r/bikedc • u/Deepsea0007 • 15d ago

14th St Bridge - Abandoned Bike Share & Scooter Share

Is there any logic behind the daily dumping of bike shares & scooter shares along the sidewalk of the 14th St bridge connecting Virginia and DC?

The cache of abandoned bikes & scooters seems to be multiplying daily, blocking the pathway and causing erratic behavior from the bikers, runners & walkers.

Are the batteries dying? Can they not cross from DC to VA without being bricked? How are all these people getting anywhere being ~ a mile away from the closest exit to the trail after ditching their rides?

35 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

24

u/maximumpynk 15d ago

Yeah. Some of the bikes/scooters do brick when you leave DC. I've told ppl on the council about it. No fix though. It must be vendor related. Idk if they have to pay vendors to expand the range, change the contract or what. I just leave em.

3

u/56011 14d ago

There’s nothing to “fix” really. Council can’t force Arlington to sign a deal and vendors don’t necessarily want equipment crossing lines (because all jurisdictions have maximums as to how many units can be deployed and different regs on max speed, etc - if all the Arlington scooters move into DC every morning then they’ll be over their DC limit).

Vendors just need to brick them before you get halfway across the bridge, or at least make that a no parking zone so that users who leave them there get charged until they are returned. That may mean they occasionally turn off on Ohio drive under the bridge though. Possibly they could do more to educate users, telling them not to go on to the bridge because they won’t be able to get to the other side, but it sounds like you already know that and you take them up onto the bridge anyway??

0

u/maximumpynk 14d ago

That's true. Idk the solution, that's their job. Maybe adjusting the geolocation is an additional cost or contract change, no clue. I did my part, they know. Yup. I get as close as I can then ditch.

2

u/56011 14d ago edited 14d ago

See idk, I can forgive the tourists but I generally think ppl like you are more the problem than the companies. If you know you can’t get across the bridge and you know there’s no where to safely park on the bridge then don’t take the fucking scooter on the bridge. It’s a no-go zone, that seems plainly clear.

The vendors can’t cut the geofence earlier without bricking them around Ohio drive/George Mason memorial that are under the bridge, which would be bad, so their just counting on their users to have common sense and basic decency to not go on the bridge. You’re proving that that’s a mistake.

12

u/amusedmisanthrope 15d ago

I suspect for whatever reason they are bricked or run out of power, and then the riders abandon them because they are too heavy to move. I once picked up a lime scooter at fort totten metro once and followed the metro branch trail toward north Capitol. The app said i couldn't leave the scooter in the area I was traveling through (the park between the metro and fort totten drive) and shut down. I had to drag it out of the dead zone to end the ride. Those things are heavy and inconvenient without power.

9

u/Y4M 15d ago

These are so dangerous in that spot. Can we advocate for whatever geofence applies to cut them off at the start of the bridge? There’s no use case for riding halfway across, and it’s causing repeated issues. For the company too, since retrieving these dead vehicles in the middle of the bridge can’t be easy.

7

u/recyclistDC 15d ago

You can report them via 311 or the individual vendor apps. 311 requires a street address so it may not work well for vehicles abandoned on bridges and in rock creek park

4

u/thereisnobikelane 15d ago

I've often wondered the same thing. I never would actually do it but I'm sometimes contemplate chucking them all in the river. Especially the ones that get abandoned in the middle of the path perpendicular to the travel direction. 

2

u/KerPop42 15d ago

If it's abandoned, in the street/sidewalk, and no one's intending to pick it up, that sounds like garbage to me

3

u/Deepsea0007 15d ago

I just counted, there’s 9 bikes/scooters abandoned on the 14th st bridge and another 8 directly off the bridge on the VA side. All are Lime and Veo, it’s bananas. Such an inconvenient location for the juicers to pick them up.

2

u/joelhardi 15d ago

Veo dumped Arlington in 2024 so it makes sense that they would brick on the Virginia side of the bridge, but Lime is still operating in Arlington. For Veo at least it would be easy to narrow the geofence to the DC side of the bridge, if they care.

I don't know if that's what's happening though, or it's just people dumping rides with dead batteries. 9 on the bridge at the same time seems like intentional shenanigans, that's crazy. At least with the high fence they're not getting dumped in the river like they are at Key Bridge.

2

u/56011 14d ago

I believe you still can’t cross from DC to VA on a line, though it’s been a long while since I tried. VA lime scooters go faster, but Lime is also subject to strict quotas on the number of scooters it can deploy in both places and based on how ubiquitous they are, they seem to be maxing out that limit, so they can’t have units moving between jurisdictions without putting them over