Counting scooters "strewn" on the trails – MVT at the CCC to the Jefferson

[dbb]

As warmer weather approaches, scooters will be more widely used on our trails. Regardless of your position about whether scooters should be permitted on trails, I think most will agree that both riders and scooter companies shouldn’t leave them abandoned alongside the trails. Whether this is a problem and figuring out appropriate action will require data. The trails managers aren’t likely to have the bandwidth to collect that data.

To help with that, I propose forum members help. Let’s count scooters along trail segments and post those counts to the forum. Recognizing the need to park them somewhere, I propose excluding scooters in the immediate vicinity of CaBi stations (on or near the concrete slab) and possibly other places which will be defined as this process gets going. For example, my ride from the intersection of the Crystal City Connector and the Mount Vernon Trail and across the 14th Street Bridge is in three discrete segments;
• The MVT from the CC Connector to the road crossing at Gravelly Point (CC to GP)
• The MVT from the CaBi station at Gravelly Point to the turnoff to the 14th Street Bridge (GP to 14), excluding scooters at the CaBi station at Gravelly Point
• The ramp up to the 14th Street Bridge to the CaBi station at the Jefferson Memorial (14 Bridge)

If we do this, and others add the segments they ride, contemporaneous data will be available to trail managers. I have no idea what the data will reveal but think it is a worthwhile effort.

I’d think that morning rides would be the best times as the evening is when the scooters get collected, charged, and repositioned.

I suppose there would be a similar forum thread for common trails.

Yesterday’s report for the segments would look like

830 am 3 Apr
4 on CC to GP
7 on GP to 14
4 on 14 Bridge

Today I got
815 am 4 Apr
4 on CC to GP
3 on GP to 14
9 on 14 Bridge

Topic

[Judd]

@ChristoB50 189637 wrote:

Four days in San Antonio for a conference this week has opened my eyes to how “bad” it could be… scooters simply everywhere! This morning walking 3 long blocks from hotel to convention, I counted 47 scooters in place. Dozens on the sidewalk in a single block, then repeated block after block. Some are Razor—which enable stand or sit, with far bigger diameter tires… the rest are traditional Bird or Lyft style. Riders zip down the sidewalks and down the streets equally. There are some sections of sidewalk here and there with painted areas as “Designated Parking” for scooters but they are only slightly more heavily used than abandon in place. Quite a sight…

I would ride the heck out of scooters in San Antonio. Too hot there.

[Judd]

I was on a string with the GWMP this week where another Friends group was asking about GWMP’s position on scooters as well as those single wheeled skateboard type of things. Their position is still aligned with the official rules that motorized vehicles are prohibited on the trail unless they are an assistive device. As many have documented, there are a bunch of scooters around Gravelly Point and I saw at least four e-bikes on the commute home tonight as there’s not an enforcement of this rule.

[bentbike33]

This morning about 8:00 there was one scooter on the 14th Street Bridge. This afternoon about 5:20 in the same vicinity there were 3 identical scooters. Mitosis?

[Judd]

@bentbike33 189648 wrote:

This morning about 8:00 there was one scooter on the 14th Street Bridge. This afternoon about 5:20 in the same vicinity there were 3 identical scooters. Mitosis?

I was on a CaBi when I passed the three and grumbled that they were far enough down the bridge that I would cause more of a mess by stopping to move them off the bridge. I’m not trying to sound paranoid, but they sure appeared to have been placed there.

[scoot]

@Judd 189647 wrote:

I was on a string with the GWMP this week … Their position is still aligned with the official rules that motorized vehicles are prohibited on the trail unless they are an assistive device.

So they’ll allow scooters on the highway instead?

[LeprosyStudyGroup]

@Judd 189651 wrote:

I was on a CaBi when I passed the three and grumbled that they were far enough down the bridge that I would cause more of a mess by stopping to move them off the bridge. I’m not trying to sound paranoid, but they sure appeared to have been placed there.

I stopped the other afternoon to sling a scooter in the middle of the bridge over my shoulder and ride it down to the bottom on the VA side. It was def. one of the sketchiest feeling things I’ve done on a bike. Those things are awkward to carry – do not recommend.

[ChristoB50]

@Judd 189646 wrote:

I would ride the heck out of scooters in San Antonio. Too hot there.

Heck yeah. If I’d stuck a day or two of vacation onto this trip after the conference, I could easily see myself firing up a scooter membership, or bike share membership to go explore downtown more…

[scoot]

In addition to offering higher rates for chargers that perform difficult retrievals, perhaps users could be assessed a fee for abandoning scooters in locations that excessively complicate retrieval?

Do the scooters display how charged the batteries are? It seems like the app could offer a remaining distance estimate for each scooter and a map showing locations that qualify for the drop fee, so that the potential rider would know in advance whether they are likely to run out of juice somewhere that would cost them extra.

[lordofthemark]

@scoot 189680 wrote:

In addition to offering higher rates for chargers that perform difficult retrievals, perhaps users could be assessed a fee for abandoning scooters in locations that excessively complicate retrieval?

Do the scooters display how charged the batteries are? It seems like the app could offer a remaining distance estimate for each scooter and a map showing locations that qualify for the drop fee, so that the potential rider would know in advance whether they are likely to run out of juice somewhere that would cost them extra.

There are semi dockless systems that charge you extra if you place bike somewhere other than a dock, but they do so by whether you have actually locked up. This would have to be purely by GPS I guess. Which means while it would help with some things, it wouldn’t help with some of the more common scooter parking complaints, which relate to exact positioning on a sidewalk. So I wonder if the companies are going to bother with such a tech that still leaves them with a bunch of other related issues. Depends what other options they have, I guess.

[zsionakides]

@scoot 189653 wrote:

So they’ll allow scooters on the highway instead?

Not on the GW Parkway, but I believe you could ride them on Rock Creek Parkway legally.

[Author]

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