An Alternative Alternative

I'm a supporter of pretty much any sort of so-called "alternative" transportation; alternative meaning commuting using any method other than driving alone. It's not that I hate cars, but in many cases I've found them to be more inconvenient than any of the other options available (bike, train, etc). Plus, there's inherently something neat about doing things the "non-traditional" way.

Unfortunately, Columbus is the largest city in the US without any form of passenger rail transportation, so that's recently left my options a little more limited than they were in Philly. There have been some significant improvements in other areas of alternative transportation here, including these nifty little scooters my girlfriend and I tried out last night:

Actually, these sorts of things didn't exist (yet) back in Philly. They're a service of Lime, who's been making strides in the dockless bike share world over the last few years (we also have Bird, but I have yet to try them out). Due to mis-use and general human idiocy, these electric scooters have been the source of some controversy since their introduction a few months ago, but if used properly, they can be pretty awesome in situations like we had last night.

We were out with friends and wanted to go to a place that was about a mile from where we were. The bus would only get us so far, and due to our timing, hiring a car share service would have been too expensive to justify the supposed convenience. We instead chose to rent scooters for about $1/each (it's an app-based system, so you don't have to actually feed it a dollar). As you can see, there's really not all that much to these things:

They're quite easy to access and use. You use the app to find one near you, then scan the QR code on the handlebars to unlock it. There's a brake on the left handlebar and a throttle on the right:

So, pretty simple, right? I can't complain one bit about the functionality. However, our choice of route unfortunately took us down a couple brick streets in the German Village, which were a bit shell-shocking due to the hard, thin tires and light weight of the scooter itself. There's also no cargo area, so you're left to carry everything in your hands (not advisable) or in your backpack if you have one. Still, they made short work of a 1-mile trip:

Apparently they have a 20-mile range on a full battery, so in theory, I could take one to work, but that's not necessarily practical. For getting around downtown without using a car, spending a lot of money, OR breaking a sweat, it's a pretty solid idea. I'll definitely use these again.

Now about that train system...