How Los Angeles car culture is being challenged by a shared system of electric scooters
Birds and Limes, the vehicles that are being loved by millennials but hated by some people.
A life with a clean, cheap and shareable transportation is already possible. However, car drivers might not be that happy with such possible dream. For those who live in cities where the public transport works well enough to free people from the compulsory use of cars, Los Angeles might look like a small nightmare when it comes to getting around. Having already lived in São Paulo, London and Tokyo — cities with large public transportation system — LA was always a place where I avoided to be in. But I must confess that I had a nice surprise in my last visit to one of the most car dependent city of California. That’s because instead of driving or taking endless Uber rides I just “birded” around.
I first heard what seemed to be this probably new verb in a Venice Beach bar — “Now I just want to bird around”, said a New Yorker who was wearing a “Mayor of New York” cap, written both in Spanish and Chinese. With the verb “to bird” he was referring to the shared system of electric scooters called Bird. In the same style of transport, another alternative is also Bird’s competitor “Lime”, which has investments from Uber. Working like a bicycle sharing system, that are already common all over the world, Birds and Limes are becoming another clean and quick alternative for cars and sometimes even substituting regular public transportations around some American cities.
The technology behind some of the scooters are provided by Segway– yes, the kinda cool, kinda lame vehicle famous among tour guides or the aka the best friend of airport and shopping malls’ security guards. But both, Lime and Bird, are startups with millions of investment in the venture market. To use the vehicles you just need have the app installed in you smartphone. Since they don’t have stations and can be parked anywhere, you can use the app to find the one closest to you, unlock it and start riding. Besides being immensely fun, birding or liming around is quick, clean and offers a totally new option for the commuters.
A constant connection through app and the scooter offers live information about your vehicle, like battery level and some technical issues that might appear. Unlocking a Bird is easy as scanning a QR code, and through the bluetooth connection both, scooter and phone, keep in constant exchange of information to make sure that users don’t misuse the system. Before parking a Bird, the app also asks you to take a photo and show that you stopped it properly. Along with the technology, the service also offers a glimpse of how a good circular economy can be. Besides riding the futuristic kick-boards you can also become a “charger”. Yes, you bring the scooter to your home, charge them during the night and in exchange you can receive up to $20 dollars per night charge.
But, in spite of all this apparently well done business model and good transportation solution, some people seem a little bit upset with Birds and Limes, or we could even say that they are publicly becoming haters of what we could call the “new crush” of American millennials. In San Francisco Birds were prohibited, which was not a big problem since the city has a quite nice public transportation system and bike sharing options. However, in LA, where the service still running, people are angry, very angry with the poor scooters. Or we could say that they are actually upset with the way that people are using them.
It is normal to see Birds and Limes all over the city, thrown to the ground, covered by sand near to the beach or sometimes even blocking sidewalks. Also, even though traffic regulations say that riding in the sidewalks are illegal, car drives are constantly honking and yelling at Birds and Limes riders when they use the street. However, in general the average use of the scooters also seemed like working pretty well for me. The majority of them are well parked and the riders respect pedestrians in most of the cases. As Peter Kiefer, from The Hollywood Reporter highlights, much of this hate comes actually from the car culture that used to be the rule in LA.
But as we know well, history always repeats itself. Change brings a clash of opinions and ideas. Every new product or culture need their time to fit in on an old context and finally get fully adapted and accepted. We can no longer deny that cars should no longer be the main way of transportation in any city. Offering new options like shared driverless cars or any new type of clean vehicles should be the priority of any local government. And of course, both regulators and service providers, should work hard not just in the improvements of the business but also in the process of changing the culture and in the process of “educating” the users about the new service.
Birds are cool and thanks to them I can clearly say that exploring and enjoying Los Angeles was surprisingly easy and enjoyable. And I hope I can be able to bird around in other cities around the world soon, because I must confess that besides being extremely useful, those scooters are quite fun and addictive.
Mateus Bagatini (Tokyo JP)
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