No surprise to me. May I refer to the my two posts a few comments up from this one?
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I’m seeing that the number of Bird scooters will be increasing this week.
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At 8:30ish there were tons of them available and then when I checked the app a few minutes after 9 there wasn’t a single one around. The people who charge them are really quick at picking them up.
I rode one Sunday until the battery was completely depleted, this was around 5PM, within an hour a charger person had snagged it.
How are your first impressions coming along? I think I’m having some bad luck here.
1st attempt: flawless
2nd ride: Scooter was unlocked but wouldn’t accelerate. (battery was half full) Had to walk 2 blocks to get another that did work.
3rd ride: Scooter was unlocked on the app but not in real life, the alarm went off as I tried to use it and wouldn’t work. Walked 2 blocks to look for a second one and could not find the scooter according to its location on the app. Gave up and just called a Lyft.
So far, not so good for me. Bad luck or are others seeing stuff like this too?
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Did you try a few kick-pushes before rev-ing the acceleration? I had to do that today to get my scooter to start. Maybe they are getting water logged 
Definitely fun to ride but I am not willing to consider them a dependable mode of transportation yet!
I’ve rode twice and found it really easy to use, and I’m 6ft 6 so I looked ridiculous all hunched over but oh well.
I weigh 240, I think I read 200lb is the maximum weight, it went about 12MPH or so on flat smooth concrete/asphalt but when I tried to go up even a small hill I was going slower than someone walking would.
It was fun but I doubt that I ever use them to get around DTR. I work downtown but I just walk if I’m going a mile or so, any farther and I’d drive or take the R Line.
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Wife and I live near Seaboard and have taken a combined 10 rides already. Zero problems with any of the Birds. Glad they deployed more over the past few days.
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you definitely need to kick start them. They’re good at maintaining speed but not great at accelerating.
I’ve had 3 flawless trips so far. I just wish there were more “nests” outside of downtown.
Ridden them a few times.
Their location map in the app is a bit wonky and slightly inaccurate but mostly still helps you find a scooter.
The ones I’ve ridden accelerated fine. I found it’s better to do a few pushes to start. Might be a lifelong habit of skateboarding that makes it feel natural.
I noticed in the mornings that scooters are placed in particular places (very neat) from the folks who charge them.
And you can ride them one-handed if need be. You can always drag your foot to slow down while letting off the throttle.
And good luck riding thru City Market’s cobblestone streets. I think I lost a filling. LOL
Bummer. The only time we tried they out when the first arrived, the first scooter I tried showed plenty of battery but wouldn’t go. Traded it out and that one worked fine but when we stopped it wouldn’t let me lock the scooter. Re-starting the phone made it responsive again.
Made me wonder what you would do if your phone died or broke while you’re riding - couldn’t figure out a manual way to lock up and the help feature on the app was pretty worthless.
One handed is a pro-move. It gets wobbly fast.
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It’s not too bad and I had my coffee in the other hand.
Just to add, yesterday another 100 Birds hit the street. With about 20 or so of the total Birds damaged, the total on the street is around ~330. I’m not aware of another shipment as of yet. Also, please don’t ride them and leave them on NC State Campus. They will capture them and hold them hostage and are not playing nice at all. Lime bike has an agreement with the University which is why you see them littered all over.
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Maybe NCSU will work out something with Bird. They need “nests” on the main campus and Centennial Campus.
I’m told Bird has their legal department working with NCSU so hopefully soon. I believe there were nests on campus during the initial few days but were promptly removed when they started confiscating the scooters. I’ll update this thread when I hear something new about this.
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In general these motorized scooters should be a complement to our city getting around without cars in an increasingly dense urban area. I fear that there will be rude behavior and injuries if we don’t keep them from riding on sidewalks. I have hear other cities are having real problems with them vs pedestrians (SFO).
It is against the law in Raleigh.
Sec. 11-2121. - DRIVING ON SIDEWALKS.
The driver of a motorized vehicle shall not drive within any sidewalk except at a permanent or temporary driveway .
( Code 1959 , §21-19; Ord. No. 1988-103, §1, 1-5-88)
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Some chatter at my company got me thinking about the dockless devices (bikes, scooters, the next thing) and how best to balance their use on public streets but prevent us from these stories of clutter or in worse cases, urban garbage.
I think the main problem with dockless is that its inherent nature to be useful is to have a large supply. With a large supply though, the risk of urban clutter is higher and the value of the devices is lower. This leads to people devaluing them and doing bad things. (throwing them into the ocean, off parking decks, putting them in trees, yes this is all happening)
Well what if the city regulated just the supply?
What if the city said that they think Raleigh can support 500 scooters and then put out a bid for vendors to supply this. One or two (more if needed) can operate but they operate for these 500 slots. So 1 company can grab all 500 slots or maybe just 300 and another company picks up the remaining 200.
Then they deploy the scooters and the city operates as usual. If more is needed, they ramp up the numbers accordingly.
The supply is in check which may lead to less clutter because the scooters are more likely to be moving. (being used) Since there are less, that makes them a little more valuable and might lower the instances of people wrecking them. (harder to find one to wreck)
What do you think?
The cities that have 4 or 5 vendors might have a gross oversupply of devices leading to problems. If these cities only need 500 but 4 vendors show up with 500 each, that’s 1500 unnecessary devices. Simple example but you get what I mean.
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I think some cities have programs where they start with a given number (~100-200) for a city our size, and the permitted companies can put new scooters on the ground when they can show that the current scooters are getting a certain number of rides per day, somewhere around 2.5/day.
This allows the companies to make their own business decisions with an elastic cap that keeps rivals from getting in coverage wars.
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Personally, I think that the most useful thing about any dockless transport system would be their GPS data that could tell us the most traveled and underserved routes in the city.
Imagine if the vendor started with dockless and then built a docked network based on what they learned. It would be a win-win in my book. It would especially eliminate abuse and trashing of units because users would be accountable for their safe return.
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Kind of like a taxi medallion? Gives the city the ability to regulate certain aspects of the system. I think the market is taking care of this on its own to some degree, with many underperforming dock-less bike companies exiting cities that were over supplied (See DC).
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