E-Scooter Rentals in MA

[Badusername]

With the recently passed e-bike legalization in the Transportation Bond Bill, do we expect more communities to allow dockless e-scooters like Bird and Lime?

Massachusetts seems to be an outlier in how few of its cities allow dockless vehicles. A google search is showing only P-town and Pittsfield allow them currently. If someone has more information or knows where to find an up to date list of cities with these programs that would be helpful.

What factors make MA unique in its lack of e-scooters? My theories:

1. The fuzzy legal definition. If so, I would expect to see widespread adoption with the new bill.
2. BlueBikes being owned/operated by cities rather than private companies. Boston area cities may have a conflict of interest. There is an incentive to prevent competition with BlueBikes.
3. Community opposition. While this is the stated reason for early trials getting pulled from MA cities several years ago, what factors would make MA residents more opposed than any other states? I would expect MA and Boston specifically to be more in favor of micro-mobility given its existing bike infrastructure is superior to most of the country’s.

Curious to hear people’s thoughts. I didn’t see an existing thread, and it didn’t seem like this fits in the “Biking in Boston” thread.

 

[Stlin]

Full disclosure: I own an electric scooter - and prefer lugging it with me to dealing with rentals. So my experience with these in other cities is that they've generally been substantially limited as a result of community feedback. Most cities with them now have a plethora of no-park / no ride zones, mixed with a few different flavors of other restrictions. DC for example has a requirement to park locked to a bike rack as otherwise a fine can apply, San Diego you can only stop in designated parking areas. As far as the SD option goes, that makes it about as convenient as a docked option when there isn't one nearby (the convention center, for example).

Places that are now introducing them are introducing them a lot slower - requiring training modules in app, in limited neighborhoods etc - especially in cities with extant bike share programs, I feel that there's less urgency, but I generally don't see these as competing per se with traditional bike shares. They serve a different distance, comfort range, and in a place with both like DC, they both seem well patronized.

What I would actually love to see with the legalization is what some other cities have done: docked e-bikes, as in Blue ebikes. The docks can double as charging stations, reducing upkeep. This is what NYC has done with CitiBikes, and even a city like Omaha has these mixed in.

 

[MjolnirMan]

As someone who has extensively used docked bikeshare in Boston AND dockless bikes/scooters in Providence, the latter is a bit of a disaster.

In Providence, bikes are not only docked by users in the middle of narrow sidewalks wherever is most convenient for them, they are often deployed this way by the companies, leading to ill will between resident pedestrians and the bikeshare system. With such sporadic placement (even given Providence's "dockless bike bike racks" originally installed for JUMP several years ago before they went kaput), it is therefore not reliable for a daily commuter - unlike Hubway/BlueBikes where I know there would be several coming and going near my place of work or home, I can't guarantee there will be any near enough to me to be useful when I need them. The scooters also don't go fast enough to be reasonable to use on mixed-traffic roads (intentional speed cap due to city concerns about dangerous use), but have "do not ride on sidewalk" written on them. There are also various unexpected "no-ride zones" like Stlin mentioned, including on Providence's new "bicycle and pedestrian bridge", which the city decided is just a pedestrian bridge. Requiring the use of an app to unlock the bikes opens the door to performance issues and glitches that you don't usually see with a BlueBike code or key fob. With several competing companies, you MAY see lower rates, but at the expense of having to juggle multiple apps depending on what is available. Corporate discounts become more complicated to provide. I have had a plethora of headaches with the Providence system(s) over the years.

I would much rather improvements and continued investments to BlueBike, including deploying ebike models like Stlin suggests, over opening the door to the various other dockless companies as in Providence. These are easier for the cities to plan around, from things like expanding in proportion to community usage, to issues around routine snow clearing, that Providence clearly does not have down:

 

[737900er]

Community opposition. While this is the stated reason for early trials getting pulled from MA cities several years ago, what factors would make MA residents more opposed than any other states? I would expect MA and Boston specifically to be more in favor of micro-mobility given its existing bike infrastructure is superior to most of the country’s.

Boston has good use of the existing bike infrastructure, and if there are more users it will create conflict with the incumbent users unless additional capacity is added. Even if there are "no scooter zone" rules or whatever, it's unlikely there will be much/any enforcement.

This being the Boston area, the possibility of inter-city/town squabbles where Brookline has different rules than Boston which has different rules from DCR seems high.

 

[erom]

Agreed, adding ebikes to the bluebikes network is MUCH more desirable to me than adding dockless anything.

 

[jl326]

Dockless scooters would be terrible. I imagine too many would find their way into rivers, reservoirs, the Harbor, etc. as well as on the tracks of the Green Line.

I know this isn't related to one-time use rentals, but I recently found out that Unagi offers monthly subscriptions on their electric scooters. I thought that was pretty interesting.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Anyone promoting dockless scooters or any dockless e-transport needs to do some serious research on the exceptional mess this practice caused in Chinese cities.

They ended up with mountains of useless dockless garbage that had to be bulldozed off of the streets. Total nightmare. People do not behave responsibly with dockless transport.

 

[Jahvon09]

As someone who has extensively used docked bikeshare in Boston AND dockless bikes/scooters in Providence, the latter is a bit of a disaster.

In Providence, bikes are not only docked by users in the middle of narrow sidewalks wherever is most convenient for them, they are often deployed this way by the companies, leading to ill will between resident pedestrians and the bikeshare system. With such sporadic placement (even given Providence's "dockless bike bike racks" originally installed for JUMP several years ago before they went kaput), it is therefore not reliable for a daily commuter - unlike Hubway/BlueBikes where I know there would be several coming and going near my place of work or home, I can't guarantee there will be any near enough to me to be useful when I need them. The scooters also don't go fast enough to be reasonable to use on mixed-traffic roads (intentional speed cap due to city concerns about dangerous use), but have "do not ride on sidewalk" written on them. There are also various unexpected "no-ride zones" like Stlin mentioned, including on Providence's new "bicycle and pedestrian bridge", which the city decided is just a pedestrian bridge. Requiring the use of an app to unlock the bikes opens the door to performance issues and glitches that you don't usually see with a BlueBike code or key fob. With several competing companies, you MAY see lower rates, but at the expense of having to juggle multiple apps depending on what is available. Corporate discounts become more complicated to provide. I have had a plethora of headaches with the Providence system(s) over the years.

I would much rather improvements and continued investments to BlueBike, including deploying ebike models like Stlin suggests, over opening the door to the various other dockless companies as in Providence. These are easier for the cities to plan around, from things like expanding in proportion to community usage, to issues around routine snow clearing, that Providence clearly does not have down:
View attachment 27198

I don't think that anyone would rent a scooter in the winter! If they do, they're stark-raving crazy!!!

 

[MjolnirMan]

I don't think that anyone would rent a scooter in the winter! If tjhe do, they're stark-raving crazy!!!

Regardless (people in the northeast do still commute in the winter, including by walking and biking), the companies still deploy the units as they are often mandated to via contracts, and they do not do a good job prepping their fleet for snow. While BlueBikes can coordinate with the cities to shut down or reposition docks based on seasonality, and they create standard-sized and predictable footprints for their docks in former parking spaces or on sidewalks, a dockless system of bikes or scooters locked to fences and signs or left on sidewalks leads to chaos (at least, in Providence, which has far from a functional ability to clear snow generally).

 

[stefal]

Dockless scooters would be terrible. I imagine too many would find their way into rivers, reservoirs, the Harbor, etc. as well as on the tracks of the Green Line.

I know this isn't related to one-time use rentals, but I recently found out that Unagi offers monthly subscriptions on their electric scooters. I thought that was pretty interesting.

They're especially a nightmare around larger events (sports, concerts, conventions, etc.). With how the typical sports fan sometimes behaves/the hive mentality on the T before and after a game, a few of them on scooters is recipe for disaster.

 

[Stlin]

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the City of Boston's Director of streets, recently posted a photo with a NYC Citi E-Bike - I didn't realize that the company that manages these both here and in NYC is actually owned by Lyft, but per Streetsblog Mass, apparently they brought their newest model up for decision makers to experience while they're investigating the potential for Blue E-Bikes.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1569477378308702209

Boston Officials Test-Drive New Electric Bikes for Potential Inclusion in the Bluebikes System - Streetsblog Massachusetts

"We're looking at what it would take to add e-bikes to the Bluebikes system, and I wanted to try out the hardware," says Boston's Chief of Streets, Jascha Franklin-Hodge.

mass.streetsblog.org

 

[Vagabond]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1569477378308702209

Boston Officials Test-Drive New Electric Bikes for Potential Inclusion in the Bluebikes System - Streetsblog Massachusetts

"We're looking at what it would take to add e-bikes to the Bluebikes system, and I wanted to try out the hardware," says Boston's Chief of Streets, Jascha Franklin-Hodge.

mass.streetsblog.org

Do I hate that bad bike riders will now be fast bad bike riders?
Do I love that I would not despise biking up my neighborhood hill on those heavy blue creatures?

 

[theSil]

I took my first ride on one of the next gen citibike e-bikes a couple of weeks ago. They’re shockingly powerful, even compared to the previous generation of citibike e-bikes. Was able to fly across the Williamsburg bridge - which is a pretty serious climb - without breaking a sweat in 80 degree weather.