On Rental Scooters

me@calebsharp.dev (Caleb Sharp) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:56:57 -0700

We took the new Bird e-things they’ve deployed to Kamloops yesterday. We’d ridden them once before, for a shorter one-way trip. This time, we wanted to head across the river to grab some ice cream, and I also wanted to try the new e-bikes they’ve started putting out. I was able to find one, but my partner had to take a scooter, because only I have a helmet and only the scooters come with one you can rent.

Unlocking

To actually rent one of these things is relatively straightforward. All of the “vehicles” have a little QR code that you’re meant to scan in the app to unlock. After some waiting around for what I assume is some bluetooth negotiation, an apple pay prompt will appear, to charge you with an “amount pending”. They take a $3 hold while you are renting, so I assume that’s related. Then, once you’ve unlocked it, you’re basically ready to go.

As with anything wireless and probably shitty-react-native, don’t expect this to go very smoothly. The first time I attempted to rent a scooter, I got stuck in the helmet rental screen, which presented me with instructions that were clearly for a completely different type of scooter. I also made the mistake of reserving that scooter (since it was a 10 minute walk away). Turns out you get charged at the same rate as riding it, so I paid like $7 for nothing.

The ride

The ride sucks. I’ve not tried many e-bikes before and this was actually my first time trying an e-scooter, but they both had incredible rigid suspension. Actually, I think the bike has no suspension. They’re also super heavy. I don’t think this is necessarily a surprise to people who are more familiar with this type of thing (after all, they have to put up with a lot of abuse. More on that in a sec), but it was definitely a different experience than the “regular” e-bikes I’ve ridden before.

They’ve also been totally trashed. The bikes have only been out for a week and they’re already covered in graffiti and scuffed to hell. That said, after mentioning it to a friend, he said it’s probably just because they’ve come from another city and we’re not getting brand new stuff. Fair enough, my faith in people is slightly restored.

Anyway, we were able to ride across the bridge and grab some ice cream (I got spumoni; very good) and hang out for a bit. We decided to book it back after we saw the huge rain cloud that had been looming in the distance shift over to us. We both took scooters on the way back.

Parking

You have to park the scooters in designated areas. This is pretty annoying, especially because they can be relatively spread out, depending on the part of town. This means you have to basically plan where you’re going to park before you start the ride. If you don’t check ahead of time, you have to stop and pull out your phone, since the parking spots are only indicated by map icons in the app. If you’re lucky, there’s another scooter already there you can use as a landmark. Once we ran into an issue where the app just wouldn’t recognize that we were in a parking spot, which is pretty lame especially when the ride time continues to tick up.

Pricing

We took about 15 minutes each way (about 4km). The total cost for both of use was probably around $25-$30 (one of us had to rent a helmet). The pricing is pretty clear before you unlock the scooter ($1.15 fixed unlock fee + $0.35/min), but I was still pretty surprised at how expensive it was to take such a short trip. They have some monthly pass options that I had initially scoffed at for how expensive they seemed, but in comparison they’re a pretty good deal. Not sure if that’s a good thing.

Update: I’ve taken out a scooter a couple more times since writing this. I ended up getting the $4/mo “unlimited rides” pass, which basically caps ride fares to $3 (+ tax!) for 20 minute-and-under rides (I think you get charged at the regular fare for time after). Not sure of the exact math, but I only had to do two 15 minute rides to make that worth it. $3 rides makes it significantly more competitive with other modes of transport IMO. If you need to do lots of trips in a day though, it’s still hard to beat the $4.50 day pass for the bus.

Conclusion

The larger problem was just the lack of infrastructure for most of the way there. Unfortunately, when we don’t have the ability to use a dedicated bike lane (which is more often than not), we’re required by law to ride on the road. I don’t mind this on a bike (not to say I like it; it’s still a horrible experience cycling here most of the time), but the scooter was a new level of fear. Compared to a bike, I feel quite a bit more vulnerable and unstable. Riding down a busy road with trucks passing by within an arms-length at 60km/h is not a pleasant experience (not to mention by law they’re supposed to give us 1.5m. Oh well). I can’t recall who said this, but I saw somewhere scooters described as being in the “uncanny valley” of transportation options. That feels apt. If we had great cycling infrastructure, I wouldn’t foresee much adoption of these, since most people would already have a bike, or at least would prefer the experience of renting a bike/e-bike. With how spread out everything is here, it’s hard to think of a trip where taking a scooter makes much sense. If I just need to get around downtown, I would prefer to walk, especially because I would have to ride on the road. On the other hand, if I want to take it on a longer trip, it also doesn’t make sense, primarily due to the steep price. At that point, it’s more competitive to take rideshare, which I think is crazy. Even the bus is a better deal, and depending on the trip, also more convenient.

Update: With the monthly pass, I don’t think the scooters are quite as bad a deal as I made it out to be here. It’s still almost always more expensive than the bus, but especially on weekends when bus frequencies are lower, it can be a lot more convenient. I don’t think this changes any of my thoughts on the ride experience and lack of infrastructure though.

Overall, I don’t think we’ll see much uptake, and unfortunately I think most people will interpret this as a lack of wanting alternatives to driving. It’s nothing new when it comes to cycling infrastructure, and more generally to any transportation options other than the private automobile, but it’s a bit frustrating that people can’t understand that it doesn’t work because we aren’t making the systemic changes to our city that would let them work.