Bird scooters are needed. But so are better roads.
When the Memphis City Council struck up an agreement to bring Bird's electric scooter-share service here, it accomplished a few things.
First, in a city with a bus service so underfunded that it routinely eliminates and alters routes, the scooters, located by downloading an app and rented with a credit card, can help riders zip to those final blocks where the bus stopped short.
Secondly, the council one-upped its eastern rival, Nashville, which suspended the California-based service when its sidewalks and rights of way became too littered with scooters that users left behind.
To avoid that problem, Memphis cobbled together an operating agreement that, among other things, lays the responsibility on Bird for removing scooters from sidewalks and places where they don’t belong, and regulates where they can be parked.
And lastly, Bird didn’t demand incentives for bringing the scooter-share service here, and it didn’t cost the city anything to give it a chance.
So, it made sense that the city gave it that chance.
But even as the scooters, as well as the bike-sharing services, ease some Memphians’ mobility problems, chances are they will also shine a light on a host of other transit problems that can’t be solved on the cheap.
Those problems include inadequate bike paths and sidewalks, and, in general, a transit infrastructure so lacking that it has contributed to pedestrian deaths increasing by 46 percent since 2009.
And although people are only supposed to ride their scooters on the edges of the streets and at crosswalks, imagine how crowded those spaces could become in areas where no sidewalks exist, and where pedestrians are crowded into the same street space as the scooters.
That’s a recipe for calamity, or worse, tragedy.
“We need safer infrastructure, with better sidewalks and more bike lanes,” said Suzanne Carlson transportation and mobility project manager for Innovate Memphis – a group seeking solutions to Memphis’ transportation needs.
Nicholas Oyler, bikeway/pedestrian program manager for the city, echoed Carlson.
He told The Commercial Appeal that the city’s 20-year-pedestrian safety action plan estimates that it will cost $20 million a year over the next 20 years to fix the city’s crumbling streets and sidewalks, and to make the infrastructure friendlier to people who aren't in automobiles. That means that innovations, such as the scooter and bike-share services, could be stymied by old problems.
But, said Carlson, there’s a chance that the more popular the services become, the more people will demand that the city fix the infrastructure to accommodate them.
“The scooters are a good thing,” she said. “They will help more people become car-free, and they also have an ‘it factor,’ associated with them that will make them popular.” Carlson has a point. Bird scooters will make Memphis look hip and welcoming to millennials and others who are connected in this technological society.
But as the City Council refines rules to ensure the scooters don’t become more of a litter problem than a mobility solution, it should use that as an impetus to improve the sidewalks for pedestrians, as well as the streets where the scooters will be used.
Because even though Travis VanderZanden, Bird founder and CEO, lauded the deal as proof that Memphis “recognizes the importance of an equitable, affordable and reliable transit system,” the truth is that the scooters are only as reliable as the streets that they will be rolling on.
And right now, when it comes to reliability, Memphis’ streets aren’t quite there yet.