Scooter Share Will Be a Boon for New York

Originally published in Streetsblog on February 26, 2021

hared e-scooters have come a long way from their arrival on the scene three years ago, and are now about to take their place on the streets of the most populous city in the country. New York City recently made e-scooters legal after years of trepidation. A proposed pilot program has shared e-scooter companies such as Spin, Lime, Lyft, Voi and Bird competing to serve The Bronx this year, and eventually all boroughs other than Manhattan.

Will e-scooters be a blessing or a curse for the city? It’s no mystery why they were long seen by some as a potential disaster for a place as densely populated as New York. Back in 2017, when Santa Monica beachgoers and commuters joyfully took to this innovative, inexpensive way to get around, it didn’t take long for things to turn sour. Riders parked in the middle of the sidewalk, blew through red lights, and ran over people’s toes. A tidal wave of backlash and annoyance followed.

This yin and yang has defined the shared mobility space for over a decade regardless of vehicle type, from Uber to dockless bikes. In the summer of 2020, the same week, a lawsuit was filed against the two largest shared e-scooter companies alleging that maintenance problems led to serious injuries, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was making shared micro-mobility options such as e-scooters part of a clean energy plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Even with this backdrop, there’s reason to believe that e-scooters will be a boon to New York City. For one thing, the pandemic has changed the cityscape. Despite the fact that e-scooters had been illegal to use on city streets, sales skyrocketed by triple digits in the five boroughs since the pandemic began. They provide a relatively portable, emission-free, socially distanced way to get around the city. Low-cost, shared mobility options have proved to be a transportation lifeline for some essential workers who can’t afford or don’t want to own a vehicle. Shared bike programs in New York City have become an ever-more relied upon necessity as a socially distanced alternative to public transit and post-Covid-19, scooters and bikes will continue to be valuable assets in cities, extending the value of public transit lines by miles.

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America's big cities have blocked off streets to cars during the pandemic. It should stay that way.

Originally published in Business Insider on August 9, 2020 (written with Kay Cheng)

Prior to the pandemic, it was difficult for any American city dweller to imagine cars ceding their reign over our streets.

We've given over space to vehicles in crowded urban centers for decades. But our cities didn't always look this way. Take a trip through New York City in this MOMA film, cut together from archival footage from 1911. 

In nearly every frame of the old film, it is pedestrians that dominate the city, rather than vehicles. Fifth Avenue is a promenade with pedestrian space spanning the width of two car lanes. Sidewalks are wide, some with huge plant beds. "Parking" in this era did not have anything to do with cars — parking referred to the park space allocated alongside the roadway.

Madison Avenue looks like the reverse image of the traffic-jammed thoroughfare of today, with a narrow lane for vehicles and pedestrians meandering from the broad sidewalks onto the roadway, rather than being forced to the controlled crosswalks of today.

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, when you walked or biked through New York City, the experience was unlike any version of the city that has come before. Streets were nearly empty of cars and trucks. The air was clearer, the roar of traffic suddenly quieter. 

Now, walk through the city and you'll bump into some of the miles of streets that have been closed to vehicles as part of the city's "Open Streets" program. The city is on its way to closing 100 miles of streets to traffic, to give residents space to be outside while complying with social distancing requirements. Diners, pedestrians, bikers, skateboarders, scooters and roller skaters are slowly emerging from their confinement to reclaim what was lost to the automobile for a century.

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