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"I analyze three years worth of changes to shared bike and scooter geofences in San Francisco (2017-19), demonstrating the tension between operators' interest in emphasizing the densest areas of a city and the public-sector desire for spatially-equitable coverage," Moran told Streetsblog. "I also reviewed SFMTA's permit guidelines and the applications submitted by operators, which further shed light on how these 'geofences' were constructed."
The regulations also require scooters to have a "lock-to device, clear parking guidelines and parking enforcement," and a "complaints database." However, according to Moran's 22 page report:
...less attention has been paid to the way private operators spatially constrain access to their fleets, such as via the use of virtual geographic boundaries (hereafter “geofences”), or how municipalities have regulated these features. San Francisco, given it is home to a number of these schemes, presents a compelling case for studying geofences, and how regulators have sought to influence them to further public policy goals, including spatial equity.
If bike-share is meant to provide transportation alternatives to a wide swath of neighborhoods, stations cannot only be placed within office centers or high-end commercial districts. Such bike-share-planning outcomes can reinforce existing transportation inequities or “transport poverty” across cities, which have often left low-income neighborhoods with less access to transit than wealthier ones as well as jobs. Indeed, the trade-off between coverage and ridership, in that ridership generally does not increase as coverage expands beyond dense areas is well covered in the literature, not only for bike-share, but also for transit. Beyond finances, others have noted that the tension between ridership and coverage also relates to environmental sustainability, in that transit systems which are restricted to dense areas (and not outlying peripheries) can be less carbon intensive per rider.
The study identifies related deficiencies in how scooter deployment is regulated. For example, the regulations don't coordinate non-docked bike-share deployment with scooter deployment, two modes which could compliment each other. "...nothing in the floating bike-share permit references shared e-scooters, or vice versa."
It's an interesting study that should be required reading for anyone interested in these issues, charged with regulating scooter and bike-share companies, or for the companies themselves as an important tool in balancing profits with regulatory requirements.
Valencia merchants association strengthens support for getting rid of the failed center-running bike lane and replacing it as soon as possible with curbside protected lanes