What We Learned From Santa Monica’s Scooter Meeting: A Turf War Without Much Turf

WHAT HAPPENED, IN BRIEF

• Santa Monica came out with rankings on micro-mobility providers, suggesting Bird and Lime would not be getting permits
• Santa Monica is the hometown of Bird, a crucial battleground
• Scooters were not on yesterday’s agenda, but Bird and Lime stopped service yesterday and asked supporters to a rally at Santa Monica’s City Council meeting. They also stuck around past 12am for public comments
• Bird and Lime argued that the city’s scoring system was opaque and the results didn’t seem to based on any factual evidence
• They asked for a longer review period and increased transparency into the scoring process
• Bird and Lime employees who also made public comments about their two companies and their efforts to improve compliance, safety, and overall service
• There were also pro and con comments made by the public
• The pro side talked about how scooters were increasing their 1st/last mile access. They also noted that it wasn’t logical to bring in brand new providers with no experience
• The con side talked about how scooters had made sidewalk walking very difficult and unpleasant

BRIEF THOUGHTS

• The scoring system did seem highly arbitrary and not based on evidence
• If the city has complaints about the dockless scooter model itself, then bringing in new providers isn’t going to solve those fundamental issues of users misusing scooters
• Those from the public talking about users riding on sidewalks did present legitimate concerns. Walking is a very fundamental and essential part of any community. Sidewalks are the only places to be able to enjoy that freedom. And scooters have now made that small space unpleasant to walk on.

OUR TAKE

Bird and Lime ceded way too much ground to Santa Monica from the get-go.

First, the idea of capping a service or number of vehicles is historically quite unprecedented.

So even commenting that the scoring system was unfair cedes too much ground because it accepts the premise that there should be caps.

From our public comments yesterday:
“It’s actually a massive double standard. Automobiles have 0 caps. Auto manufacturers have no caps. Delivery trucks have 0 caps. And yet they all dominate our public streets. When was the last time Santa Monica studied which type of car or truck kills the fewest pedestrians and rewarded or punished them with permits or caps? It’s unheard of.

These caps are essentially the city of Santa Monica telling its citizens and the world, that if you want to go oil free and gas free, you will be treated as second or third class citizens.”

There should be no permits and no caps. Cars, trucks, and scooters should be treated equally, on a level playing field.

Second, all of the issues arising from the sudden expansion of scooters stems from poor city decisions.

For decades, cities have abdicated their responsibility to everyone but big auto and big oil by designing streets that are almost exclusively for cars, with a little bit of sidewalk left for walking. Scooters are exposing this car-only road model. They’re not the actual problem.

Even as we praised Santa Monica for having built a decent network of bike lanes (relative to the rest of LA), they are woefully inadequate. It is a limited network. Almost none of them are protected.

People ride scooters rid on sidewalks because riding on the street (even on painted bike lanes) is uncomfortable and very dangerous. So where are they supposed to safely ride? Next to distracted, texting drivers piloting 4000lb vehicles speeding on streets?

Third, the fact is, most people like these scooters! So why the kerfuffle? Click-bait, perhaps??

And finally, if safety were the real concern, the city would do and would have done the following:

• It would not allow 4000lb vehicles capable of going highway speeds on 30 mph roads without GPS limiters. Again, here we see a total double standard. Actually, it’s worse than a double standard. Because cars kill thousands of people each year, but scooters do not. If road safety was actually Santa Monica’s true motives, their focus would be on the real problem, cars, not the scapegoat, scooters.
• It would have quickly installed a scooter drop-off zone every block. This would solve the safety issue of scooter scatter on sidewalks. All it would take to store 20-30 scooters is just one car parking lane. Imagine, eliminating dozens of cars with just one parking spot. Why hasn’t the city done this?

This leaves us to believe that the true motives are more likely political, wanting to make an example of Bird and Lime who asked for forgiveness before permission, and reactionary, listening to the small number of constituents who really don’t like scooters (for good reasons).

But instead of taking responsibility and deploying real solutions, Santa Monica has, so far, chosen the easy, lazy, and unprecedented way out: caps and permits.

All the while, the Earth continues heating up, traffic continues to increase.

Santa Monica, we can do better.

A TURF WAR WITHOUT MUCH TURF

Those fighting for the right to move around in anything but a car are already fighting over crumbs. The physical space that car-alternatives are provided in cities is already minuscule.

So alternative mobility companies shouldn’t cede even more more ground, by arguing within the narrow regulatory lines that cities put them in, because there’s not much of it to begin with!

They need to think bigger, advocate for more space, and ask for equal footing to cars before the law and regulations.