San Francisco announces next steps in regulating shared, powered scooters
&gt;For the first six months of the pilot, a total of 1,250 scooters may be permitted. If the first six months are successful, the total number of scooters may increase to 2,500 in months seven through 12.<p>While I support the city&#x27;s efforts to balance the downsides, mainly the sidewalk parking issue, with the upsides of cheap, clean, and accessible mobility, I think there are two wrongheaded decisions the city is making.<p>1. Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? That failed tremendously as it was administered under the old Cab system. It also risks preempting new developments, e.g. at some point the scooters will be able to drive themselves to you. You do not want to give incumbents a legal mechanism to block that competitive challenge.<p>2. Why limit the number of scooters? It is already difficult to find one of these for a ride to &#x2F; home from work. Limiting the number just creates incentives for bad behavior by users. Ever seen someone &#x27;guarding&#x27; an inactive scooter? I saw someone hiding one under his lunch table (it was &#x27;available&#x27; in the app), presumably so that he could ride it home when done. Artificial scarcity is likely to create many more problems than it solves.<p>In both cases a better public policy proposal would be marginal taxes per unit on the scooters themselves with no cap on number. The community incurs an externality in allowing these operators to enjoy free on sidewalk parking, simply set a price to balance that and let commuters decide how many units should be around. Or to put it into econospeak: Pigovian taxes are better than quotas.