The City of Minneapolis recently approved agreements with two electric scooter operators, Bird and Lyft, under the Nice Ride nonprofit banner. Under the agreements, the two operators can each deploy 1,250 scooters, with a cap on scooters in Downtown. They also require a minimum number of scooters to be available in areas lacking last-mile transit […]
The first word that came to mind when taking my first ride was “solid”. With 10-inch tires (8-inch on older models) and a battery over double the size of previous generations, Lyft’s new MAX model developed by Segway-Ninebot is a beast engineered for the abuse cycle of rental scooters. Lyft introduced the MAX in the […]
One sunny day, I saw one of Lime’s new Gen 3 electric scooters parked on the plaza near the Guthrie Theater. Lime introduced the Gen 3 in October of 2018, but I haven’t seen any of the new scooters hitting Minneapolis streets until now. Excited to test ride the new model, I took it for […]
Over the past several months, I have been disappointed with the availability of scooters, even in downtown Minneapolis, where they seem to be on every street corner. In the afternoon, as scooter batteries start to deplete, the nearest one with a full battery can sometimes be blocks away in the wrong direction. If you want […]
I was walking through the skyway near Nicollet Mall on Monday and watching the backed up traffic below. Single occupancy fossil fuel vehicles, car commuters, were “blocking the box” and preventing buses full of other commuters from getting home on time. The flow of pedestrians at every signal cycle was more than the number of […]
A couple of streets.mn events are coming up. On Friday, August 16, Join Us For Happy Hour + One Final Ride On The Midnight Bus From Wayzata the next week we’re hosting Post-a-Palooza – Thursday, August 22! where you can “Join streets.mn contributors for a post-a-palooza, which will basically be a co-working session/happy hour focused on […]
On Monday, July 29, Nice Ride launched its electric-assist bike or “ebike” pilot. The press release gushed about how riders could “supercharge” their rides, and also highlighted Nice Ride’s new “Nice Ride for All” program for low-income riders. The program gives annual memberships to Nice Ride to people on either nutrition assistance (SNAP) or transit […]
Recently, Lime increased its pricing in Minneapolis and St. Paul from $1 plus 15 cents per minute to $1 plus 20 cents per minute. For a typical five-minute ride, this increases the total cost by 14 percent, from $1.75 to $2 even. For a longer ride of 10 minutes, the increase is 20 percent. Rival […]
So I’ve been riding scooters around lately for science. You know, to learn stuff. I don’t know what is is about the scooters, but I’ve been extra curious about them, even more than other transportation trends like UberBlack or pogo stick sharing. Maybe it’s the fact that random conversations I have with random people about […]
Welcome to the back side of summer – solstice passed, 4th of July over, and the back to school ads have probably already started. But not at streets.mn, because our summer picnic is next Saturday, July 13, 2019 starting at 11:30 am at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. We’d love to see you! Getting […]