I live in the NYC area which has Citi Bike but doesn’t allow any scooter companies to operate. In fact it actually disallows any electric bikes/scooters/skateboards/hoverboards and only makes an exception for pedal-assisted bikes. And since I haven’t been traveling much the closest I could get to trying an electric scooter was reading the endless series of articles about them.

Luckily for me I went on a vacation to Mexico City and got the chance to try a Lime scooter. It was great. I use Citi Bike whenever I can in NYC so I didn’t expect the scooters to be that much different but it felt much more liberating with significantly less friction. The big difference is that there is no docking station which is always a concern in NYC: a station may be empty when I’m looking for a bike or a station is full and I need to dock a bike. The electric powered also makes it much easier to just hop on and go. I don’t mind the Citi Bike pedaling but the scooter only needed a small kick-start and then quickly accelerated to over 14 mph. The scooter was also much smaller and lighter than a Citi Bike which added to the feeling.

I read some articles complaining about the clutter introduced by these scooters but didn’t feel any of that. Sure there were random scooters in random places but it never felt overwhelming and actually made me appreciate them more knowing that they’re so easily accessible. I’m not surprised that they haven’t made their way into NYC yet but hope they’re able to in the future.