Tourists riding Bird scooters for the first time wait at a stoplight in Santa Monica, Calif.
Photographer: Angie SmithTo Live and Scoot in L.A.
A year after their introduction, e-scooters keep cropping up all over the city.
“The future is here,” tweeted Los Angeles City Council member Joe Buscaino on Sept. 4, with a picture of himself donning a helmet and posing with an electric scooter. The council had just approved a set of regulations for the use of dockless bikes and e-scooters across the city after a summer of controversy. While U.S. cities scramble to regulate the spate of new scooter startups, Los Angeles is tentatively embracing them.
Critics of the short-range vehicles (often called “micromobility services” or “shared mobility devices” by policymakers) question their safety and consider them a nuisance. The actress Busy Philipps posted on Twitter, “I can’t stand these scooters everywhere and I also think they’re a safety hazard. Also. I just think they’re dumb.” James Patton, a pedicab driver who works on the bike path in Santa Monica, is opposed to the scooters. He confessed to burying many of them in the sand.