Letter to Seattle: I Fucking Hate Lime Scooters
Because I don't own a car, I spend a lot of my time walking and taking the bus around the city, and the bane of my existence is those Lime electric scooters that are across most major cities. From irresponsible riders (a lot of them young men) driving full speed on the sidewalk and almost hitting everyone trying to walk down the street, to people who park them in the most annoying spots that block accessibility for the sidewalk or bus stops, I hate the increase in popularity of these scooters in cities.
Recently, I was walking to the bus stop to go to Trader Joe's, and right in the middle of the sidewalk was one of those Lime scooters blocking the entire width of the sidewalk. I am able to easily walk around it, but many people don't have that ability to. I made the effort to move it off to the side even though my bus was arriving soon because I wanted people to actually be able to use the sidewalk. Placing it in the middle of the sidewalk when there were plenty of other places around to park it was selfish. And this may seem like such a big reaction to such a small thing, but especially in recent years, people's lack of care for community spaces and hyper-individualism has been a huge problem in our country and has been increasingly pissing me off. And I think these public scooters is a small-scale representation of that.
I think having publicly accessible transportation, including bikes and scooters, is something that our cities need. But our car-centric infrastructure ruins it. There are very few protected bikes lanes, so people who don't want to get hit by a car while riding their bike or scooter have to use the sidewalk, which then ruins it for pedestrians who aren't looking to get hit by scooter. It's then the car-centric infrastructure which prioritizes parking spaces for cars in the streets, but doesn't have space for bike or scooter parking, which then blocks the sidewalks and bus stops and makes it hard for everyone to use the sidewalk.
The only good use of these scooters I've seen lately are people using them as barricades in protests. I've seen this most recently during the ongoing ICE protests happening in Seattle. People are placing dozens of these Lime scooters and bikes in front of driveways to prevent ICE vans from leaving their garages. I think this is a perfect use of these scooters and bikes. The only time I agree with them blocking the sidewalk. And especially as Uber has invested in Lime, which Uber's CEO supports Trump, I think they should be used more and more for this kind of protesting.
