Charlotte Bike / Scooter Sharing

[TheOneRJ]

They aren’t usually hard to find in Uptown. The scooters are available 24/7. Lime requires you to wear a helmet, but I’ve never seen anyone wearing one while riding 

Edited July 21, 2018 by TheOneRJ

[kermit]

I have seen more than 20 scooters on my quiet residential street in Dilworth today -- roughly on par with the number of cars that have gone past.

[lit]

On 7/20/2018 at 11:50 AM, Matthew.Brendan said:

Yeah I took my kids uptown last weekend specifically because they wanted to ride the scooters and we spent the better part of an hour walking around trying to find some. All were “under maitenenace” or empty on charge.... oh well. 

 

On 7/20/2018 at 8:30 PM, TheOneRJ said:

They aren’t usually hard to find in Uptown. The scooters are available 24/7. Lime requires you to wear a helmet, but I’ve never seen anyone wearing one while riding 

The best time to find a few scooters to ride around would be early in the morning. Bird Scooters all shut down for charging at 9pm (unfortunately they’re not 24/7). Chargers have to capture them, charge them, and release them all at “nests” (usually in groups of 3) between 4am and 7am. If you don’t release one by 7am, you don’t get paid same-day for that Bird and the bounty will go down so chargers are extra motivated to release by 7am. 

 

Bird also encourages riders to wear helmets and offers free helmets (you cover shipping costs) but you’re supposed to be 18+ with a valid drivers license.  

https://www.bird.co/safety

 

source: I am a Bird charger

[TheOneRJ]

1 hour ago, lit said:

 

The best time to find a few scooters to ride around would be early in the morning. Bird Scooters all shut down for charging at 9pm (unfortunately they’re not 24/7). Chargers have to capture them, charge them, and release them all at “nests” (usually in groups of 3) between 4am and 7am. If you don’t release one by 7am, you don’t get paid same-day for that Bird and the bounty will go down so chargers are extra motivated to release by 7am. 

 

Bird also encourages riders to wear helmets and offers free helmets (you cover shipping costs) but you’re supposed to be 18+ with a valid drivers license.  

https://www.bird.co/safety

 

source: I am a Bird charger

Lime scooters are available 24/7. 

[Matthew.Brendan]

https://www.curbed.com/word-on-the-street/2018/7/13/17246060/scooters-uber-lyft-bird-lime-streets

 

Thought this was interesting. 

[kermit]

meanwhile in the bike world: ofo appears to be pulling out of US markets although they have not said anything specifically about Charlotte.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/07/18/ofo-bikes-us/#13984f4a2785

Edit: and Mobike is likely not far behind

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by kermit

[dylansukkert]

19 hours ago, kermit said:

meanwhile in the bike world: ofo appears to be pulling out of US markets although they have not said anything specifically about Charlotte.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/07/18/ofo-bikes-us/#13984f4a2785

Edit: and Mobike is likely not far behind

 

Honestly wish there was just Lime bikes and scooters. I would not have to worry about if I had that app or if I had money on a certain app.

[kermit]

It may be from Portland but the lesson applies equally well here. The local version of Creative Loafing asked readers to email examples of scooter riders behaving badly. This is what they got instead:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2018/07/30/we-asked-readers-to-tell-us-about-scooter-riders-behaving-badly-instead-we-got-tips-about-cars/

 

[JoshuaDrown]

17 hours ago, kermit said:

It may be from Portland but the lesson applies equally well here. The local version of Creative Loafing asked readers to email examples of scooter riders behaving badly. This is what they got instead:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2018/07/30/we-asked-readers-to-tell-us-about-scooter-riders-behaving-badly-instead-we-got-tips-about-cars/

Goodness I love Portlanders... and props to Willamette Week for owning that and publishing that piece, written in that way. I wonder if we would have that kind of self-awareness from our local media?

[kermit]

This is interesting, Bird has:

Quote

pledged to contribute $1 per scooter per day into a fund that will pay for projects that carve out street space where its users can ride without getting intimidated by drivers or aggravating people on sidewalks. The company urged other scooter and bike-share firms to do the same.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/08/02/scooter-company-bird-offers-to-pay-cities-to-build-bike-lanes/

Good motivation for the city to increase the number of permitted scooters.

EDIT: Any chance of changing the name of this thread to Bike and Scooter Sharing?

 

Edited August 2, 2018 by kermit

[kermit]

I continue to be amazed by the breadth of appeal that the scooters have. I have seen nearly every demographic riding one regularly (missing are old-ladies and toddlers but that is about it).  I have seen people carrying cases of beer and even other scooters on their scooters. Unfortunately their don't seem to be enough of them to consider them to be reliable transportation (e.g. you can't be sure there will be one available when you finish lunch). Despite that their appeal is so strong to people that they really can be a game changer for urban transportation.

Any politician who does anything to limit the availability of scooters needs to quickly be labeled as environmentally insensitive.  More of these things will certainly reduce car trips.

[SgtCampsalot]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

I continue to be amazed by the breadth of appeal that the scooters have. I have seen nearly every demographic riding one regularly (missing are old-ladies and toddlers but that is about it).  I have seen people carrying cases of beer and even other scooters on their scooters. Unfortunately their don't seem to be enough of them to consider them to be reliable transportation (e.g. you can't be sure there will be one available when you finish lunch). Despite that their appeal is so strong to people that they really can be a game changer for urban transportation.

Any politician who does anything to limit the availability of scooters needs to quickly be labeled as environmentally insensitive.  More of these things will certainly reduce car trips.

I have almost wiped out only twice: Both times I was attempting to carry something in my hands/arms rather than a backpack, etc.

Which brings us to another good point: I think these scooter shares will encourage people to buy their own (maybe with baskets or buckets for goods).

There are models that can be pulled like a suit case, perfect for anyone with an office job. And it would pay for itself after 4 months of saved car insurance payments!

Edited August 13, 2018 by SgtCampsalot

[KJHburg]

this from LA LA land of Southern California 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/08/13/southern-californians-are-tossing-electric-scooters-into-ocean-burning-them-report.html

[JorgiPorgi]

I rented a lime scooter, one time, last week. Since then I've been doing research on the best scooters to buy, longest battery life, etc.  They are great!

[dubone]

I continue to be a big proponent of the scooters and bikes and potentially ebikes in the future.  One concern I have had in observing riders in Charlotte, even if Bird did trickle-donate to new bike lanes (which seems to just be a Cali PR stunt), is that I have seen first hand at least a half dozen times as scooters are going fast on sidewalks even with an empty bike lane 3 feet away from them.  

 

I think these are novice riders that don't feel safe on the bike lanes, but don't realize they are going far too fast on the sidewalks.  I'm glad it is not illegal to ride them on sidewalks, as I often ride bikes on sidewalks in areas with unsafe roads, but always at walking speed.   

Hopefully the city is actually observing the natural behavior of these new riders.  Maybe our bike lanes should be like dutch bike lanes which appear more like a sidewalk than a shoulder on a fast road.  That is, protected bike lanes.   

 

To me, there ought be a generational shift CIP type fund where in one fell swoop we fund a $500+ million catchup on protected bike lanes.   We now need them because our ridership has shot up exponentially. 

There is somewhat of a framework for that, http://charlottenc.gov/Transportation/Programs/Pages/Bicycle.aspx .  But I believe there is not a transformative-level of funding to go along with those plans.  

 

 

[dubone]

I haven't seen it mentioned

On 7/24/2018 at 9:42 PM, kermit said:

meanwhile in the bike world: ofo appears to be pulling out of US markets although they have not said anything specifically about Charlotte.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/07/18/ofo-bikes-us/#13984f4a2785

Edit: and Mobike is likely not far behind

 

I haven't seen any news on Mobike, but I noticed Ofo pulled out when one of their bikes got stranded in front of my house.   2 weeks later, it is still there, although I called 311 to deal with it.  ( Low key,I kinda hope word gets around the homeless so they clip the locks on those and use them as communal bikes for them to reduce theft.  )

http://charlottenc.gov/Transportation/Programs/Pages/BikeSharePilotProgram.aspx

I do not agree with the sentiment that we want it to just be a single provider, but I do think we want it to shrink down to just 2 to keep competition but not have to feel obliged to download 10 apps to check what is closest.  Lime obviously had the most visibility, so they are probably going to survive, but I do hope one or two competitors remain for pricing competition. 

[SouthEndCLT811]

Mentioning dutch lanes reminded me of staying in Richmond borough of London they had these bike lanes protected from the street with a dedicated sidewalk next to it

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4653382,-0.2965257,3a,75y,92.65h,68.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSYjfuKjgEC_l3GGQfDLD2g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[dubone]

16 minutes ago, SouthEndCLT811 said:

Mentioning dutch lanes reminded me of staying in Richmond borough of London they had these bike lanes protected from the street with a dedicated sidewalk next to it

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4653382,-0.2965257,3a,75y,92.65h,68.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSYjfuKjgEC_l3GGQfDLD2g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Exactly.  That is more like the dutch lanes I'm used to.  The opposite problem happens where pedestrians wander in to those lanes with somewhat fast moving cycles and mopeds, though.  

I think our plan for protected bike lanes is good, but it is severely underfunded.  but there should be a much better story to tell now about the pent up demand for bike and scooter mobility and the need for those lanes.  

The 6th Street "Cycle Track" will be a an awesome first stage to that, but even that is just in design and not funded.  

 

Just looking at the paltry list of bike / ped projects on the plans for the next round of TIP funding is pretty sad.  Granted we finally have the money to get major progress on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway and a few others, but there really is no major push to actually have a sort of solid system any time.. ever. 

http://crtpo.org/PDFs/Prioritization/P5_0/P5.0_Division_Needs_NonHighway.pdf

[dubone]

41 minutes ago, SouthEndCLT811 said:

Mentioning dutch lanes reminded me of staying in Richmond borough of London they had these bike lanes protected from the street with a dedicated sidewalk next to it

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4653382,-0.2965257,3a,75y,92.65h,68.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSYjfuKjgEC_l3GGQfDLD2g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Total coincidence, but we were talking about dutch bike paths on the sidewalks and another good dutch infrastructure ended up on the reddit front page today.  I don't know if Charlotte needs this style of in-ground dumpters, but NYC definitely does with all the mountain of trashbags on the street all the time.  

In much of NL, the pink part of the sidewalk is the bike path.   Ignore it to your own peril

Now, in Charlotte, we have those 1 foot sidewalks, so I suppose that would need to be 6 inches of bike lane and 6 inches of pedestrian area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2278031,-80.8509137,3a,45.9y,21.21h,76.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sX0aGDKnL6cO5hi_d8F24cg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

[dylansukkert]

Spin seems to be the most popular where Silos, Solis, and The Junction apartments meet on remount at the light rail cross. In the morning there will be 20 lined up perfectly then in the evening they will all be gone.

[Matthew.Brendan]

I’m in Denver for the week and am loving the protected bike lanes here. 

[nakers2]

My brother came to town over the weekend, we parked in Southend and intended to ride to Uptown and back using Limebikes since we both have the app, but after walking a few mins we noticed an abundance of Spin bikes (orange) so we downloaded the app and rode those instead. Did not see a single Limebike till we got close to Uptown. Seems like there's never one around when you actually need one, but when you don't you're just falling over them. Same with the scooters, I have yet to ride one because they all seem to be dead. 

[Spartan]

21 hours ago, dubone said:

I continue to be a big proponent of the scooters and bikes and potentially ebikes in the future.  One concern I have had in observing riders in Charlotte, even if Bird did trickle-donate to new bike lanes (which seems to just be a Cali PR stunt), is that I have seen first hand at least a half dozen times as scooters are going fast on sidewalks even with an empty bike lane 3 feet away from them.  

 

I think these are novice riders that don't feel safe on the bike lanes, but don't realize they are going far too fast on the sidewalks.  I'm glad it is not illegal to ride them on sidewalks, as I often ride bikes on sidewalks in areas with unsafe roads, but always at walking speed.   

Hopefully the city is actually observing the natural behavior of these new riders.  Maybe our bike lanes should be like dutch bike lanes which appear more like a sidewalk than a shoulder on a fast road.  That is, protected bike lanes.   

 

To me, there ought be a generational shift CIP type fund where in one fell swoop we fund a $500+ million catchup on protected bike lanes.   We now need them because our ridership has shot up exponentially. 

There is somewhat of a framework for that, http://charlottenc.gov/Transportation/Programs/Pages/Bicycle.aspx .  But I believe there is not a transformative-level of funding to go along with those plans.  

 

 

I think the problem with people riding on the sidewalks is cultural. Many/most millenials and even xennials and GenXers grew up using bikes and scooters as toys, not a legitimate way to get around, and parents told them to ride on the sidewalk because streets are dangerous. There isn't a great way to reverse that mentality, but I do think bike lanes would help quite a bit... if you can keep pedestrians out of them.

[Nick2]

These scooters are almost hard to use because by the time you walk to one on the app, it's already being taken. They're incredibly popular and fun as hell. I love them. Super convenient.

 

[deleted]

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/transportation/sd-me-dockless-bikes-fate-20180820-story.html