The Scooter/City Hype Cycle

When I tell people that I work in the e-scooter industry, I typically hear one of two reactions:

1. “Oh, I love the scooters! I just rode one last week!”
2. “Ugh, those things? What a menace! One of them nearly ran into me the other day.”

I’m used to hearing strong opinions about scooters — both for and against. In Washington, D.C. where I live, a magazine even gave scooters an award for “Best Public Nuisance,” saying that scooters annoy some but “do solve a last-mile problem, and if that means less traffic, lower demand on Lyft, or…