New York Tough: Pridefully Stupid

For about five years now, cities across America have been struggling with Silicon Valley’s most dismayingly useful invention: electric scooter sharing. Just saying the name of some popular brands like Lime, Bird, or Jump!, is enough to trigger exclamations of angst and fury in American city-council folk and urban dwellers alike. Images of toppled and vandalized groups of scooters blocking sidewalks are commonplace now, not to mention the obvious safety hazards of helmetless millennials whizzing by on their flimsy two-wheeled silent scooters. In just the one year span of 2018, there were about 14,651 scooter-related injuries, making scooter sharing possibly the greatest threat to American millennial’s well-being.

So, in possibly the smartest move he’s ever made, New York City Mayor Deblasio along with city lawmakers held tight to existing restrictions that prevented such menacing two-wheeled death machines from flooding New York’s already overcrowded bike lanes and sidewalks. Au contrair, he continued to expand the city’s bike-share program which has proved not to be a death-trap (although many still ride helmet-less), while vowing to fix the city’s crumbling bus system and subways.

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But we’re in New York. Of course, there was a loophole. While all this was going on, vehicle sharing services such as car2go and BMW’s reachNow continued to operate, providing Zipcar-like services to the multitude of careless New Yorkers. Following the idea of road-legal vehicle sharing, Frank Reig and Paul Suhey (current Revel CEO and COO respectively,) began piloting a scooter-sharing service of a different caliber. Rather than two-wheeled, flimsy, kickable stand-ups like Lime, their startup, Revel, began placing sturdy electric mopeds on the street in 2018. All of their vehicles, similar to the other vehicle-sharing companies, were available to rent via their easy-to-use app, allowing for their seamless rollout. New Yorkers watched in awe as the company’s 1,000 brand new scooters began randomly appearing in front of seemingly every street corner, sparking their curiosities. And upon further inspection, New Yorkers quickly encountered their golden ticket for fast transport, which thankfully wasn’t another Metrocard. With Revel, millions suddenly came to the Revelation that free movement was possible, without having to descend into a rat-infested subway tube or a stupidly late bus.

“So, when I’m going to Queens I can just get a scooter? No G train?!”

Yes. Yes, you can.

“You're telling me I can ride to Ikea without waiting 20 minutes for a bus?”

Welcome to the modern world. 

“Alright, bet. So I can grab one, or maybe 20 of those things, and tear up Brooklyn Bridge park with all of my crackhead-a** friends?”

Hold up. 

Another New-York-style loophole. You see, Revel at first was the holy grail of what Lime should have been. Safety was unparalleled. To get into the app they verified your license and made you sign a contract in which you pledge not to be an a**hole on the road (which would put you in a minority group, unfortunately.) Even when you got on one of their cherished mopeds, a safety lock was activated to ensure you put on the provided, shiny new Revel helmet stowed in the back. Turn signals were highly utilized, and the speed of the machines was capped at thirty miles per hour. Revel took every single step to ensure that they upheld a bulletproof safety system, keeping fatalities to zero in 2018 and 2019.

But, it’s 2020, and we're in New York. This time, however, the fault was a massive pothole of a pandemic. As public transportation use plummeted in the city, dropping as low as 90% from the same point in 2019, the discussion of Revel’s place in a post-COVID world became an extremely consequential one. On the one hand, they were a zero-emission, space-saving, and socially distanced way of commuting to work. On the other hand, helmets. And ya-yas.

Helmets are an obvious downfall, as they’re shared, and reside close to our COVID-spewing face cavities. Naturally Revel cut the requirement out, instead, guiding that users should bring their own head protection. Of course, only nerds bring their own helmet, so essentially every non-nerd in New York (the majority) began riding sans-helmet, drastically increasing Revel’s chance of hosting their first death. 

But what are ya-yas? Ya-yas are the heeber jeebers that people get when they sit in quarantine for too long. Sometimes, it results in safe socially distant exercise in the park. Other times, it causes people to be plain stupid. The ya-yas could result in a COVID party, not distanced mosh-pit, or adrenaline-inducing activity, like gang warfare and drag racing. In New York, however, where most don’t have cars, drag racing is an unachievable feat. Unless you and 20 of your most ‘crackheady’ friends each rent a Revel and race in those. While the 30 mph limit is a bit stingy, racing through the park while dodging bikes and families tends to ramp up that addictive adrenaline rush. Add in the no-helmets, and BAM.  

Revel, a loophole company in itself, succumbed to its own pothole in July of 2020, after having two fatalities, one of which being a notable CBS news reporter, and suspending 2,000 members for unsafe driving practices (think: ya-yas.) Doctors at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx had even begun reporting higher than ever scooter-related injuries, given the influx of side-walk riding and unsafe racing activities. It is with traumatic memories that New York cyclists and pedestrians happily bid adieu to the service as well, scarred by their many near-death experiences with bike-path and sidewalk riding Revelers. 

However, for the city as a whole, Revel’s ultimate failure represents a major loss for post-pandemic commuters. Theoretically the perfect solution for New York’s infamously unreliable trains, New Yorkers spat out Silicon Valley’s innovative transport tech almost as fast as we chewed it. Following the great Revel recall of 2020, commuting to jobs for most outer-borough workers is now once again limited to crowded and close-quarters bus and subway rides, if a bike route is not available to them. Some argue the loss of the zero-contact Revel scooters is because we misused the privilege given to us. I would point to Cuomo’s signature saying, burned on to every electronic road sign in the state: “We are NY tough.” And New York tough, no matter how perfect a fit the solution may be, will never settle for the wimpy way out of its problems.