They’ve put the scooters out around Schiller Park. I’m going to keep a close eye on them, because I think scooter use in the coming weeks may give us a lot of telling information about how things are going to be, post-shutdown.
Here’s my reasoning. Last year, scooters really made inroads. Lots of people, of different ages, were using them to move around town. Then the scooter weather ended, winter came, and then the coronavirus shutdown hit before scooter weather returned. Now we’re on the cusp of scooter weather again, and the scooters are out. Will people use them?
Of course, scooters are a pretty basic example of vehicle sharing. And, in post-shutdown America, the key word there is “sharing.” You can’t ride a scooter without touching the handlebars. Will people be willing to do that? Or will we see scooters standing idle due to fear of COVID-19?
And that’s why scooters are a kind of leading indicator. A big question for the post-shutdown economy is whether people will be too freaked out by the risk of infection to return to the pre-shutdown norm. If the Scooter Brigade — by self-selection risk-takers, since riders are willing to go zipping through vehicular traffic without any protective shielding — is willing to go back to scooting, that will tell us something about people, and the economy, bouncing back.
What if the Scooter Brigade doesn’t ride? Well, that will tell us there’s a lot of work yet to be done in the social confidence category.
Webner House 