On an Electric Scooter? Watch Out for the Moat
Last-mile transportation services are giving commuters exciting new options, but cities have to balance users’ desires with regulations.
There are right ways and wrong ways of doing business.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Electric scooter company Bird is raising $200 million, valuing the company at $2 billion, the company announced this week. It’s a heady ascent from the $15 million the company raised toward a $300 million valuation just three months ago. According to Alison Griswold at Quartz, it is the fastest a company has ever reached a valuation of $1 billion.
The news comes just a week after San Francisco ordered Bird and its peers Lime and Spin to pull scooters from the streets before starting a formal pilot program later this year with a total of 1,250 scooters. It came the same day that the city of Santa Monica, where Bird got its start, approved the less restrictive Shared Mobility Pilot Program for scooters and bikes, with no vehicle cap, but it requires operators “to develop systems that remedy improper parking, including pick up/drop off zones and incentives.”