Background and review of my week living an all-scooter lifestyle
/Over on my personal finance blog I wrote about the range of programs offered by the so-called “micromobility” companies to provide free or reduced cost access to the scooters and e-bikes that clutter the streets and sidewalks of even the nation’s small- and mid-sized cities. Having experimented with the programs for a little over a week, I want to share my experience using dockless scooters for virtually all my errands.
Experience applying for access programs
Here’s a quick rundown of my experience applying for each of the micromobility access/equity programs:
Capital Bikeshare for All (online signup appears to be unavailable right now): our local docked bikeshare system is actually administered by Lyft, which also administers their "Capital Bikeshare for All” program. The only program that’s not free to sign up for, once approved you’re eligible for a $5 annual membership which allows you unlimited rides up to 60 minutes. This is actually more generous than regular $95 annual memberships, which offer unlimited 45-minute rides, presumably to reduce the risk of low-income riders accidentally incurring overage fees.
BIKETOWN for All: I spend a lot of time in Portland, OR, and happened to be there when I started working on this project, so I looked into whether their docked bikeshare program had an accessibility program. Sure enough, BIKETOWN for All, also administered by Lyft, offers an identical benefit of unlimited 60-minute rides, including ebike rides (excluded from Capital Bikeshare for All). I created a BIKETOWN account and applied for BIKETOWN for ALL on June 27, 2022, and later that evening I received confirmation I was eligible and told to sign up for an annual free membership.
Lime Access: I applied for Lime Access on June 23, 2022, and didn’t hear anything in the “couple of days” promised, so sent a follow-up e-mail to access@li.me on July 1. Finally, on July 8, I received an e-mail confirming I’d been approved. Instead of free rides I was given discounted pricing of $0.50 per unlock and $0.07 per minute. I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not here to pay money.
Helbiz Access: I wasn’t able to apply for Helbiz’s accessibility program online, but after e-mailing access@helbiz.com with my ID and eligibility documents on June 27, 2022, I received a prompt reply on June 29 confirming my enrollment in Accessibility+, which includes 100 free 30-minute trips per month.
Bird Access. Like the other micromobility companies, Bird offers a confusing array of discounted and free programs depending on the city you apply from. I started by submitting a support ticket for Bird Access online on June 23, 2022, and less than an hour later received a form e-mail explaining the process of enrolling in Community Pricing (their version of Lime’s discount program). I replied by e-mail that I wasn’t interested in Community Pricing, but rather the free Access program. Again after less than an hour I received a reply correctly explaining the Access program, and asking me to send a photo of my proof of eligibility, which I did the next morning. On July 6 I sent a follow-up e-mail, and less than 30 minutes later received a confirmation that I’d been enrolled for unlimited free rides.
The rest of this post will be dedicated to my experience using Bird scooters, so I’ll just offer a few remarks on the other programs first.
I paid the $5 Capital Bikeshare for All membership fee and did a little tooling around the neighborhood, but I don’t own a bike helmet so until I get one I’m not comfortable doing longer-distance rides (subscribe to the blog to support my newfound biking hobby!). I didn’t get a chance to take any BIKETOWN rides before I left Portland.
Lime is the only dockless scooter I’d ever used before, and I thought it was “kind of neat,” but the problem is that it’s very expensive. The $1 unlock fee (plus per-minute fees) means that for rides of any length whatsoever the bus or subway will be cheaper by an order of magnitude. Obviously a discounted fare will be cheaper than a full-price fare, but for almost all trips I’d rather walk or take the subway.
I have nothing to say about Helbiz because I have never been able to unlock the cable lock now required by DC on all dockless bikes and scooters. I can start a ride, I can push the unlock button, and nothing happens. If anyone has ever successfully unlocked a Helbiz cable lock, please, reveal your secret in the comments!
This isn’t a Bird ad — let’s do the criticism first
I’ve been deliberately taking Bird scooters everywhere for the last week to get as nuanced a sense of the advantages and disadvantages as possible, and I’ve simply fallen in love with them. Since this is going to be a glowing review, let me start with the downsides, of which there are many!
First, and this is a bit silly, Bird requires you to buy a minimum of $10 worth of “Bird Cash” before you can unlock any scooters. I consider this basically a $10 lifetime membership, since I never plan on spending any of it, but it’s twice the price of a $5 annual Capital Bikeshare for All membership, so Bird Access isn’t exactly free.
Second, while I’ve had a lot more luck with Bird cable locks than with Helbiz locks (0%), it hasn’t been 100%. I would estimate around 15-20% of the time Bird cable locks fail to open, whether for mechanical or mobile connectivity reasons. Fortunately, in my city Bird scooters are fairly ubiquitous, so it rarely poses a problem, but if you’re counting on a particular scooter you see available in the app, keep a backup or two in mind because the lock may simply not pop when you need it to.
Third, and of course this is true of all the scooter companies, maintaining balance with heavy groceries requires some practice and involves some danger. This isn’t a big deal when you’re just out for a joy ride, but if you plan on doing regular grocery or other shopping you probably need to invest in a well-balanced cargo backpack (and a helmet wouldn’t hurt).
Finally, give yourself a few rides to get used to the acceleration and speed of electric scooters. Electric motors famously have almost-immediate acceleration to top speed and if you’re not used to it you will be caught off balance. Start slow, get a feel for the throttle, and drive more defensively than you have ever driven before. In my city scooters are electronically regulated to 10 miles per hour which sounds slow, and would be if you were planning to scoot cross-country, but is faster than you are, realistically, able to walk or even jog. Going uphill I regularly pass bikers, and on side streets either keep up with or beat traffic most of the time. In short, 10 miles per hour in city traffic is faster than you think.
Bird Access has been amazing
With that out of the way, unlimited free usage of Bird scooters has been awesome. The easiest way to describe it is that it lowers the hurdle to doing anything. I’m far from a homebody — I walk 5 or 6 miles a day — but when walking even I consider my direction, elevation, route, etc. Bird Access throws all that out the window.
When a 15-minute walk to the grocery store takes 3 minutes, then forgetting to pick up an onion isn’t such a big deal. When a 30-minute walk to a new takeout place takes 5 minutes, you try new takeout places. When an hour-long walk to the comedy club takes 10 minutes, you try out new comedy clubs. On a purely literal level, easy access to rapid point-to-point transportation makes the tradeoff between space and time much more flexible. Walk short distances, scoot medium distances, take transit long distances, with the definitions of “short,” “medium,” and “long” left entirely up to the reader.
Bird has an interesting feature that I had to figure out for myself, since like most apps these days, it doesn’t come with any documentation: you can “lock” a scooter without “ending” your ride. If you’ve never paid for one of these scooters that might sound like nonsense, but essentially it means you can keep anyone else from taking “your” scooter while you pop into a store to shop, so that when you’re finished shopping you don’t need to pay for another unlock fee. This isn’t terribly relevant if you’re riding for free, but it’s slightly more convenient than going through the rigamarole of “ending” and “beginning” rides every time you want to pop in for a baguette or a stir-fry (as I did the first few days until I discovered this feature).
One thing I was worried about when I adopted my all-scooter lifestyle was that I’d be getting less exercise. If scooting is so easy, surely I’ll spend less time walking. But this is a simple well-known error: increased access to (non-car) transportation on average increases physical activity, and indeed a quick glance at my iPhone’s step-tracking app doesn’t show a blip on the day I started scooting.
Conclusion: Scoot Free or Die
Bird Access has a funny feature: when you end each ride, it tells you how much you would have paid if you were paying. Over the last week I’ve take about 37 rides, which I would ballpark at around $100 (partly because I didn’t find the “lock” function mentioned above until about mid-week). In other words, you would have to be insane to pay money to live my all-scooter lifestyle. The logical, sensible thing to do would be to simply buy a personal scooter: even the high-end models top out at a few hundred bucks, after all.
But I don’t want to own a scooter. I don’t want to worry about it getting stolen, I don’t want to worry about maintaining it, I don’t want to worry about whether I’m over-charging it or under-charging it, and I don’t have anywhere to put it. What Bird Access offers is the best of both worlds: unlimited free access to scooters whenever and wherever I want them, and absolutely no responsibility for their care or maintenance. I hesitate to even call it a “business model,” since none of these micromobility companies has ever or will ever make any money, but as long as the rides are free, I’m scooting.
