Electric Scooters: Coming Soon to a Street, or Sidewalk, Near You.

• Author: Pula, Kevin
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

They've got clever names--Bird, Lime, Skip, Scoot, Spin--and in many cities they appeared seemingly overnight.

Rentable electric scooters are a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. They're just one of the new slow- and medium-speed options to become available with the rise of mobility as a service, known in the transportation industry as MaaS.

Proponents say the scooters are inexpensive, easy to use and great for short trips. (Forty-five percent of trips in the U.S. are less than 3 miles.) Plus, they help reduce traffic and air pollution. And in some areas, they appear to have caught on. The transportation-data analysts at Populus recently surveyed 7,000 people in 10 U.S. markets and reported that, in less than 12 months during 2018, 3.6 percent said they'd used an e-scooter--a portion they described as "remarkably large."

In other areas, however, scooters are viewed more as a nuisance than a convenience, with residents complaining of cluttered sidewalks and reckless driving.

In response, Delaware has banned the use of motorized scooters on public streets, and New Jersey limits their use to people with mobility-related disabilities. Massachusetts' definition effectively prohibits their use due to requirements that "motorized scooters" have brake lights and turn signals, neither...