86 SMITHSONIAN.COM | December 2019
When people actually own their scooters,
they worry about carefully storing and
riding them. On-demand users don’t,
and the fi rms seem willing to tolerate the
resulting equipment damage. As Carlton
Reid—author of Roads Were Not Built for
Cars—points out, the fi ght for bicyclists’
rights was a genuinely grass-roots move-
ment. “The diff erence now is the compa-
nies are doing this—it’s Uber, it’s these
companies that own this, the Limes and
the Birds,” he notes. On the other hand,
having scooters distributed all around
town is part of what helps them become
widely used, rapidly.
Some argue that cars are the problem:
We give them so much space there’s lit-
tle left. Given the emissions of automo-
biles, and how routinely cars kill people,
they shouldn’t enjoy such largess , argues
Marco Conner, deputy director of Trans-
portation Alternatives, a think tank in
New York City. He’s in favor of scooters,
and thinks cities should build more bike
lanes—to give scooters a non-sidewalk
place to ride safely—and reallocate one
curbside car-parking space per block for
micromobility parking and charging.
Scooters do reduce car use, he argues:
When Portland, Oregon , studied how
residents used the scooters, it found 34
percent of the trips replaced a car trip.
“We’re accommodating the movement
and storage of multiton lethal vehicles,”
Conner says. With the rise of micromo-
bility, the fi ght is on again to see what
type of wheels will rule the streets.
Scooters
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