from work this afternoon.

First I had to dodge two scooter bros on NW Naito that were all over the place in the bike lane. Another group was sitting on their scooter and riding in the street. That same group also thought it was a good idea to weave in and out of the cars lined up waiting for a train under the Steel bridge and were riding under the gate and around the train. The Eastbank had a couple scooter riders darting around peds and cyclists also.

I’m hoping this is temporary and things will be better after the novelty wears off. They’re a great last mile travel option for folks that use public transit.

Toby Keith
Yikes. We are not advocating physical attacks on people who ride scooters are we? Have we really come to that here?Recommended 0

A number of years ago I was riding my track fixie set up for cross on the 205 path to a medical appointment. Suddenly a very large young woman jumped out into the middle with arms spread to tackle me so her boyfriends could beat and rob me.

That bike was powerful and agile, so I accelerated and headed right at her. As she jumped aside I rode by, punched her out, and continued amid a shower of stones.

Every moral and legal system from the Summa Theologica to Oregon Revised Statutes recognizes the proper use of physical action in self defense. The only answer to aggressive idiots is payment in their own coin.

Mess with me and I’ll mess with you.

I am not sure we have much hope as a civilization. We have a very limited amount of resources needed to transition from a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewably sourced electricity. This transition will require battery storage of all types and our best bet is Lion batteries which are dependent on limited supplies of Lithium and cobalt. We don’t seem to have the discipline or foresight not to squander these scarce resources ( not to mention the waste products and pollution given off) on toys for Scooter Bros.

Anti-escooter here. So far, their only contributions to the city have been bad behavior, road hazards, junk, batteries, and excuses not to exercise. None of which we need more of. Not looking forward to the full launch, when they will really become a scourge.

I looked into them and decided that they weren’t for me. But for other people they might work out well. They’d be better than cars at any rate.

But then one dropped off outside my house started yelling, bleeping to high heaven and threatening to call the police. Thank g-d it was during the day. If it had happened in the middle of the night I would have been tempted to take a sledgehammer to it. Or maybe just call the cops on it.

Well, here’s an unexpected “e-scooter in support of bikiness” story.

I was dropping off my cargo bike for service this morning ~1.5 miles from work. Although it’s a spot well-served by transit, waiting and transferring means walking is faster than transit. I usually take BikeTown to work after dropping of the cargo bike. But this morning, the BikeTown network was down (or at least, pressing buttons on 3-4 bikes resulted in nothing, so I assume the BikeTown network was down).

So instead, I took an e-scooter. And, what’s better, I could cargo-bike to where an e-scooter was, load up the e-scooter in the cargo bike, bring the e-scooter to my bike shop which is a bit out of the way, drop off my cargo bike, and e-scooter to work. I got to work just on time, whereas I would have been quite a bit late walking.

I’ll be doing the reverse this afternoon. I think I’ll be taking an E-scooter if I can find one because with the exact amount of cargo that I have (a backpack and a heavyish, lowhanging bag), it’s easier to carry on an e-scooter than on a BikeTown bike.

Recent data shows 60% of scooter rides displace motor vehicle trips. The TNC’s own data is also showing scooter trips competing aggressively with TNC car trips.

What this means for me is the potential for less pollution on my bike commute. Every summer I show up at work sometime barely able to talk due to a very raspy throat. Every fall when it starts to rain again the problem goes away, not to come back until the next Summer. After getting checked out by my doc and trading question, he say its likely inflammation due to air pollution. For me, this problem correlates specifically with riding downtown, and every year the downtown pollution problem seems to get worse. He suggested I just drive to work. Many newer cars have good air filters, including even HEPA filters how, and they make HEPA filters that plug into the lighter. However I don’t want to be part of the problem and make the problem worse for others with the same issue as I have.

Scooters have the potential to lower downtown air pollution, while also providing me a summertime backup plan if my problem becomes worse. If I can ride a scooter, I don’t need to breath deeply and can cut my exposure time. Active transportation is great, but not always an option for those with respiratory problems, which are actually very common. Transportation options should not be available only to people in perfect health.

The few scrapes and bruises I have gotten from years riding a bike pail in comparison with the potential damage from air pollution. An estimated 200,000 die in the US every year directly from air pollution. Its also a major culprit for chronic disease, leading to an estimated 150,000 cases of diabetes a year. Studies show that exercise offsets this on average, but those distributions have wide tails and likely many die or become sick regardless of the exercise benefit.

There are other ways to improve downtown air pollution, but so far those solutions don’t appear to be going anywhere. Scooters could provide very quick mitigation, vs waiting decades for other improvements.

New cars – the kind typically used for Uber etc – are very clean. 90% of vehicle air pollution is produced by the 25% dirtiest vehicles, likely being commercial vehicles and older cars. Reducing Uber trips will have quite minor impact on vehicle-produced air pollution. Reducing truck traffic will make far greater difference. Without the impacts on our sidewalks and streets from scooters.

Toys for tots.

From what I have seen of the characters riding these things. so far, is that it looks like the main purpose of these e scooters is to get the kind of folks who would drive their pickup or adventure-mobile with the roof top tent to work but can’t find any city center garages with tall enough roof clearance, so they park a bit farther out where bloated parking is available and ride the last mile on a scooter. I guess that is a bit of progress.

From the stories I am hearing about these things making loud noises when moved or tampered with I am assuming that the security plan for these eventual thousands of scooters is to have the Portland Police Department take on the lions share of burden in keeping these things from disappearing in to someone’ s basement or the playgrounds of Estacada. The same Police department that is too understaffed to properly enforce traffic laws or prevent bike theft. To me this seems like a private company offloading a large portion of its operating expenses on to the public. I will change my tune if the taxes on these scooters result in increased PBB staffing and better traffic enforcement, but for now I doubt it.

But, but, but,,, People here love them, including the editor..
Pieces of battery powered fossil fuel junk cast about like garbage is somehow the flavor of the month for Progressives?
Really???
They replace walking, that is about it.
I saw 5 on my bike commute home today, about the same as every day since they showed up.
5 people just scootering around, seeming like just a lark thing to do. Nothing about transportation.
Another new shiny capitalist object toy.
WTF is wrong with Bike Portland?
Do you dare print this?

Bird app shows only 4 scooters east of 205 as of 7:30 am. Its been that way every morning – only a few scooters in East Portland. Scooter companies are required to deploy 20% of their fleet in East Portland. They don’t seem to be complying with that condition of their permit.

“The total number of e-scooters allowed to operate in the city will be capped at 2,500, with a requirement that companies deploy approximately 20 percent of their fleet each day in East Portland. ” https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/690215