the theft problem also exists with bicycles (and to a lesser extend with mopeds, motorcycles, and cars of course) and people still own those, they just use locks and keys to try and deter theft
i don't know, i just find the whole idea of "just pray that there happens to be a random scooter near you whenever you want to go anywhere" to be extremely retarded. like, what are you supposed to do when there is no scooter? stay home until someone randomly decides to leave one at your door? you can't plan for anything like that, seems fucking retarded
the scooter idea (and it kinda works, somewhat, if you ignore the details when looking through VC glasses) is that it replaces walking, which can be a big boon to pubic transport
like take a metro system (because bus suck, ignore bus) - here's one from
2014 from what looks to be washington, dick country:
The colored areas (lol colored) are the places that are within half a mile walk to the train. That's about a ten minute walk; and that's pretty reasonable; most people will walk ten minutes rather than driving unless they need to carry stuff, etc, etc. Infinite scooters everywhere should in theory increase that limit to about a mile or a bit more; making the circles above much larger in area.
The PROBLEM is that if you are scootering to your metro connection, you now have to carry that damn scooter with you on the train, and that's a bitch; but if there's infinite rental scooters you just leave it at the station and grab another one at your destination.
That's the idea, anyway, and it
kinda somewhat works in that people USE the stupid things, but once you remove the VC subsidy and make them mostly niggerproof, they're heavy, ungainly, expensive, and so you have to charge too much and people will stop using them.
And even if you hire people to clean them up, you still have the problem of needing it when you step outside your house/work/etc, and if the one you brought there is gone, now you're walking to the scooter collection somewhere, and maybe it would have been quicker to just walk to the bus/train/whatever anyway.
thus is summed up the idea behind the shit. maybe it could work as a subsidized part of the transit authority itself
everyone of these idiots (and us too, probably) needs to step back and realize that what we have here is a TRANSPORTATION QUESTION and people actually don't give much of a shit about what method they USE beyond getting from point A to B safely, quickly, affordably, and comfortably. Cars win on that in a bunch of cases but you can at least make the other options not suck absolute donkey dick, but that requires being turboracist nowadays apparently. Imagine subway stations that looked like Moscow's, but in Niggertown, USA:
how fast would it deteriorate to New York? And half the damage visible here isn't even caused by feral urban yooths:
you can just put a bike lock on the scooter and get the same level of protection
the problem really isn't securing the device, it's the amount of time you're fucking around with it
if you have a 10/20 minute bike ride, it's worth the minute or so at the end to fuck around with the lock, because in 20 minutes you've gone much further than you could have walked
but a ten minute scooter ride, if you have to fuck with a lock for a minute on one or
both ends, screw it, just walk; the extra minute or so almost makes up the difference
(note, if you are a massive landwhale like the average american, this calculus may change)
