The Flawed Law That Aims to Tame E-Scooters - Bloomberg

In the name of safety, the District of Columbia just made an important change to its shared e-scooter rules.

Ever since shared e-scooters appeared in 2017, companies offering them have struggled to dispel concerns about their dangers — both to the riders who pilot the tiny machines and to sidewalk users who consider the devices to be hazards. An increasingly popular way for cities to manage that latter risk: force e-scooter operators to install “lock-to’s,” a locking mechanism that a rider uses to affix their vehicle to a bike rack or street sign after completing a trip, thus preventing discarded scooters from becoming obstacles for pedestrians or those using wheelchairs. San Francisco and Minneapolis already require lock-to’s, and Portland, Oregon intends to do so as well.

In D.C. , the local city council passed a bill requiring lock-to’s last year, granting e-scooter operators like Bird, Lime and Spin a year to comply. “I don’t think these are outrageous requirements, but I think they’re important ones” council member Mary Cheh said as she championed the bill. “And it’s for safety’s sake.” (Cheh did not respond to a request for comment).

Is that really true? Protecting vulnerable road users is certainly an urgent priority in Washington, D.C., where traffic fatalities have risen 32% in the four years since Mayor Muriel Bowser made a Vision Zero commitment of zero road deaths. (Last month, the city’s auditor announced an investigation into the city’s Vision Zero initiative.)

But it’s automobiles — not scooters— that pose the greatest risk to Washingtonians’ lives, and the city’s lock-to requirement has no effect on them. Worse, flawed thinking behind D.C.’s new rules could have the unintended consequence of pushing people away from scooters and bikes and towards driving — making Vision Zero (and the city’s sustainability goals) more of a stretch. The city’s lock-to requirement is a deeply flawed policy, likely to cause more harm than good.

D.C.’s law draws from the experience of Chicago, where the city added a lock-to requirement to its second e-scooter pilot last year, crediting it for a sharp drop in 311 complaints for misplaced scooters. D.C. Councilmember Cheh cited Chicago’s pilots when she advocated for the e-scooter bill last year, telling the Washington Post that “the experiences and legislative initiatives of other jurisdictions have informed our own legislation — a perfect example being a locking-mechanism requirement that is already estimated to improve parking compliance by 75% in Chicago.”

But that causality is dubious at best. Chicago officials used 311 complaints as a proxy for parking compliance, a metric easily skewed by a few passionate e-scooter haters. (Two years ago I heard a San Diego official claim that 80% of citywide e-scooter complaints came from the same 20 people.) It’s also plausible that Chicagoans would naturally gripe more about e-scooters when they first appeared, growing more accepting over time. And — importantly — Chicago reduced the number of permitted e-scooter company from 10 in its first pilot to three in its second. With fewer competitors, an e-scooter operator has less incentive to flood the market with devices and a stronger one to deploy technology and workers to reposition those that are misplaced.

So Cheh drew a lesson that she shouldn’t have from Chicago’s experience with lock-to’s. But she also missed an important element of Chicago’s pilot: The city threatened scooter companies with a fine of $100 for every improperly parked scooter, much as San Francisco does. D.C. Council’s bill didn’t create any such penalty, giving operators and riders little reason to alter their behavior. One of D.C.’s loudest scooter critics, local resident Steven Reichert, spotted that flaw, telling Post reporter Luz Lazo that “the big problem with the bill is that no one is charged with enforcing its provisions, and I doubt riders or scooter companies will follow the rules.”

Marla Westervelt, the director of policy at the nonprofit Commission on the Future of Mobility and a former Bird employee, is also skeptical: “The scooter companies aren’t going to start thinking about enforcement for this rule until they get fined.”

Nevertheless, the five e-scooter companies that operate in Washington, D.C. have dutifully attached cable-style locks to their fleets and sent emails and push notifications to users, alerting them to the lock-to requirement. Even without strong enforcement, the new rules will probably induce more riders to affix their e-scooter to a bike rack or signpost. That, however, may create new kinds of problems. The city permits more than 10,000 shared scooters (plus around 4,000 shared e-bikes), but has installed only around 7,500 bike racks to serve residents, who are among the most likely in the U.S. to bike to work. The new lock-to requirement will pit e-scooter riders against cyclists in competition for a limited number of safe and legal places to park. (Last Friday, the first day when the new rules were in effect, a predictable shortage of bike racks on the National Mall was already drawing attention.)

San Francisco more than doubled its pace of bike rack installation when it added its lock-to requirement. In a press release, the District Department of Transportation committed to adding 1,000 new bike corrals in 2022, but that’s still several months away. (DDOT did not respond to a request for comment.) Meanwhile, the challenge of parking a bike or scooter could lead some District residents to avoid the hassle and drive instead — putting more cars on the city’s streets, hardly helping the city attain its Vision Zero aspirations.

But at least those managing a stroller or using a wheelchair will benefit from the lock-to mandate, right? Don’t be so sure. A scooter lying in the middle of the sidewalk can usually be pushed aside; one locked to a street sign and blocking a curb cut might not be so easily moved.

To be fair, Washington, D.C., is not the only city whose officials have waved the mantle of safety as they impose restrictions on a new and comparatively benign mode of transport. In Columbus, Ohio, for example, the city recently banned e-scooters from a portion of the city in order “to assist the Division of Police in curbing crime and heightening safety and security in the district.” As one resident tweeted, by that rationale it’s probably time to ban cars, too.

So why do city officials focus on scooters when cars and trucks are the real menace to residents? It’s about politics.

Even in a comparatively multimodal city like Washington, D.C., driving is the most common way to commute. Steps like banning right-on-red, completing bike networks, and redesigning dangerous arterials such as North Capitol and Massachusetts Avenue would protect vulnerable road users, but they risk antagonizing drivers — many of whom vote. Shared e-scooters may be mostly innocuous, but they present an easier target, especially because cities control companies’ operating permits. Automobiles, meanwhile, are mainly regulated at the federal level. Thus, a city like D.C. caps the speed of shared e-scooters at 10 mph, while reckless drivers of automobiles weighing 100 times more can drive as fast as their machine allows.

Instead of taking real steps to protect vulnerable road users, D.C. officials have given residents a toothless e-scooter rule that’s likely to increase driving. Officials in other cities should seek Vision Zero inspirations elsewhere.

David Zipper is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government, where he examines the interplay between urban policy and new mobility technologies.

source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-04/the-flawed-law-that-aims-to-tame-e-scooters

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