My introduction to electric scooters was not a pleasant one, but I learned to appreciate them more as I got better acquainted with their ability to efficiently move me about town. Since then, I’ve ridden them in various cities around the world, including Lisbon, Portugal.

I was walking with a friend who hadn’t seen them before so I offered to give her a ride on the back. While that is against Lime scooter rules, so is riding without a helmet, and we know 100% of users disregard that rule. I did run into a guy once at a Target store in downtown Portland who was actually looking to buy a helmet so he could legitimately operate the scooter but, as we know, people use and abuse the scooters at their convenience.

The scooter companies set the model for this by dumping scooters in cities and never attending to them again save to collect the usage fees. I’ve heard stories that scotters have about a three month lifespan and that, though they display on their apps how much you helped the environment by using them, there are mountains of discarded scooters and their batteries at city dumps throughout the US.

Some companies have tried to be compliant with city rules, in certain cases removing them from the city altogether. I recently found that while you can ride scooters around most of LA, you are not allowed to start, end, or ride a scooter in Beverly Hills. This proved inconvenient when I wanted to visit the homes of the stars on my newly purchased homes of the stars magazine. I would have done it anyway, but I didn’t come up with the idea until I was on Rodeo drive, almost a mile from the closest scooter. I was to find later, that despite my intended deviance, it may not have worked anyway.   

In San Diego, I found that the city had attempted to manage the littering of scooters upon the sidewalks by designating painted squares in which scooters must me parked. You cannot end a trip unless the scooter is within that square. I didn’t realize how tightly managed scooters were in San Diego until I tried to take one to the airport this morning.

I’d been sure to check the app beforehand to determine that I could leave a scooter at the airport, and the red boundaries surrounding certain areas of downtown where scooters were not allowed to operate did not include the airport. At the time, I thought the designated exclusion zones were just informational, but I learned that Lime actually prevents you from riding in the areas altogether.

As I approached Harbor drive, which in and of itself is shown as a legal place to operate a scooter, my Lime slowed to a near stop. I figured the battery had died so I took it back to a scooter square to drop it off and pick up another. As I headed back towards Harbor with my next scooter, it too died. When I returned it and looked at my app, I noticed a warning that I had entered a restricted zone. 

Apparently, Lime uses GPS to reduce the speed to just 3 mph within the restricted zones. While this is respectable, using GPS to regulate the zones was not entirely accurate, and I found myself restricted several more times on the way to the airport.

The only road from downtown to the airport follows the waterfront, and since the entire waterfront was restricted, my scooter kept slowing down when I grazed the restricted area. There were several times I had to push the scooter for a minute or so until it realized I was not actually in the restricted zone. 

About a mile from the airport, I finally gave up on it. There was no sense in pushing a resistant scooter in addition to carrying my heavy backpack. The problem was that I couldn’t park the scooter because the GPS believed I was in a no parking area.

Eventually, in frustration, I tossed it to the side of the road, abandoning it to walk to the airport instead. I passed several other scooters left by users who apparently gave up about the same place I did. At this point I was too close to the airport to get a Lyft so I had to walk quickly to avoid missing my flight.

While I love using the electric scooters and laud the companies for working with municipalities to manage the problems, I cannot recommend using them to get to the airport in San Diego even though both Google and Lime indicate that you can. Next time I’ll just walk the waterfront instead of dragging a scooter with me.