Speakers featured on this epsiode

Brianne Eby is a policy analyst for Eno, where she conducts research on various topics related to the transportation industry. She has written at length about what dockless scooters mean in the context of reduced carbon emissions, disruption of car culture, equity in public transit, and increased investment in public transportation infrastructure. Prior to joining Eno, Brianne conducted research on transportation behaviors as a graduate student, and on helping cities and metropolitan regions achieve inclusive and sustainable growth as a research assistant at the Brookings Institution. Brianne earned her B.A. in Psychology from Indiana University and her M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Follow her on Twitter: @brianne_eby.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez covers transportation for the San Francisco Examiner. Joe is a long time San Francisco resident and pretty obsessed with transit, so he has followed (and written about) the scooter issue closely. He also writes the weekly political On Guard column. Reach him at joe@sfexaminer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @FitzTheReporter.

Transcript

Reem Rayef [00:00:00] Odds are if you live in a large to medium sized city in the U.S. you've seen dockless scooters crop up in your neighborhood in the last year or so. Dockless scooters are battery powered and they're reminiscent of the Razor scooter I remember riding as a kid. Except these can go up to 20 miles per hour. They're managed through smartphone apps. They're backed by huge dollars from the venture capital sector and city governments across the U.S. are having a really hard time figuring out how to regulate them. Dockless scooters like Lime and Bird claim to represent a solution to the transit problems faced by growing cities. They're a last mile option for commuters traveling to and from train stations or bus stations, they extend to neighborhoods that aren't reachable via bus or subway, and they might even get cars off the road. These scooter operators want to be an extension of the public transit systems, but city regulators, here in the Bay and elsewhere, complain that these scooter operators are not very good partners in transit. In most cases they unilaterally launch their services in cities that weren't prepared to regulate them. There were no existing frameworks about where you can ride a dockless scooter or where you should park it and whether or not you need a helmet.

Reem Rayef [00:01:07] I'm Reem Rayef And this is Talk Policy to Me, a podcast from the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the future of young Americans. In this episode we highlight a new policy issue born from the intersection of tech and transit policy: Dockless scooters in San Francisco and beyond. I called Brianne Eby, a policy analyst at the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington D.C. to talk about how cities are coping with the sudden introduction of dockless scooters to their streets and sidewalks. Brianne has written at length about what dockless scooters mean in the context of reduced carbon emissions, disruption of car culture, equity and public transit, and increased investment in transportation infrastructure.

Brianne Eby [00:01:50] So the purpose of dockless bikes and scooters both is to expand transportation options. I do think that they're succeeding at this because we are seeing usage in parts of the cities where there previously were limited transportation options and so for example in DC the docked bike system Capital Bikeshare has been slow to expand dock bases bases in lower income neighborhoods and we're seeing that dockless bikes and scooters are in fact serving those populations. And you know I think this is trying to is starting to repeat itself in other places around the country. I also think that they're succeeding in terms of getting people who wouldn't regularly bike onto these devices and so you think about people wearing business clothes, ties heels skirts things like that. I see those all the time and of course that's just an anecdotal experience. But I do think that we're seeing people that wouldn't otherwise engage in active transportation and start to use this new form of mobility.

Reem Rayef [00:02:56] Okay so part of the benefit is getting cars off the road and getting people out of Ubers and then part of it is getting kind of this new form of transportation to people who might have been in these gray zones where they weren't able to get on a bus or on a docked bike.

Brianne Eby [00:03:10] Yeah. And you know I think I'm certainly sympathetic to the possibility for this to have good environmental benefits. You know the data is still out on that and the tricky thing with environmental implications is that you know emissions in one place don't stay in that one place. They transfer over to other cities and regions, you know, emissions are certainly a regional or more macro level thing. But I do think that this is a great strategy for encouraging folks to explore other mobility options.

Reem Rayef [00:03:46] Sure. And in terms of the equity argument how exactly does that work in that you're allowed to check out a dockless scooter or bike from anywhere and leave it wherever you want. So how do you make sure that they actually do end up extending to underserved populations in areas where there aren't other methods of transportation?

Brianne Eby [00:04:05] So I think this is something where the companies themselves have a lot of potential to innovate and you know we're seeing some companies that are providing incentives for people to to rebalance bikes and honestly this is happening at the docked bike level as well. So with Capital Bikeshare and I think Citi Bike in New York they've started to implement a program where you know people, riders, can get their money back or some other form of incentive for parking in a certain place that you know that has more of a demand or more free docks or you know needs docklessu bikes and scooters.

Reem Rayef [00:04:41] So it seems like there is a really huge opportunity here for the operators to really cooperate with with city and transportation experts to make this really work. But it seems like in San Francisco at least there has been this adversarial relationship between cities and the dockless scooter operators. Why do you think that that shakes out that way.

Brianne Eby [00:05:02] Yeah you know I haven't followed San Francisco persay too closely but the last I heard I think the city was going to allow six hundred and twenty five scooters each for two different companies and then eventually potentially increasing that limit to twenty five hundred devices per company. But for a city of nearly a million people that that's really not a lot. I think that there are there are ways that cities might be a little too apprehensive.  You know I certainly understand caution when it comes to a new industry a new or a new service coming coming into your city. But you know if we really are talking about expanding usage then then it's worth stepping back a little bit and saying how do we actually make that happen and is placing a strict limit on the amount of bikes and scooters. Is that really the best strategy.

Reem Rayef [00:05:57] You raise a really good point about these dockless systems being a really good way to serve underserved populations and people who aren't able to hop on a bus or don't have a docked bike system near their home or near their work. So that's part of it. Maybe they're serving an underserved population, but then on the other side you'll see a lot of vandalism of scooters and bikes because people view these docked and dockless systems as kind of a signal of gentrification. So they're, in the bay at least, they're dumping them into the bay or they're sticking stickers on them and vandalizing them kind of as a form of resistance. So where do you think this major backlash to scooters is coming from given that they might be serving this really important purpose?

Brianne Eby [00:06:40] Yeah I think like all things that's you know it's new and unfamiliar unfamiliar. And it's shaking something that is really deep in people's cores which is car culture. There's a strong desire for people to be operating in personal vehicles and to not share the space with other types of users. And certainly I don't mean to generalize and give a blanket statement there but I think that this is just. My point is this is something that's really shaking people's way of thinking about how space should can and should be used. And the same point could be made with the lag in infrastructure for bikes in cities. You know our many of our city streets haven't caught up with expanded use in bikes in recent years. So I think that I think that we're seeing people you know reacting to something that's new and unfamiliar.

Brianne Eby [00:07:35] I do think though that in terms of technology I think that there is a space for dockless bikes to really set a new precedent. And so by that I'm thinking of you know in terms of equity. So we're thinking of people that you know maybe don't have smartphones or don't have access to banks and I think that this is a discussion we should certainly be having not only with dockless bikes and scooters but let's think about Lyfts and Ubers, anything really that we use a phone for you know today. How can we expand usage for  various apps or services to people who don't have that technology? And so I've written about this in one of my previous transportation weekly articles and how certain companies, I think Lime had a model where they were allowing people to basically charge an account that was tied to their name that they could then use to access dockless bikes and scooters all without the use of a phone or even a bank account. You just have to I think have five dollars to load onto this account and then you can get rides charged that way.

Reem Rayef [00:08:45] What about the safety aspect? Who is responsible for making sure that these dockless systems are used safely?

Brianne Eby [00:08:51] So I think that's an opportunity for partnership between all, and by all,  I mean cities, the companies and the users themselves. I think a lot of the burden there comes down on the companies again. I think there's an opportunity for them to innovate and actually incentivize safe behavior. But again I don't think that a helmet requirement is something that is really the most effective. And it's also incredibly difficult for cities to enforce that. You know if we have police officers that suddenly policing or requiring helmets to be worn by all scooter [riders] by doing that at the expense of people who are potentially running red lights in their cars. I think that's maybe a misplacement of priorities. But again I think that this is a shared responsibility for all three entities.

Reem Rayef [00:09:48] And so the helmets are one aspect of the safety conversation, and then others will tell you these scooters only belong on sidewalks, or they only belong in bike lanes. Do you have an opinion on that?

Brianne Eby [00:09:59] Yeah you know I tend to think that folks should be operating in the bike lanes. That's what's allowed in the permits city to city. And so that's where folks should be using them. However the one caveat to that is a lot of cities, to this day, don't have the proper infrastructure to accommodate bikes and scooters and so I think the real discussion that we need to be having is how can we encourage more infrastructure, and not only that but what role do the companies play in making that happen and so we're seeing a lot of companies that are pledging to donate a portion of their profits to ensuring that infrastructure does in fact get put into places and cities. So I think that dynamic between companies, the role that companies play in an expanding bike infrastructure, you know bike lanes, whether it's protected or painted lanes. The role that they play in making that happen and partnering with the city to make that happen is crucial.

Reem Rayef [00:11:09] That makes a lot of sense. So that would be a cost to the city though, and in what ways are dockless bikes and scooters representing kind of a drain on the city's resources?

Brianne Eby [00:11:21] You know I think the company actually helping to defray the cost is crucial and I think that that's a really great example of where the private sector can be working with the public sector on solving this problem.

Reem Rayef [00:11:36] I know this is a tough projection to make but what does the dockless scooter look like in a city like San Francisco or Washington D.C. or New York maybe five years from now or 10 years from now?

Brianne Eby [00:11:47] I think there's a range of opinions. I think some people areskeptical that they'll be around, I mean these are venture capital funded and this is this is something that plagues Lyft and Uber too: what happens when the funding runs out? They're not really running on sustainable financial models right now, so they're not charging riders very much per trip and are primarily operating off of venture capital funds right now. So how long do any of these services really have to survive? So who knows. We'll see. I think scooters have already far surpassed  the length of time that a  lot of people thought they would be around, and I would love to see them still be a part of our larger landscape in the future. And I think the more that we can build the infrastructure for them, the more they'll linger.

Reem Rayef [00:12:40] To learn more about dockless scooters, micro mobility, and the future of urban transit find Brianne's work at enotrans.org, or on Twitter at brianne_eby.

Reem Rayef [00:12:50] The Talk Policy to Me team has a lot of great episodes in store for you this season. We're looking at Title Nine laws at Berkeley, universal basic income, and affirmative action. And if you missed it, we've also produced some episodes on food policy, young voter behavior during the midterm election, and resegregation of housing. Is there a policy issue we haven't covered yet that you'd really like to hear about? Let us know. Find the Goldman School on Twitter or write us an email at talkpolicy@berkeley.edu.

Joe Rodriguez [00:13:20] I have tried the scooters twice myself in Golden Gate Park when they were first unleashed in their disruptive mode without permits or city permission. And as a guy who does not know really how to ride a bike, I have no sense of balance. So when I was riding that lime scooter, careening down JFK drive on Golden Gate Park, I bit the sidewalk pretty hard -- twice. I couldn't walk right for a good two weeks. My knee was pretty screwed up and I bled. It was great. Great and Terrible.

Reem Rayef [00:14:04] That was Joe Rodriguez, a transit and transportation reporter at the San Francisco Examiner. I spoke with Joe at the end of September when there were no scooters in San Francisco. Scooter operators had been unceremoniously kicked out of the city by regulators who cited many of the concerns and frustrations I discussed with Brianne. Primarily safety, but also equity and generalized angst with tech industry hubris. I wanted to talk to Joe because he's a longtime San Francisco resident and he's kind of obsessed with transit so he follows this particular issue closely. We spoke about how the dockless scooter story isn't a standard battle between government and innovation. It demonstrates the ways in which the Bay Area represents a unique transit challenge. We're a petri dish for fresh ideas and solutions that come from the tech sector, but we also have extremely bad traffic, a history of high participation in public transit, and very visible gentrification, wealth inequality, and homelessness.

Reem Rayef [00:14:59] So that safety issue is obviously a concern of many of the regulators in San Francisco or that's kind of what they're what they're saying in their calls to limit the way that operators can operate. So can you maybe fill me in on the history of dockless scooters and scooter regulation in San Francisco and how we got to where we are today which is that there are almost no scooters in San Francisco but they're all over Oakland for example and around Lake Merritt and also inside of Lake Merritt.

Joe Rodriguez [00:15:27] Yeah I spotted a few inside a Lake Merritt myself while I was walking my dog a few weekends ago. But the dockless scooters kind of came on the scene much in the tradition of tech and ride hailing conveyances like Uber and Lyft. They all of a sudden popped up on the streets of San Francisco. It was disrupt disrupt disrupt. They were here without the city's knowledge and all of a sudden people were riding them. It was it was lime and bird and spin I believe. Who were all out there on the streets. Rollin' rollin' rollin' without permission.  We had seen this happen with Uber and Lyft. The state came in to regulate them. The city moved preemptively to block a number of companies including Bluegogo Chinese based companies from launching dockless bikes on the street and then eventually we came up with a permitting process to allow some of them to operate in San Francisco, just one, Jump with a very limited pilot. So when this happened all of a sudden regulators were shocked. Eventually the city attorney's office paired with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency citing a number of complaints from residents said hey you know you've got to get these off the streets. This is a cease and desist. They're banned. You've got to yank them and we're going to make a permit process that allows them to legally be on the streets with regulations attached to ensure safety for people who are walking and biking and driving and as well as people on the scooters themselves.

Reem Rayef [00:17:09] And now recently the SFMTA has decided that's Skip and Scoot are gonna be the only ones who are allowed to partake in this pilot program, and kind of booted out the more obvious choices of Lime and Bird. And that's kind of been a big and surprising choice at least for me because those are the ones that I see most frequently and I hadn't really heard of Skip and Scoot. What do you think are the characteristics of Skip and Scoot that made them appealing to the SFMTA. What did they have to promise to win these permits?

Joe Rodriguez [00:17:38] Sure. Well there's kind of a two pronged answer I think for why Skip and Scoot were the winners in this whole giant San Francisco Scooter debacle, and to really see why you have to go back to those other experiences I imagine you have to go back to the Uber Lyft rollout debacle you have to go back to the bike share debacle because at that point San Francisco really started to learn "hey we've got to have rules that are really strict in place to ensure the experience on the streets that we want to have." I have the right audience here because this can get real wonky, but deep behind the scenes San Francisco has been developing a set of guidelines about the transportation future it wants to see on its streets -- what are the basic core principles we want to see? And really what the city settled on was that the city wanted to see more public buses, more public trains, some mix of private conveyances but not as much emphasis on that. At the same time there's also the development of guiding principles of what San Francisco would like to see when emerging technology vehicles come on the scene because it became a problem, right? There were no regulations for dockless bikes because no one conceived of the idea of dockless shared bikes, nor did they conceive of dockless electronic shared bikes with electric motors, or Ford go bike, or these scooters, so the idea was the city want to make a set of guiding principles that said "these are the things we want from companies when they have any emerging mobility technology no matter what it is." So that way this kind of almost constitution of sorts, a tech declaration of rights of sorts, for emerging technology was formed and this was formed over the last year the city of San Francisco has them in place now, and it really was put in place as a response to all of these disruptive technologies and all the complaints that surfaced. For the most part what these principles state is they want an amount of cooperation with the city, they want reports about safety, they want data about usage and traffic, they want to see that there is a low income program instituted for low income people in different parts of the city, they want to see geographic equity, so like historically black neighborhoods, historically Latino neighborhoods in the outer lying parts of the city, even though they may be more geographically spread out than the denser more profitable urban core, which you know it would be geographically inequitable if these companies only sought to give transit options where there were already robust transit options in dense areas that would make the most money for the companies. So all these requirements were kind of set in stone -- these are the guiding posts.

Joe Rodriguez [00:20:39] And we've seen this work in San Francisco before. In the 1970s San Francisco was pretty prolific in putting forth a guiding principle called transit first policy. On the face, it was a principle that did not necessarily say "you must build this or so many subways or whatever" it merely stated: San Francisco will always put transit first above cars, above those modes, we will prioritize buses and trains and that kind of thing. And what San Francisco's planners have been able to do with that transit first principle is make an argument. When the reactionary public says "oh hey you're taking away our parking in order to build that new train line" planners and the city can argue we have a transit first principle and we've got to get people out of cars for environmental reasons, for congestion reasons, for everyone's benefit. And this transit first policy is enshrined in San Francisco law and I'm sorry we got to take away your parking but we have to. It's a pretty amazing unique principle that allows planners to kind of push back because they're not really allowed to say what they think or what they think the principles should be they have to kind of be open to what the public is saying but the public did make this expression of principle in the 70s so they're able to rely on that. So all of these principles all of these enshrined ideas of guiding San Francisco are what came into play when all the different scooter companies, about a dozen or so, the scooter companies all applied to become part of San Francisco's scooter program. And whereas you see maybe in other cities different companies like Lime and Bird taking the forefront, you know when they evaluated these companies with about a dozen metrics from safety to worker response to worker equality to geographic equity to experience they rated them fair poor or good. And with the two companies that came out on top we Scoot and Skip. That whole reason was because they had shown, at least Scoot had especially a propensity to work with the city, and not at odds with the city. And so instead of going after those billion dollars instead going after a more reasonable amount of profit but working with the city, they got on the good side of regulators who took that a lot in mind when awarding these permits.

Reem Rayef [00:23:12] I want to backtrack to the that constitution about the future of transportation that San Francisco has put out, and it seems like they have this vision where it's fewer cars more buses better trains and just better accessibility, and that's great because San Francisco's traffic is insane. Does the vision of the future of transportation for San Francisco align with what tactless operators envision?

Joe Rodriguez [00:23:40] That's that's a fair question. I think that the city's opinion is seen through the selection it made right? It seemed to view that Scoot and Skip had a kind of mirrored view of what those ideals should be, whereas the other companies perhaps not. Especially that geographic equity, like when we get to where you found those scooters when they had launched in San Francisco without permission, they were in the most dense areas of the city. You can only find them really there. It was harder to find them in the outer lying parts of the city. And that doesn't seem like a solution to taking cars off the road at first blush because those parts of the city where the scooters are most widely available already had the most subways the most buses the most access to bike docks and protected bike lanes, and there was a question on the minds of many of our city council who are here called the Board of Supervisors -- are these scooters taking people out of cars, or are they taking people from walking trips? And actually one of the biggest opponents of dockless scooters or how they at least were rolled out in San Francisco previously was a walking advocacy group --walk S.F.. Yeah. It wasn't a driver lobby. It wasn't a you know groups of neighbors worried about their parking. It was a group whose advocacy is dedicated to getting people to walk more. They were concerned that people were taking scooters instead of walking for the trip down the street to go to Walgreens to pick up a drink or a can of soup or whatever. Like are you going to walk five blocks or are you going to hop a scooter at the end of your corner and then take that five blocks because it's Zippy and it's chea? They were also concerned that the scooters were being left in sidewalks in the right of way where people walked. So the idea that they were being ridden on sidewalks in the way of pedestrians and that they were being left on the streets in the way of pedestrians were angering these walk advocacy groups. Now cyclists and people who were pro bike share found themselves siding very much with the prosecutor side because we're so dense because about 50 percent the city does not drive for their commute, we depend on the buses, the trains, the ride hails, the taxis, biking, a good deal of the city bikes to work. So this is a very transit happy city and people fiercely battle over every aspect of it. You can't even remove a single bus stop without a constituency coming -- I'm not even kidding. I'm not even kidding. There was a three months long fight that I covered in the news about a desire by the transit agency to remove a train stop near a busy intersection called 19th Street and Terival. And the community was in an uproar. That's our favorite transit stop near the Safeway. How are people supposed to get their groceries if you take away that transit stop. There were pickets and protests and and signature gathering drives to protect that transit stop. This is the background you have to understand when you understand the scooter battle here in San Francisco. This is not the middle of Texas where everyone drives and maybe 10 people ride these scooters. This is a place that hotly debates all of its transit modes every day. So the bike loving people came out in defense of the scooter modes and said "well hey Walk SF, you're complaining about scooters on the sidewalk but people don't complain about cars that sometimes park on sidewalks" It was a transit advocate war all over who was the worst behaved on the streets -- scooters, cars, pedestrians. The answer is people are bad.

Reem Rayef [00:27:51] I spoke with Kia Kokalitcheva-Axios about this very debate. And she said what this comes down to is that nobody really wants to share space. This is just a big battle about space and that some cyclists are really opposed to scooters on the street because they're getting in their way and the bike lanes but also other cyclists are saying OK well dockless scooter operators are actually planning to help expand bike lanes. So we're kind of on their side. And then many people who have limited mobility are saying you know it's already hard for me to navigate in a city like San Francisco which is full of hills and rocketing sidewalks. Having scooters on the sidewalks is a really big hazard for me and makes it really hard for me to move around.

Joe Rodriguez [00:28:30] Oh absolutely. It really does highlight as the technology evolves that we may need to evolve the spaces on the street that we inhabit, a lot of people from advocates to planners were saying well you know the motorized scooters don't really work well in bike lanes because the bikes are going faster. They don't work well on sidewalks with people walking or going slower. Maybe we need some sort of multi-modal lanes in some places, or to develop new rules for those scooters writ large. But the idea that there wasn't really a space, there was nowhere they're really fitting. It was kind of like a Goldilocks problem. A little too slow for the bike lanes, a little too fast for the sidewalks. The scooters weren't just right just about anywhere and now we're going to see how that plays out on the streets of San Francisco.

Reem Rayef [00:29:20] Whose responsibility is it to ensure that scooters are used safely and effectively in San Francisco?

Joe Rodriguez [00:29:26] Well I mean I as a journalist I can't answer who's responsible for safety on the streets but I can't say the city of San Francisco has asserted that they are responsible for the for that safety. And as that responsible party, that's why they issued the regulations requiring more robust training. The companies that won partially won because they had more robust safety training they would require that users watch safety training videos. Even Scoot has in their mopeds if you try to rent their mopeds you either are required to watch many safety training videos, like a lot, or you have to go down and they have someone they provide who teaches you how to ride the thing for free which I think is great. I mean I have no balance on a bike and I got in the damn lime Scooter and I fell twice twice on two separate days. So you know if you can get on these things, someone should be telling you to be safe. And it was SFMTA who said we need to require that these scooter companies require their riders be safe.

Reem Rayef [00:30:32] I wanna speak a little bit about the response from the VC sector and tech advocates who are really frustrated with the way that San Francisco has responded to talk of scooters and believe that they're being overregulated. People like Ashton Kutcher have come out and said San Francisco should take their hands off and let these scooters innovate and proliferate. So what is it about the scooters that is so appealing to the venture capital space?

Joe Rodriguez [00:30:59] There's a lot of money to be made in the dockless scooter sector. Many of these companies, their valuations are going up by billions. It's kind of stunning to see, but I think Uber and Lyft provide a, you know from us as a city reporter with a city level perspective, I get to see the human cost of these things all the time and so do our politicians and so do the communities and advocates who've been fighting so hard. I think a useful lesson is in the roll out of Uber. Prior to 2013, Uber was not regulated terribly heavily in the state of California. It still isn't really. When the California Public Utilities Commission first began its regulations of Uber in 2011 or 2012, those regulations were a first phase. They're very hands off to allow that innovation with the understanding that a second and third phase of regulations would be coming, the third phase of which are being discussed now.  At that time there were not very robust insurance requirements for Uber and there weren't very robust requirements for its drivers either. In San Francisco, New Year's Eve, 2012 to 2013, a driver named Siad Muzaffar was driving in San Francisco's Tenderloin looking for his fare. He had the app open and his eyes were on his phone. As he turned a corner in the Tenderloin, he hit a family of three, a mother, her young boy, and her young daughter, Sophia Lu. The mother and brother survived. But the young 6 year old daughter Sophia Lu died because due to her injuries. The driver was not covered by insurance for Uber because he had no passenger in the vehicle. The family was not able to be paid. There were no requirements around how he should be looking at his phone or not looking at his phone while he drove. Quite simply the regulations weren't there because they were allowing for innovation to proliferate.

Joe Rodriguez [00:33:08] When tech innovates in a pure software space, no one's life is on the line. When tech innovates a new app no one dies. When tech innovates on the road and iterates on the road, people's lives are at stake. After Sofia Lu's death, the state all of a sudden was galvanized to increase regulations on a lift, and only after her death did we see a multipart insurance coverage be implemented so that there's a certain amount of coverage when a driver is seeking a fair versus when they have a fare and when they have just dropped off a fare to ensure that families are protected and receive due compensation when someone is killed, and also stricter safety regulations trying to push drivers to not look at their phones as often while they look for fares. Now those regulations may not even be strict enough at this point. Many advocates have said because frankly the state is not overly compelled to do that. Whereas cities are more empowered too and more compelled to. In fact it has been as we've seen with the helmet law and the sidewalk law, a pattern for tech companies to seek state solutions to undo tighter regulations at the city level. And this has been a common tactic they use but quite frankly cities regulate because they want their people to be safe. Tech asked for no regulations or fewer regulations because they want the ability to iterate. But what they need but what they often don't understand is that iteration has a far more human cost on the street than it does in software.

Reem Rayef [00:35:02] It's awful that deaths have to happen before anyone decides to really take a serious look at how this kind of technology needs to be regulated.

Reem Rayef [00:35:12] I started to hear the word micro mobility a lot when I did research on this and it seems that the tax base is really interested in micro mobility as the future of transportation, especially urban transportation. And also a lot about kind of the last mile transportation. What is micro mobility? Are scooters going to be a major forward step for micro mobility or are they going to be forgotten and discarded in the coming five years? You know will this be kind of a relic of 2016 through 2018 or or will they persist?

Joe Rodriguez [00:35:48] I can't tell you definitively if if scooters will be that micro mobile last mile solution, but the last mile solution is something that tech companies have touted and called for and said that they will solve for many years. You know I can remember the discussion five years ago: "Uber and Lyft are going to be the last mile solution for the bus rides that you take when you take a train or bus to the downtown core of San Francisco and you need to get that extra five blocks you can take an Uber and it'll get yout there. That really hasn't happened. There was a lot of talk for many years that Uber and Lyft would partner with major cities to have something like this happen and we do see them taking spaces in cities to offer transit solutions where public transit has not really found a foothold. Or maybe it's not cost effective for a bus to run but not enough people take it. But there is a concern among many that when you allow that foothold from Uber and Lyft and this is a concern in many transit circles among many transit officials among advocates and they have openly debated this question because it's hard to know, when you let private transit like that take a foothold, does the public begin to lose faith in public transit? Do they begin to disinvest? Because a wealthier person can take an Uber or Lyft every other morning but someone poorer can't. But then a wealthier person decides not to vote yes on that tax to fund the public transportation system. This is a question that has vexed many transportation planners Uber and Lyft scooters run by private V.C. companies, private bike share. All these can be great solutions for getting people out of cars, but at the same time to what degree do they lead to people going out of buses and out of trains? People making car trips or make their car trips. It's the people who are a little wealthier and on a bus who decide to take an Uber or Lyft. So it really is an open question whether those scooters will be that last mile solution or if they will lead to some sort of disinvestment from public trips. I found myself taking a trip down JFK drive in Golden Gate Park, the one where I fell, on a scooter when I could have taken the five Fulton bus down Fulton Street from ocean beach to where I live in the Avenues. I decided just on a whim to take a scooter instead of the bus because it was cheaper and I was like Sure I'll take it that far. Yeah it'll be fun. It's a whim. It's a good time you know. And for a while you know it was fun until I hit the concrete.

Reem Rayef [00:38:37] I mean I think that's actually part something that's absent from the discussion is that it is extremely fun and extremely whimsical. And I think a lot of people, when you bring up the scooters, they consider it to be a nuisance. But then you ask them if they've been on one and they say no I haven't. And this actually came out of a conversation I had with S.F. Supervisor Aaron Peskin who has called for heavy regulation of scooters. And I asked him Have you ever ridden a scooter before and he said no. So I'm wondering if you think that people would soften their views on scooters if they got one, or is it going to be like you where they have very bad experience and maybe decide that it's not for them.

Joe Rodriguez [00:39:18] I you know I have heard in my interviews and in my time doing news coverage that people soften their views once they've actually ridden one because they are kind of fun winds whipping through your hair you're kind of going down the street at a speed you're not used to and it's a grand time until you hit that crack or pothole and go flyin'.

Reem Rayef [00:39:46] Last time you spoke you told me about this pretty astonishing study that found that in a survey of several cities across the US San Francisco was the only one in which residents had this negative overall view of dockless scooters. So beyond the regulatory battle why do Franciscans hate scooters more than residents of any other city where they've popped up?

Joe Rodriguez [00:40:06] Why does San Franciscans hate scooters. God. Do you have an hour? It's a few things. In San Francisco you have to understand. We have a very high level of people versus other cities who walk. We have a very high level people versus other cities who take other modes of transit. We were are nothing compared to European cities who have far higher levels of transit and walking and cycling usage. But for an American city we are pretty darn transit heavy. So there's a lot more people fighting for that space. There's people who don't want to step on scooters or trip on them. There's you know people who don't want to have a scooter zoom around them even if they're not necessarily getting hit. And then also cyclists who maybe don't want to share the road with with a scooter though some certainly do. I mean there is just a lot of people vying for a limited amount of space in San Francisco unlike other places where maybe more people are in cars. I can see why San Francisco more so than any other than many other cities in the U.S. would be perturbed by a scooter in their space. And also you have to understand San Francisco is the epicenter for for tech. San Francisco is a petri dish for every wacky tech idea that happens along. So you know for us more so than maybe I don't know Dallas or something, the scooters are the straw t hat broke the San Franciscans back.

Reem Rayef [00:41:37] I think that people have also come to see scooters as a sign of gentrification when they show up  in their neighborhoods and they're being defaced. So to what extent does this transportation issue play into an equity issue and an affordability issue in the bay? And does that contribute to why it's unpopular here?

Joe Rodriguez [00:41:56] I can't believe I forgot that and I'm so glad you said that. As a parable for why people may see scooters as gentrification harbingers, you know when Ford Go Bike first started coming into San Francisco, people in the Mission District, a heavily Latino district where more than eight thousand Latinos have been displaced as well as just white folks who are not maybe Latino white have have kind of tipped over the ethnic balance of the neighborhood. It's really the epicenter of tech. It's where the Google buses roam. It's where the rents are highest. It's where white dudes talking about their stacks and they're coding problems and drink overpriced smoothies and eat avocado toast that someone should smack their hands -- that is where Ford Go Bike was heavily expanding and in that neighborhood many started hanging them from trees, picking them apart. One Ford Go Bike station was lit on fire. Some graffiti near one station said "die techie scum die." I mean people are losing their homes in San Francisco to a wave of newcomers who are here coming here to make money. I mean previous generations of new San Franciscans came here because they were gay and looking for acceptance, because they were immigrants who were pushed out of places and looking for safety. And this newest wave in the view of many San Franciscans who have lost their homes is a wave of people who are here to make money get rich and get the hell out. And you know the dockless scooter craze is certainly seen in that context. These are brought by venture capitalists looking to make some money. They may help with transportation issues but hell, my grandfather just got evicted from his 30 year apartment where he was paying you know 900 dollars a month rent controlled. So the landlord can make three thousand five hundred dollars a month from a techie who could afford it. So yeah San Franciscans may not like a venture capitalist introduced transportation option when they're losing their homes, their cultural identity, and their communities to an oncoming wave of tech gentrification.

Reem Rayef [00:44:18] Why do you think that the scooter operators haven't meaningfully engaged with this reality in that kind of they have this vision of scooters as an affordable way for even poor people to because of their low income programs to use them. But the reality is that a lot of people view this as a harbinger of gentrification as you said. Why won't they talk about it or address it?

Joe Rodriguez [00:44:42] I'm not in the brain of every scooter company's CEO but I can tell you what I think is a useful comparison. I remember I was in a room with more than 100 people debating the introduction of a transit only lane for buses, a red lane going through the Mission District on Mission Street to allow buses to circumvent car traffic. It's a great idea for transit planners. They say "hey this means that our buses won't be stopped by cars." But a lot of people in the mission who are poorer found themselves needing those cars because they maybe go in off hours to work when the buses don't run as frequently because they more often have families and are not single alone and need to cart a lot of young children and babies which may not be as convenient to do that on the bus yet, maybe one day, but not yet. And so in the room it was really split. There was lots of brown and black people who were really angry about the red transit lanes who tended to be poor. And then there were a lot of white kind of transportation wonks who really wanted the new lanes and said hey I could get downtown to my fancy jobs a lot faster. And I remember one one the one speaker and another speaker one woman who is Hispanic talking about why it was so tough for her to get around the mission now because of the transit lane in her car and she had to drop off her two children in school and then go to work as a janitor. And she was having a hard time because of the red lane. And then the woman who came up after her was a white woman who said "well my last three week trip to Sweden let me tell you all the wonderful transportation options that they had there" and started talking about all of her wonderful trips to different parts of the international community and how they had innovative transportation options. It was incredibly tone deaf and just about every brown person in that room groaned audibly and just about every argument I've heard from these scooter tech CEOs and from the scooter tech representatives is "hey look how fancy pants we are and how fancy pants you could be." I'm not sure that's necessarily reaching people.

Reem Rayef [00:46:57] What does this whole ordeal tell us about transportation policy in the Bay Area specifically? How are the transportation struggles of San Francisco unique to San Francisco?

Joe Rodriguez [00:47:09] Well I think to see this how the scooter roll out played out is a fascinating lesson to me. in how San Francisco has learned to wrestle with being tech's petri dish and to disruption. You can almost see it -- it's like a play in three parts Uber and Lyft came in and San Francisco was snookered. Bike share came in and San Francisco kind of handled it a little bit. They didn't quite get the control over it they wanted. And then the third act scooters came and San Francisco stomped down with a mighty foot and said no, and managed to enact exactly its vision. Now I can't tell you if that vision is the right one or if it will best serve everyone in terms of transportation. But the very least I can tell you that it is a far different reaction. San Francisco gave then when the first disruptive transportation technologies first arrived.

Reem Rayef [00:48:09] Since recording this interview scooter operators Skip and Scoot have launched in San Francisco under the year long regulated pilot program. Riders are required to wear helmets while using them, and they are generally restricted to bike lanes where available. Over the course of the next year. San Francisco City regulators will be watching closely to determine whether the pilot program will become permanent. Well we see Joe zooming around the city now that the scooters are back?

Joe Rodriguez [00:48:34] If that's what happened to me on JFK drive on a car free Sunday in the middle of Golden Gate Park, I really hesitate to see what would happen if I bit the street while scattering out on Market Street. On busy day with Muni Buses nearby and cars and dozens and dozens of cyclists. I don't think I'll be riding the scooters but I'm sure lots of people will have fun on them.

Reem Rayef [00:48:57] For more stories about transit in the bay and strong opinions about the Dark Knight trilogy follow Joe on Twitter @fitzthereporter, or read his work in the San Francisco Examiner.

 [00:49:15] Talk Policy to me is a production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. For show notes visit us at talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode is by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Talk Policy to Me's executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. Michael Quiroz is our engineer. I'm Reem Rayef, see you next time.