Micromobility for all

For the Star-Revue’s August issue, I wrote a feature about Revel, the moped-sharing app whose Vespa-style scooters have overtaken parts of Brooklyn and Queens. It wasn’t technically an opinion piece, but because most of Revel’s other media coverage had taken the form of first-person essays by intrepid reporters who, having tried out the product, had intercut regurgitated press-release info with descriptions of their own pleasant or terrifying experiences on the bikes in order to generate a bit of color, I felt emboldened to adopt the same approach.

I tried out the mopeds. More importantly, I figured that a first-person account would leave some room for my own reflections on the somewhat questionable value of Revel’s addition to the New York transportation landscape than otherwise would fit into an ostensibly neutral story about a new company in the area.

I tried not to turn the article into a rant, but I still sought, at least implicitly, to caution New Yorkers not to give in to the notion that tech companies could ever resolve the city’s public transit crisis by bringing us new, compact, shareable modes of trendy individualized transport. The whispered, perhaps even unconscious promise of Revel, along with the e-bikes by JUMP and Motivate and the scooters by Lime and Bird, is of an environmentally friendly patchwork of convenient, for-profit transportation services that, along with Uber and Lyft’s less virtuous cars, will one day allow wealthier New Yorkers fully to opt out of the crumbling MTA.

A hierarchy of personal mobility devices will eventually develop to address different consumers’ “freedom of choice”: a fleet of robot-pulled rickshaws for the rich, a scattering of janky GPS-embedded pogo sticks for the poor. It’s a grim prospect. The New York City Subway (when it works) is not only the best, fastest way to get from Upper Manhattan to Lower Manhattan; the really wonderful thing about it is that everyone rides it together. This is also what some people hate about it.

The MTA must fix its subway and improve its buses. That’s the main thing. But the truth is that, to the extent that “micromobility” services don’t pose a threat to public transit, I mostly like them. My own vehicle of choice is a regular old bike, and even if the subway here were the best in the world, I’d still ride it, but not everyone has the health or inclination to pedal all day. E-bikes and electric scooters offer alternatives.

Occasionally, journalists suggest the notion of a conflict between cyclists and scooter riders, but in reality, they travel at about the same speeds and share the bike lane easily. In fact, as a cyclist, I would like many more companions in the bike lane: the busier it gets, the likelier cars are to notice it and respect it, and the less likely they are to kill me because they’re not considering the road’s non-automobile occupants. A constant of stream of bicycles, motorized skateboards, and self-balancing unicycles on every street sounds good to me.

When I lived in San Francisco, I rolled my eyes at some of the techies on their e-scooters – they looked dorky to me. Even so, pretty much anything beats a car. We may soon resolve their carbon problem, but cars will continue to take up too much space in cities and inspire hostile, alienating urban design.

Cities across the country are now in the process of determining whether to legalize personal transporters and how to regulate them. They must consider the potential safety hazards for riders and the possibility of nuisance for pedestrians if dockless e-scooters should crowd their sidewalks. But many lawmakers also recognize their upside.

Unfortunately, these lawmakers tend to see their choice in limited terms – in short, whether or not to open a new market to Silicon Valley. Their highest hope is to establish rules to circumvent public health hazards while private operators reap the profits. If we deem today’s personal mobility devices worthy as new forms of urban transportation and are willing to make room in our cities for vast new sharing networks centered upon them, we should consider their potential as a public service instead of automatically assenting to their current yuppie-only status.

Governor Cuomo still has not agreed to sign the bill legalizing e-scooters and throttle-assist e-bikes that the New York State Legislature passed in June, but if he does, a new opportunity will emerge, if anyone spots it. We could do better than we did last time.

When the New York City Department of Transportation developed a bikeshare program some years ago, it decided, like most American cities, to hand over portions of its public streets and sidewalks to a private company (now owned by Lyft) for the installation of docking stations. Today, they cover a swath of New York City between Sunset Park and 130th Street in Manhattan.

A 30-minute ride costs $3 (or $5 for an electric bike, once they return from recall). Lyft, which receives no direct subsidies from the city, has to make money here. How many more New Yorkers – especially those who live too far to walk to a subway station – would benefit from Citi Bike if they could instead use their MetroCard to unlock a bike at the rack, ride it to the subway, and then swipe again for a free transfer? Because most Citi Bike users also use the MTA, the former service primarily works for those who can afford to pay for transportation twice.

The feud between Cuomo and de Blasio would present an MTA compatibility hurdle for any transit project initiated by the city, but for the future, it’s not so hard to imagine an integrated system of public micromobility in New York City. Like Citi Bike, Revel’s mopeds end at Sunset Park. A publicly owned version of the app could serve all neighborhoods, not just the ones that are attractive from a business perspective.

Last year, at the peak of Lime and Bird usage in the Bay Area, angry Californians picked the dockless e-scooters up off their sidewalks and threw them into the Pacific Ocean in protest. Others lit them on fire. San Francisco ended up banning them, at least for a while.

But I don’t think it was really the scooters that they hated – I think it was the breezily entitled people riding them. More importantly, it was the social malady that their demographic represented as they whizzed past San Francisco’s homeless encampments and dodged overcrowded Muni buses: inequality. The meaning of new technology isn’t fixed; it depends in part on whom we give it to. We could give it to everyone.

Photo courtesy of GoRevel Instagram