The Bird and Lime scooters are parked in front of a building in San Francisco, California.(Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES – Jonathan Freeman, unhappy with the electric scooters that flooded his hometown of San Diego, came to a conference on urban mobility here this week to demand solutions.

Pedestrian life "is being destroyed by unregulated scooters," he told the public during a session about whether "micro-mobility devices" "such as scooters were here to stay. "We are losing the right to walk around."

Freeman's comments sparked a debate on scooter safety last week at LA CoMotion, a transportation conference bringing together innovators and US transit companies to discuss what organizers call "the revolution." of urban mobility ". While manufacturers were showcasing the latest equipment and products, including scooter chargers, electric bikes and even electric unicycles, one of the contractors boasted that his electric skateboards could reach speeds of up to 39 per cent. at 25 km / h. the sidewalks, bringing a dose of reality to the generally sunny outlook on innovative ways to move in overcrowded cities.

The so-called "dockless" scooters – that is, you drive them and leave them anywhere – started appearing on urban sidewalks across the country a little bit ago. more than a year, quickly becoming a scourge for municipal leaders worried about the safety of pedestrians and pedestrians, not to mention the clutter of the street. Cities have recently begun to act by limiting the number of scooters and attacking them at the point where they could be mounted or parked. The scooter companies themselves are opposed to reasonable regulation, as more and more cyclists see scooters as a serious means of transportation, a convenient way to travel short distances, not as a novelty.

In response to Freeman's question at the conference, a representative of one of the largest scooter operators, Bird, issued an empathic note.

"It's really important to understand that," said YJ Fischer, Senior Director of Global Partnerships at Bird. Regulations could be expensive for operators, but "we are willing to make these investments in the community".

Public transit experts view scooters as another way for commuters to build a bridge between their homes and their bus stops or stations. Besides Bird, other newcomers have included similar names, such as Lime, Scoot, Skip and Jump. Scooters are serious business: Jump is part of the Uber remote support service. And the automaker Ford has just spent more than 40 million dollars to buy Spin, a startup of the scooter.

It is only now, after a summer of scooter chaos, that many cities are starting to face.

In California's urban centers, where scooters have become as common as taco trucks, the city of Beverly Hills has decided to impose a six-month scooter ban. San Francisco issued a temporary ban, then restricted the number of operators to two, while Santa Monica strives to designate street parking spaces for scooters. Other cities have tried similar approaches, including Nashville, Denverand Washington, D.C.

In an interview, the mayor of the city, Sam Liccardo, said in San Jose, California, that he was trying to use technology to combat scooter problems. He added that he asked scooter companies to put plans in place to ensure that their products are used safely and not in ways that harm walkers. One idea: use "geo-fencing" technology – a technology that prevents devices from operating outside a designated area – to prevent sidewalk scooters.

Another idea to prevent scooters from piling up on sidewalks would be to continue charging users until they are properly parked. He said that he acted as a result of complaints about driving sidewalks or scooters everywhere.

"We receive a lot of complaints," he said in an interview after an intervention at the conference. "There is no doubt that it is a problem everywhere in dense neighborhoods where we expect a lot of foot traffic."

At the conference, there was hope to bring peace to the streets. Some startups have proposed docks for what used to be dockless scooters. A start-up called Swiftmile, for example, has shown one in which scooters could be plugged in for charging instead of being left behind around the city to allow workers to track and recover to recharge. redeploy

Freeman, a former marketing professor, said that despite the gains, the problems, at least in San Diego, remain.

He said he came to the cause when a scooter rider for the first time met his dog, River, while they were walking in a park. "He's slightly apologized," he said about the runner. Fortunately, the Shiba Inu was not injured. It was only the beginning.

"The next point was the neighbors.They said," I'm afraid to go for a ride, "he said.

Freeman said he had brought the cause of scooter regulation to two of his city's council committees. He even conducted a survey in which he interviewed nearly 100 cyclists, about half of whom were San Diego tourists. Most admitted to taking the sidewalk to get away from cars.

But he added that the nightmare of scooters was continuing and that the police were not issuing enough tickets for curb users.

"This seriously affects our quality of life," he said. "It's a fundamentally dangerous means of transportation."

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