Scooter Media Brief: The Dawn of the Age of Scooters

Electric scooter rentals will never be new again.

2 minute read

December 31, 2018, 5:00 AM PST

2018 is the year the world will remember as the dawn of the electric scooter.

Sure, some companies electric scooter rental companies launched in 2017, but as we've documented already, urbanism media didn't really start noticing until several months into 2018. News feeds pages were overwhelmed enough by summer that we started to gather electric scooter news into more of a compendium format, lest we have to change the name of the site to Scooterizen.

We weren't the only ones to take drastic measures. Smart Cities Dive also started collecting the news into a map to make some geographic sense of the constantly breaking news. Now CityLab has declared 2018 the "Year of the Scooter" (in addition to a few other things as well).

In 2019, electric scooter rentals will no longer be the only new thing under the sun. Will they be out of fashion entirely, reduced to a footnote in the history of urban mobility? Or will scooters continue scooting into the future?

Also, will we figure out how to post one scooter article at a time?

Those stories aren't for 2018. Here are the last pile that were:

National News

Winter Is Coming, for Scooters (CityLab, December 1)
Investor Frenzy for Scooter Startups Cools (Wall Street Journal, December 9)

National Commentary

The Dockless Revolution: What We're Learning from Shared Micromobility Data (Eno Center for Transportation via YouTube, December 13)
Are scooters here to stay? Here’s our take (and suggestions for future research) (Mobility Center, December 17)
DEEP DIVE: Are E-Scooters Unsafe At Any Speed? (Streetsblog USA, December 19)
The scooter stampede of 2018 is great news for urban transportation (Vox, December 19)
Electric Scooters: Last Mile Mobility, Thrill Rides, Public Nuisance or Hazard (Forbes, December 24)
E-scooter sharing start-ups ‘not sustainable’, says scooter maker (Financial Times, December 28)

Local News

Lyft Becomes Third Company to Offer Dockless Scooters in Arlington (ARL Now, December 3)
Scooters could fill gap in Chicago for short trips to and from transit, study finds (Chicago Tribune, December 14)
In the move toward personal mobility devices, D.C.’s poorest are left behind — again (The Washington Post, December 15)
Lyft announces scooters in San Diego, 1 day after Uber does the same (Fox 5 San Diego, December 20)
Lyft brings electric scooters to Music City (WSMV, December 20)
On heels of Uber’s announcement, Lyft lunges into Atlanta’s e-scooter market (Curbed Atlanta, December 21)
Frisco Flipped Bird Electric Scooters the Bird (Texas Monthly, December 21)
D.C. Could Have As Many As 16,800 Scooters And E-Bikes On The Roads Next Year (DCist, December 24)
Ready to roll: OSU awards scooter contract to Spin (Stillwater News Press, December 26)

Transportation 2018 Electric Scooters Weekly Electric Scooters News Dockless Scooter Share

James Brasuell

James Brasuell, AICP is the former editorial director of Planetizen and is now a senior public affairs specialist at the Southern California Association of Governments. James managed all editorial content and direction for Planetizen from 2014 to 2023, and was promoted from manging editor to editorial director in 2021. After a first career as a class five white water river guide in Trinity County in Northern California, James started his career in Los Angeles as a volunteer at a risk reduction center in Skid Row.

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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