Now, some of them may have switched from walking; in which case the small amount of sidewalk space taken up by a scooter not in use is an increase in use of space over the status quo; but not a very big one.

But many of them may have changed from driving. A car takes up far more space than a scooter. For each person who switches, you free up that much more space both on the streets while they're driving, and in parking at their final destination.

Having scooters available won't generally mean people will give up their cars. But a combination of scooters, bike facilities, car shares, buses, trolleys, commuter rail, and so on can make it possible to live in a city without a car, or by reducing a family from two cars to one.

One thing that bike and scooter share systems can help do is solve the "last mile" (or more likely "last quarter mile" or so) problem of public transportation. Walking to the nearest bus stop or train stop, coupled with the wait and then time to reach your destination, is a big factor in how efficient public transit is. Having options for being able to get to and from these places more quickly and conveniently can be a big benefit.

And parking spaces are being reclaimed, especially in cities with high levels of foot, bicycle, and public transportation travel: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/when-the-parking...

Anything that reduces the number of people who haul around a couple of tons of metal wherever they go, while burning black gold that funds crazy religious monarchies and failed democracies to do so, seems like a good tradeoff to me.

1) Person sits in traffic getting to work

2) Person notices Bird scooters zipping by them

3) Person ALSO notices that their company has to pay them the cost of their parking space if they don't use it (in California at least - see parking cashout law)

4) Person starts taking Bird, and enjoying the cash from their company

5) Person's office now has an extra parking space

6) Person tells coworkers about how great it is getting to work 20 minutes faster and making a couple extra grand a year

.... (wait a year or two)

7) 20 of person's coworkers are now doing the same

8) Office building has more open parking spaces

9) Business leasing office space says "I actually don't care if my office has loads of parking, most of our employees take scooters/walk/transit/whatever"

10) Office building developer says "wow we can make more money if we build the office with more units instead of more parking"

11) Office building development petitions city to reduce legal minimum requirement of parking spaces

12) (couple years later) FINALLY gets the parking minimum reduced after overcoming the screams of NIMBYs who think only a few weirdos are the ones riding scooters "because the scooter/bike lanes are empty". (Related - this is a problem with people thinking bike lanes are unused - turns out a bike lane with 500 bikes an hour will LOOK emptier than a road with 500 cars an hour because, well, bikes are faster (in congestion) and smaller)

13) More of that space can be used for offices, homes, or just not built on, etc.

So if we can design an experiment that can track all of that, awesome, but in the meantime it's messy.

If nothing else, just making parking compete like any other land use reveals that there are people who would happily repurpose the land for other things. You can park your car in the absolute most prime land in downtown Santa Monica for $525 a month. That is CRAZY. I would pay ~$1600 a month for a few of those spots and build a studio in an INSTANT because you could rent that out to a human for about $5,000 a month.

But instead we use taxpayer money to subsidize sleeping spaces for cars, even though there are humans who would happily pay to sleep there instead. It must really suck for the person who can barely afford their $3400 rent at 16th and Santa Monica blvd that their taxes are helping provide affordable housing for cars right on the beach.

These companies have existed for how long? The point is that if more and more people switch from using cars to using alternative transportation options we may move away from being a car centric society.