Are The eScooters More Trouble Than They’re Worth For Boise?

Sometimes good ideas turn into bad ideas. Sometimes good ideas don't age well. And sometimes good ideas were never that good.

The idea of the e-scooters in Boise was a good idea. It's easy to see why it was easy to convince the city to embrace them. At the time, rental scooters were popular in Europe and larger American cities like San Francisco.

You can't beat the e-scooter program for convenience. You can pick up a scooter on almost any corner of the downtown area and ride wherever you need. Then just abandon it when you arrive at your destination. Eventually, an e-scooter representative will pick it up, or another user will ride it to their destination.

The idea is simple, and it seemed like a great idea at the time, but now, nearly five years after the city reached an agreement with Lime and Bird to provide the scooters, they've become a problem. The city has become cluttered with scooters. They're everywhere. People leave their scooters in the middle of sidewalks and sometimes in the middle of streets. It's easy to find broken ones along the Greenbelt too.

Boise may be going in the same direction as China, where broken e-scooters are filling up public spaces. San Francisco is trying to create legislation to prevent further e-scooter problems like riders leaving them in the way of businesses front doors and reckless users weaving in and out of traffic.

Paris, France, just banned them altogether because they became too much of an eyesore to the popular tourist destination. Should Boise be next, or are you still okay with the e-scooters?