A tale of two scooter cities – TechCrunch

The children of Madrid's Retiro Park adore their new joy toys on demand. Lime has launched its scooters in the Spanish capital this summer.

Spending a weekend in the city center last month, this craze was inevitable. Scooters parked in bunches compete to save time. Sometimes aligned properly. Too often not.

The brilliant Lime attractions stood out, although it's not the only brand in town. Scooter start-ups have quickly taken the train of the international expansion movement as they seek growth.

Greatly proportioned, El Retiro is clearly the ideal place to take a ride on a scooter. The test rides generate walks, and the children jumped on it. Sometimes two against one.

The boulevard linking the Prado to the Reina Sofia was another popular means of transportation.

While a bustling area of ​​downtown bars was a hot spot for the late landing. Rows of scooters competed for space with the vintage street terminals.

The call was obvious: go to the bar and drink! Do not worry about parking or how to get home later. But for the partygoers on Saturday night, there was suddenly a new piece of urban furniture to float, with a sagging handlebars erect in all directions. Anyone trying to navigate the wheelchair sidewalk would not have had much fun.

In another big tourist town in Spain, the history of the scooter is a little different: Barcelona, ​​the Catalan capital, has not yet invaded the startups of scooters on demand, but scooters are introduced. In recent years, local residents have bought on their own – do not rent.

In electronics stores, big and small, the rides cost a few hundred euros. Even for a flashy Italian design …

Take a stroll in one of the trendiest neighborhoods and you may meet a buyer in the infatuation to get on two wheels. There are a lot of non-electric scooters too, but e-scooters seem to have carved out an increasingly important place with some type of Barcelona native.

Once again, you can see the logic: Well-dressed professionals can walk in narrow streets that are not always very good to find a place to lock (safely) a bike.

There is actually a fairly large variety of electronic wheeled carriages at play for locals with the courage to ride them. Some with seats and / or handles, others with almost nothing. (The hipsters who hold their hands in unbalanced unicycles are quite in plain sight.)

In these two Spanish cities, it is clear that the trend towards micro-mobility tends to bring down the population.

But the difference between on-demand scooters used in Madrid and two-wheeled scooters belonging to Barcelona is a level of goals.

The lime walks in the center of Madrid seemed to be a tourist novelty. At least for the moment, having had only a few months to sleep.

While the organic growth of scooters in the neighborhoods of Barcelona concerns the people who live there and feel a need.

Even the unicyclist hipsters seem to be on the way somewhere.

Jump on

What does this mean for scooter startups? This is another example of how the utility of technology and broader societal impacts may vary when you parachute a new thing to a market and hope that growth will increase, as opposed to organic growth and more. progressive because it is dictated by real demand.

And it's essential to think about the impacts on scooters and micromobility, because all this must be grafted onto shared public spaces. Nobody has the luxury of being able to avoid what is teeming on the street.

That's why many on-demand scooters ended up being thrown in the trash – residents expressing their feelings (not being asked about alien invaders).

In Europe, there is another problem: companies that scooters startups seek to colonize are already well equipped with all kinds of public transport options. So, there is a clear and present danger that these new kids are not moving. And that will simply mean more traffic and additional congestion – as was the case with scaling up.

In Madrid, the first tranche of scooters on demand seems to generate a rather superficial and additive use. Offering an innovative alternative to walking between monuments or bars from a to-do list. They may replace a short taxi or subway.

In the park, they were used 100% for pleasure. Maybe the recipes are at the boating lake.

In summer, Barcelona is full of electric walks on the beach where shops rent all kinds of wheels to tourists at the time. But far from the beach, locals do not seem to waste the load of scooter rolling in circles.

They travel regularly to work, for example. In other words, scooters are useful.

Given all these activities and commitment, micro-mobility seems to offer real transformational potential in dense urban environments. At least where the climate is not punitive for most of the year.

That's why investors are so hot with scooters. But the additive nature of micro-mobility underscores the urgent need to properly manage technology if we want cities, residents and corporations to get the best benefits.

Scooters could certainly replace some moped rides. Even some local car trips. So that they could play an important role in reducing pollution and noise by eliminating the movement of gasoline and diesel vehicles.

Because they offer a convenient alternative, low barrier to entry, with populist appeal.

Not being too fast also means, in and of themselves, that they are safe enough.

If you just go around the neighborhood or if you can plan most of your social life on a few blocks, you will not doubt the convenience. Novelty is not the only lure.

Go down

However, local trips for which scooters are best suited could just as easily be done on foot, by bike or through public transit options such as the metro.

And the crowded streets of Barcelona seem no less filled with gasoline engines – for the moment.

Which means that scooters are both an opportunity and a risk.

If policymakers comply with regulations, a smart city can take advantage of their fun factor to keep commuters away from more powerful but less environmentally friendly vehicles – with potentially significant gains to be made.

Subsidized scooters, associated with a set of congestion zones that levy royalties on petrol / diesel engines, are a simple example.

A clever policy could open the possibility of excluding cars almost entirely from city centers, so that the streets can be redeveloped for new leisure and retail opportunities that do not require a large amount of space. paid parking.

Pollution is a chronic problem in almost every major city in the world. Thus, redeveloping downtowns to make them more people-centric and less toxic to human health by moving cars would be an incredible victory for micro-mobility.

While scooters are easy to use, they offer a suggestive insight into what is possible if we dare to rethink urban architecture to prioritize people over four-wheeled vehicles.

Yet, if the policy was bad, scooters could become, at best, useless relevance. A ride that disrupts go anywhere. Another nuisance in the streets already stifled. An optional supplement that feels disposable and is thrown away because nobody feels invested.

In this scenario, technology is not socially transformative. It is rather an antisocial nuisance. And a waste of resources because it only disrupts the march.

Scooter startups have already encountered some of these problems. And that's not surprising given the speed with which they try to grow. Their first expansionist game book may also look like Uber again.

Yet Uber could were the pioneers of micro-mobility itself. But being "focused on growth" with the laser apparently gave the company a tunnel vision. Only now, under a new CEO, everything is changing. Now, Uber wants to be a unique platform for all kinds of transport options.

But how many years have you lost to losing the disruptive potential of the upcoming micro-mobility because it was too busy trying to install more cars in the cities – and to ignore what the residents thought about it?

The obsession with growth at any price could be the side effect of large investments in venture capital. But for startups, it's really beneficial to stay self-conscious, perhaps especially when you're investing in money. Otherwise, your investors could finance your biggest blind spot – if you miss the next even more transformative disturbance.

The really smart trick to do is not to "go fast or try"; it is smart growth that relies on the application of innovative technologies that involve whole communities with them. This is the true transformation.

For scooters, it does not just mean throwing them on cities without thinking of anything, beyond a profit from everything that moves. But involve residents and communities in the direction of travel. Partnership with citizens and policy makers on appropriate incentives to steer innovation as best as it can.

Move people around cities, yes, and move them from their cars.

There is little doubt that Uber's old book of 'growth at any price' was a huge and damaging waste (especially for the reputation of the company). And now, he needs to redefine a more inclusive approach while eliminating an "ecologically insensitive" legacy for which the original playbook does not really look elegant.

Scooters startups are still young and have made some of their own mistakes trying to hunt early. But there are reasons to be happy with this new generation of mobility startups.

They see it as a sign of value and opportunity to be actively involved in the environments in which they operate. They also learned good lessons from the need to be very sensitive to shared spaces.

Bird announced a program this summer offering discounted rides to low-income people, for example. Lime has a similar program.

These are small but interesting steps. Hoping we will see many more.