There’s been much press coverage of the dockless bicycles starting to crowd up sidewalks in many cities in the U.S. and abroad. But as I recently discovered in Washington DC’s Georgetown neighborhood, there are also dockless electric scooters now, and honestly they’re way better.
Most of these electrified scooters are supplied by the same players that offer dockless bikes — LimeBike, Ofo, Mobike, etc. The scooter I tried was from a company called Waybots but besides supply each of these brands offers an undifferentiated experience. Just counting by the sheer amount of people I see zipping through DC on the scooters, though, I’d say there’s a bigger market for them than the bicycles anyway.
It’s not hard to understand why either. The scooters are more agile and frankly, much more fun! They have some real get-up — the Waybots scooters have a maximum speed of 15mph — and you can weave through stop-and-go traffic with ease. Moreover you aren’t working up a sweat if you’re, say, on the way to a meeting.
There’s Uber, sure, but for short distances it’s faster and cheaper to use one of these scooters. It’s cleaner, if that makes sense.
As I’ve written here before, the best, most progressive cities offer a mix of urban transportation options that can be used in tandem (each suited for different distance and cost considerations) to get around. Ideally ones that can reduce the awful congestion caused by cars. Maybe these dockless scooters and bikes will be more than just a fad and instead actually help us progress towards that type of world. I don’t know, but I hope so!
