Fallen on the side of the road; propped up in front of the aquarium; leaning on stoops — broken electric scooters are still all over Baltimore, and the city’s transportation department wants them gone.
Transportation officials are asking residents to report the locations of the decommissioned, highlighter-yellow and gray Link scooters using a short online form. Maintenance crews will come out and pick up the “missing Links.” More than 100 sites with one or multiple Link scooters have already been reported, according to a transportation department spokesperson.
But some around town have had other ideas for them. Scooters have been found sprawled across sidewalks with parts missing; one was spotted by The Baltimore Banner months ago that had been Frankensteined with other scavenged parts and was working again.
At the end of 2023, Superpedestrian, once a Boston-area startup responsible for the Link scooters, suddenly announced it was closing up shop in the United States and gave employees roughly two weeks to round up thousands of their vehicles in multiple cities across the country, including Baltimore.
They didn’t find them all — at least not here.
The Link mobile app is still available for download because the scooters still zip around more than 60 cities in Europe, according to the company’s website. As of late December, the mobile app no longer unlocks the scooters across Baltimore and people associated with the company stopped coming around to charge their batteries.
Between Spin and Lime, Baltimore has roughly 4,000 scooters and e-bikes available for rent. The companies pay the city for the right to deploy their vehicles on city streets and a small tax on each ride. They’ve grown in popularity since first appearing in Baltimore in 2018, logging roughly 1.3 million trips in 2023, according to the transportation department. Plenty of residents have purchased their own scooters, too.
Some see them as nuisances that block sidewalk ramps when not in use or pose a hazard to cars and pedestrians when ridden. Riders have ended up in hospitals after falling without wearing a helmet or from using them while intoxicated. In July, a scooter rider was struck and killed by a speeding car in East Baltimore.
The “missing Links” are fodder for scooter detractors. They have collected dust, snow and scratches for more than half a year; they’ll appear on a street corner or in front of someone’s house and then disappear days or weeks later after someone tries to ride it and then dumps it elsewhere.
But Baltimore, as expected, has also gotten a little creative with them, too.
Some missing Links have had their innards raided. Vehicles have shown up on doorsteps missing batteries or tipped over on sidewalks with wires sticking out.
One man popped off the base board of a Link to expose the battery and found the necessary electronics online to make it run without the mobile app, he told The Banner. He even added a seat to it. When The Banner spotted the zombie/Frankenstein scooter in Charles Village months ago, the man was using it to make food deliveries. He said his name was Travis but declined to provide his last name before riding off.
