Environment

Stolen, burned, tossed inside the lake: e-scooters face vandals wrath

t would have been a sight as common at Oakland’s Lake Merritt as being the ducks paddling to the water or perhaps the seagulls fighting over scraps: a bright green motorized Lime scooter was submerged just feet from the murky shore.

“Aw man, the Lime person just came with this morning,” James Robinson, executive director from the Lake Merritt Institute, said whilst found out about up to date scooter deposit.

It was simply an example of nearly 100 Lime and Bird scooters that had been dumped during the lake since late September, Robinson said. In October alone, he stated, his volunteers counted 60.

This year could go down while in the history books because the year on the scooter: all seasons various brands and colours began appearing along sidewalks around the globe, seemingly beyond nowhere.

Are ride-share electric scooters the way forward for urban transport?

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To people that hate them, they’re similar to an invasion from your dystopian robot future. Thus to their fans, they’re not able to urban transport: green, biotech and fun.

What is undeniable is usually that the rollout weren’t able to be called smooth, with vigilantes, decrying whatever they get in touch with typical tech industry hubris of companies profiting away from public spaces, expressing their displeasure through vandalism.

Some have defaced the vehicles with profane stickers and feces. Others have tossed them into trash cans and trees.

And then, however, you have the dumping in waterways. A web site tracking scooters tossed from the Willamette river counted 17 in August alone. San fran Baykeeper, an eco watchdog group, has recorded at the very least two scooters that have have been inside the San fran Bay since May. The organization has since started the cause with the dumping in Lake Merritt, near its offices.

“We’ve just been so frustrated,” said the Baykeeper executive director, Sejal Choksi-Chugh. “They’re hardly taking this seriously.”

Meanwhile, few scooter companies will say without a doubt the amount of scooters are vandalized, stolen, or damaged in the past year

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