I, for one, welcome our new dockless electric scooter urbanism
I got to try out an unbranded version of the Bird electric dockless scooters which briefly flooded the streets and sidewalks of San Francisco recently. It was a blitzkrieg deployment, surprising city officials and residents alike, provoking furious controversy, i.e. $100M of free earned media for Bird; before city Supervisors got back in the game — or out of it, depending on your perspective — by banning them until further agreement.
Bird, the Santa Monica startup behind this urban tactical incursion, is led by — would you believe it — a former Uber executive. They rolled gamely and graciously with the Supervisors’ and Luddites’ and Law and Order types’ stern reactionary spasm, apologized for misunderstandings, pledged to work together for a solution serving all stakeholders, to gently educate and usher us into the new last-mile mobility future, etc etc.
I, for one, welcome our new dockless electric overlords! And welcome them the perhaps *years* sooner they’ll arrive due to Bird having jump-started 1/2 the city’s interest in and enjoyment of e-scooters. Versus having been ‘legal’ and consultative about it, thus entering into those dark grim gates of San Francisco process, above which portal reads those fateful words, Abandon Hope, All Who.. I mean, the local planning saying, “The Process Is The Product.”
Anyhow, guy I know in the East Bay interzone, far out East of that product-launch and morality play Eden across the Bay, has got a connection to source unbranded unlocked units — from the OEM in China I think, or possibly and more simply just getting them off the ship a bit sooner than Bird is, at Port of Oakland. He’s apparently running a little import-export international goodwill program. So, a crop of them are adrift in our people’s Interzone for trial and experiment and exhibit.
So I tried it out, and have to say, it is pretty cool, swift, and svelte. The industrial design is clearly expert and well-considered, satisfyingly solid feeling yet slim, with many confident and clever touches. For example, making the stem, where handlebars connect to upright steering tube, a focal point containing the power button and system indicators in familiar form factor and materials of a smartphone face. You almost expect it to be a smartphone, and can readily see how one could be there, or your one mountable there, say for map & GPS navigation.
The acceleration and speed were surprising and impressive to me, quietly whirring up immediately to 10–15 mph much easier than pedaling a ‘manual’ (non-electric) ‘bicycle’ used to be. For the Tesla or Tesla-aspiring set or their kid, a gateway vehicle.
Finally, it occurred to me that this thing might pair nicely with my 5x8' Housletswagen trailer dwelling unit under development (see below), or one of my 8x10' 1-module Houslets units. In these, putting a bicycle inside is impractical; on top or mounted on the side is a bit unsuited for road transport or urban stealth deployment. Also, geared down, the scooter might work to pull the whole trailer unit, at low speed; or drive things like a ceiling fan or in-wall-mounted airflow system, or desk/bed platforms raising and lowering mechanisms.
Or the scooter when not scooting might be used to power the timer- or sensor-driven automatic opening and closing of wall and/or roof movable louvers (i.e. parallel shutters). These can do a few things:
1) help manage the unit’s natural light level: eg, full open roof in the morning to wake me up and combat northern-latitude SAD!; and
2) help manage thermal gain/loss from sun: eg, full open roof and walls in day to accept and store heat in large thermal-mass stores. Such as, say, a big emergency water tank, covered in black cloth, that FEMA and/or the city might, with auto-monitoring of water level and quality, paying us something monthly to maintain. It might solved that problem for us, pay a good chunk of our Dwelling Permit cost (see below). Also in a major catastrophe it may save lives of or allow non-evacuation of dozens of neighbors.
Daytime or workdays or going-out evenings, you could unmount the scooter and take it out for a few miles’ spin on the new car-free, safely lit up, and small-wheel-safely-smooth lanes crisscrossing town. These are where 2-car-lane ‘roads’, as as they were formerly known, were converted to linear plazas, with one large-vehicle lane, one car-free lane, and extended sidewalk or sidewalk cafes and popup community / retail / foodcart spaces.
Also perhaps in some outer-lying or quieter or Village-zoned areas, Housletswagens and Houslets themselves might be deployed in sections of these former car lanes where, as in Village Zones generally, there are available monthly or yearly Parking-Dwelling Permits or Parking-Retail Permits (eg food-truck) or Parking-Space-Space Permits (community space, private studio/work/artist spaces, storage for plaza activities materials, etc) for parking spaces.
The new city is likely lot quieter with the internal-combustion and large commercial vehicles gone, and the 20mph city-wide speed limit set. Now what you year most is kids playing and elders laughing and telling tales on the plaza, and the soft swishing/whirring past of the Birds, our new pervasive urban mobility cloud, or flock, weaving patterns over the city like a murmuration of starlings.
