I own a couple of bicycles (and no car), I bicycle regularly, and I think
others should bike, too. I liked it when my city had a bike-sharing program; it
encouraged people to bike, and helped introduce a lot of people to actual,
sensible bikes, with internally-geared hubs and the like. I liked it when we
had competing bike-sharing services.

This year we don't have any bike-sharing services. What we do have are two
scooter-sharing services. (There's supposed to be a third, but they haven't
actually deployed any scooters yet, despite it being the middle of July.)

Earlier this week I took my first scooter ride, thanks in part to a promo code
I got for a free first ride. It wasn't completely "free", as I still had to
fund a $10 balance, but the ride itself didn't cost me anything.

I can see why people like them... but I can also see why they're not
economically-sustainable businesses.

I needed to go somewhere about two miles away. I could easily have biked it,
but checking the scooter app showed that, against all odds, there was actually
a scooter available about two blocks away from me. So I walked over to it,
scanned the QR code on the handlebar, and took off.

The scooter was, apparently, a Ninebot ES4, made by Segway. Mine had definitely
seen some use; it was scratched up pretty good, and the front tire was clearly
pretty worn. The controls were also super twitchy, but I don't know how normal
that is. I don't mean the steering, which is inevitably going to be twitchy on
something like this, but the throttle and brake.

On the scooter I rode, the throttle had maybe a one-eighth-revolution travel.
Half that distance did nothing, and then the difference between "just moving"
and "full speed" was about a sixth of the available range. Beyond that you just
kept going full speed.

The brake had the same amount of travel, except that it started to engage about
10% of the way into its travel, and you hit full lock-up-the-wheel braking at
about 25%. I infer this is intentional, for some bizarre reason, because the
instructions actually warn you not to use the front brake, but to use the rear
one, which entails standing on the rear fender (no really) and mashing it
against the rear tire. This on a $900 scooter, lol.

So the controls were twitchy, but, whatever. I got used to them, and by the end
of my two-mile journey, was pretty comfortable with the whole experience.

What was not comfortable was the ride. The suspension is nigh-useless, and has
essentially no travel. Coupled with the tiny wheels, you feel every little
crack in the pavement, every pothole. Even if you absorb some of it with your
knees, it's not pleasant, and it can't be good for the scooter.

What also can't be good for the scooter is hitting stuff because of the
ridiculously low ground clearance. At least three times I scraped fenders on
the ground, and while negotiating a particularly unpleasant street, the bottom
of the frame got to meet asphalt. No biggie, that's just where the main battery
pack lives.

I'm not really sure what the target use of these scooters originally was.
Getting around college campuses? They just don't seem to be designed with use
on typically awful city streets in mind.

And then there's the inevitable tragedy-of-the-commons thing, where people
abuse them because they're not their personal property. I certainly didn't
"drive it like I stole it", but I'm sure there are people who do. And just from
the battering mine took on my little two-mile ride, it's easy why the lifespan
of these scooters seems to be measured in weeks.

Also, an observation about mileage, while I'm here. I went pretty much exactly
two miles, and used 10% of the Ninebot's battery, according to the scooter app.
This would seem to put the range at somewhere around 20 miles, far shorter of
the manufacturer's claim of 28 miles. Perhaps the battery was already wearing
out from a few weeks of heavy use. Perhaps I'm just too damned heavy. I don't
know. I think part of it might be that the scooter app folks have the vehicles
set to some kind of performance mode, not eco mode, but, eh.

My other big gripe is the difficulty of carrying anything on them. They're
purely people movers. The twitchy steering is only going to get worse if you
add a basket to the handlebars. Hanging grocery bags off the steering tube
seems like a recipe for disaster (also, where the hell are you supposed to
stand, then?) and I guess you could carry stuff in a backpack or shoulder bag,
but that's pretty limiting. Not that they're meant for carrying groceries, or
other utility service. They're just supposed to get people from point A to
point B, I guess.

Anyway, they're fun, if slightly impractical. I'll probably continue to use
them, while the services last, as and when they fit my needs. I wouldn't buy a
scooter of my own, though, or at least not at retail prices. If I could get an
impounded scooter at a police auction for under a hundred bucks, it could be
rebuilt as a non-rental unit for $30 or so. At that price, the limited utility
and short lifespan might make sense, for my use needs. But that's not likely to
happen, I suspect.