Well, I won’t be riding scooters on the sidewalks ever again, or at least until I get paid.
My trip to Whole Foods yesterday cost me $37 more than it should have* thanks, I guess, to that sidewalk detection technology we all thought they were joking about.
It’s fine, I broke the law, I deserve a penalty. I guess.
Anti-scooterati folks, please take pleasure in my humiliation and punishment. You’ve earned it. Your valiant outspokenness has forced City Hall to take the scooter situation seriously, a reminder that relentless bitching is truly our best weapon against stubborn government.
So how did my tragic tale play out?
I was riding a nice new Bird scooter with good brakes on the sidewalk on Fairfax south of Santa Monica Blvd. (Lyme scooters have a little robot voice that yells at you to get off the sidewalks). There’s a bike lane I think but it was rush hour and it was giving death vibes. I couldn’t have been on the sidewalk for longer than five minutes.
Even though pedestrians roll their eyes when they see me coming, I do my best to put them first. Nobody should have to worry about being run over.
What I do is get off the scooter and walk it past people, and then get back on when the coast is clear. It’s incredibly easy to do.
I feel like a little common courtesy is the simple solution to all our scooter problems. But how do you teach scooter etiquette to the general public when there’s no consensus on the rules, no cohesive vision for how they will share the roads? Even if WeHo decides to discontinue the pilot program, scooters will still exist, and we’ll still have to deal with them sometime, somehow.
You’re gonna hate me for saying this, but I think cities would be better off widening the sidewalks and letting everyone use them, rather than trying to force bikes and scooters to share the asphalt with the automobiles. As a driver, I fear every bicycle and scooter on the road as a potential collision and lawsuit waiting to happen; they are like bloodclots in the flow of traffic. As a bicyclist and scooter rider, I don’t feel remotely safe on the roads, and would choose a sidewalk any day.
But that’s just me.
And luckily for you, Mykie Freedman and the concerned citizens of WeHo are fighting the good fight to keep WeHo’s feet on the ground and its focus on reality, not on the musings of the village idiot. Guess I’ll shut up now.
* The actual penalty fee was only $3.50, but apparently my criminal behavior voided the discount I usually get. Bird has an amazing program for very low-income earners which gives us five free rides up to 30 minutes long per day (God bless you Bird). But not if we ride on the sidewalks! Bottom dwellers like me need a stronger deterrent, and taking away the freebies sure did the trick for me.
This is amazing, the Scooters companies are implementing technology to address concerns, and yet the band plays on and on. What will they do when progress becomes the norm in West Hollywood, as it has in all the Major cities.
Countless cities across America are not in business with scooter companies. Especially those communities that believe in public safety, less, not more motors and in protecting the pedestrian experience. Human powered mobility in a walkable city is the future.
I’m an Urban Planner and Mobility Justice advocate who’s never had a car so I’ve been thinking a lot about how people on scooters add to the plethora of voices calling for safe streets. Our roads aren’t safe for anyone, let alone scooter riders who are rarely wearing helmets and – to your point – have very little physical, educational, or regulatory infrastructure to rely on to keep them safe. I’m sorry you have to decide between a cost-effective way to get around (with low GHG emissions to boot) and your physical safety. Would love for you to join the… Read more »
Would you divide these wider sidewalks into lanes; one for scooters and one for pedestrians? These wider sidewalks would be taking a few trees.
You haven’t thought this through!
….. and have you considered the cost to the city to widen these sidewalks for the handful of people who would use scooters.
That’s the problem with liberals; they really believe there can be utopia without taking into account human nature and the cost of things.
Transportation improvements all cost money. If we want to encourage the use of alternative modes (and if you’re a car driver, you do) you have to put that investment into making our public right-of-ways safer. Traffic violence was only recently usurped by gun violence as the leading cause of death for children under 14. What’s that about city costs for just a few? What other costs are we willing to accept?
Scooter and bike riders on sidewalks would be a far greater threat to the safety of children; or of any of us.
A close second to gun violence would be backyard swimming pools. What would you suggest we do about backyard swimming pools?
Of those children who die of gun violence most are a result of gang activity. A thirteen year old with a gun is likely to die at the hand of another gang member.
I’m not advocating that scooter and bike riders ride on sidewalks, rather that our public ROWs become safer places for everyone to exist and travel and, yes, that includes motorists. The trade-off is the speed and convenience of driving a car. I don’t specialize in swimming pool safety but, yeah, since you brought it up, we can make swimming a safer activity too. Not sure what your point about gun violence is here. Yes, we should make the world safer for children (and people with disabilities and the elderly and the poor and everyone else). If anything, this strengthens my… Read more »
Even if you make Right-of-Ways safER they’re still not going to be safe! Streets are made for cars and sidewalks are made for pedestrians. The few who use the alternative modes of transportation are putting themselves and often others at risk. And those very few are causing headaches for those in cars. Walking and taking the bus is the reasonable option for those who need alternative means of transportation. It’s a bit arrogant to expect the overwhelming majority to make that big an adjustment to accommodate the very, very few who ask for it … and seem to feel entitled… Read more »
To extend your logic we should also do something about the deaths of children in backyard swimming pools. I think they are just about as safe as they’re gonna be, short of banning them, just as Right-of-Ways are pretty much as safe as we can make them. To do more infringes on the convenience of those of us who use mainstream means of transportation to accommodate only a relative few who do not. Although the death of a child to gun violence is tragic I think it’s important to point out that overwhelmingly most of those cases are related to… Read more »
Your argument is based on two premises: (1) – and this is a direct quote – “Right-of-Ways are pretty much as safe as we can make them”, and (2) Even if we could make them safer, we shouldn’t because the vulnerable road users are not worth making those safety improvements. Let me know if I got either premise wrong. The first premise is just blatantly wrong. I’m not sure what design principle or statistic you’re using to support it but a quick Google search will show just how deeply flawed it is. Here’s one recent article showing how US roadways… Read more »
Your points are well taken but a little off of my intentions. Getting bikes and scooters off the sidewalks is the best thing we can do now to make pedestrians safer. I don’t recognize your second premise as anything I said because children and the elderly are unlikely to be using scooters, and if they’re able to use a bike they can also walk or take the bus. There is a limit to what a functioning society can do to accommodate everyone. If we adjust for absolutely every limitation or personal moral code the wheels of progress would grind to… Read more »
FYI. We already have wide sidewalks where possible since 2002. But unfortunately they have been taken over by 2020 outdated “outzone” that continue to use public property for private use.
We can widen the to (or beyond) ADA standards but that would require the adaptation of space currently used to park or move motor vehicles, a fix that is long overdue.
Having lived all over the United States I can honestly say that this place is the most selfish and self righteous community I’ve ever lived in. No exceptions. Not even NYC, DC, Nashville, Miami or others. This author is living proof.
THAT must be why WeHo always felt like home
Admitting you are selfish and self righteous is not something to be proud of in my humble opinion. Full disclosure I moved to an adjacent city to avoid your kind of mindset.
Children, children please take your grievances to the sandbox.
I was just kidding. Sorry.
Girls, girls ….. you’re both pretty!
I lived in Boston for almost 25 years and came to the conclusion long ago (along the Esplanade there) that differences in speed – walking versus running versus being on a bike or scooter – are the cause of accidents.
The scooter belongs on the street. I’m sorry to hear the author needs financial deterrents to simply do the right thing.
LOVE the electrification of transportation as China, Russia, USA invade Africa to enslave children to mine the minerals for electric vehicles. Glad the woke, greenies are aware whom will provide. Check this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eec_0PWGo
Petroleum has uplifted millions and millions out of poverty. The electrification of the world is just a new industry for the elite to invest in because petroleum has actually peaked and is solid and reliable.
F the scooters. Garbage woke crap. West Hollywood is NOT a 500 year old European city where biking is safe, fine, complimentary.
That you get your information/news from YouTube sure explains a lot. I bet you have a problem with wind energy and solar energy too. What a crazy Maga bubble you must live in. Truly…yikes!
Well, ….. is he wrong?
Do you have any idea what it takes to make a battery?
I think maybe this serves as a message to Larry that you need a raise if you’re considered very low income.
The loss of the discount is a good deterrence, but the fine of $3.50 really isn’t. So for most riders that don’t get the discount, it probably won’t stop them
Nicely done!
I don’t know why you’re getting slammed for suggesting wider sidewalks—most sidewalks in weho are terrible and uneven, and the bike lanes are not only few and far between but non-existent in most places. On Santa Monica Blvd its funny to see how unwelcoming to bicycles on the Weho side turn into a beautiful bike lane in Beverly Hills. It would be great if we invested in better ways to get around besides cars, but given the way city council talks about outzones, parking spots and protected bike lanes, we’re likely always going to be stuck prioritizing cars which sucks… Read more »
That beautiful bike lane in BH is there because they took land off of the park on the north side of the Boulevard. Like it or not Santa Monica is a through street with limited space. Unless you want to rip some buildings down or close it to traffic it won’t be able to have the wide sidewalks, protected bike lanes, outdoor dining, or whatever the anti-car intelligentsia wants to put in there in lieu of what the streets were designed for.
Tom, I’m almost certain no land was taken from the park on the north side of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was because of the neighborhoods to the north “protecting the park” that Beverly Hills almost ended up with no bike lanes at all. As I recall, the bike lanes were added at the last minute by deciding to do them outside of the recommended guidelines of the MUTC (aka the Transportation Engineer’s bible!). It is for this very reason, that I know West Hollywood too can preserve two lanes of traffic in each direction AND install bike lanes along Santa… Read more »
The Beverly Hills bike lanes are great. The same 12 people have been using them since 2017.
But this story is about scooters riding on the sidewalk in Weho.
Josh
You are partly correct – the BH bike lanes were added by making the vehicular lanes more narrow. This would not work in West Hollywood with the major difference being street parking. The bike lanes work in BH because there is no street parking permitted on SMB throughout that city. West Hollywood has street parking on its entire length of SMB. Local businesses rely on that parking for their customers.
Beverly Hills is great. They’re not in business with scooter companies. Scooters are banned in BH.
It appears that too many are accepting the premise that scooters are gonna be a part of our lives; we just have to find a way to make it work. I suggest that we realize that the very few for whom scooters are the only viable alternative (I don’t know who those would be, but it seems I read somewhere they exist) accept that they are too great a danger no matter where they are ridden; to pedestrians on the sidewalks and to the rider on the streets. Let it go! Let’s show the rest of the world that we… Read more »
I love your comment! We wouldn’t be the first to decide that they are too dangerous. The mayor of Paris has already figured that out. But yes, it would be wonderful if our city’s leaders were mature enough to realize that just because something is trendy, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea!
Ban dangerous e-scooters in West Hollywood!
https://chng.it/5cFr24NFr2
Amen!
So regressing against tech is the new progress? Sadly hilarious head shake for you. West Hollywood is not going to be preserved in amber for historical preservation, apart from some select few building facades. Outside the West Hollywood bubble, people all over the county ride these and they’re here to stay as alternative transportation beyond the car, which should absolutely be encouraged everywhere in LA. More walking, biking, scooting and bussing, less cars. Especially in central locations like West Hollywood!
So just because it is new and “tech” and “everybody’s doing it” means that we have to do it too? We can’t be the wiser city who makes a determination that our designation as a walkable city really means something? Why can’t we be the example of restraint on this rather than the “in your face” push to be the first in some mostly radical ways? Let’s show the world that we actually think here in WeHo rather than react and demand.
Thank you. Technological advancement continues to come at the expense of humanity, something that is difficult to appreciate if you don’t know what the world was like before the turn of the century. I’m all for advancement, but America has a long history of sacrificing humans (read non-White) for the sake of “progress”.
——–So just because it is new and “tech” and “everybody’s doing it” means that we have to do it too?
Yes. Yes it does. Glad we worked that out. Now, moving FORWARD…..
Paris, France decided it was really not a step FORWARD for them, no matter what everybody else was doing. Just because it was new and “tech” didn’t mean it was good for them.
Let’s be independent thinking adults and decide that, no, these things are not for us.
So let me get this straight- you were denied a discount on the use of this scooter because you went against the terms of the rental agreement? And that is somehow the fault of “Mykie Freedman and the concerned citizens of WeHo”? I could read by the light of your entitlement..
after reading the article, I don’t really think that Brandon is blaming me or any of the other concerned citizens who are trying to ban the dangerous scooters. I think he was saying that he blames his own bad judgment, and he’s mad at himself for getting caught. Anyway, I hope that’s what he is saying.
you got it
My fault!
It doesn’t sound like a very consequential fine at all! AND why should the city pay an exorbitant amount of money to widen the sidewalks to accommodate scooter riders? So that they can continue their bad behavior? they won’t appreciate it anyway! Have you ever heard the expression, “give them an inch and they’ll take a foot?” And in this case, it’s literally! The riders will just take up more of the room, and still leave the pedestrians in danger! And yes, as another commentor said these are called sideWALKS!! I don’t want anyone to be in danger! With metro,… Read more »
All good points! WEHOville is on Team Mikie
Well with all of those alternative transportation options you listed, most people don’t need to own their own cars either then, so why target the scooters and not car owners outside of rideshare drivers?
Ban them.