Bird, Lime, and VeoRide will bring 3,000 electric scooters to the East Bronx as part of a pilot program to test the effectiveness of scooter sharing in New York City. It is also an opportunity to introduce electric scooters to underserved areas of New York City's public transportation system before unleashing them on the streets of Williamsburg.

But while the goals of scooter sharing are certainly laudable, electric scooters around the world will not solve the infrastructure problems that have taken root in the Bronx and other American cities that have been carved out by highways and interstates since the 1950s.

Bard is piloting a scooter-share program in Co-Op City, a development of 35 high-rise buildings with more than 15,000 housing units in the Bronx. built in the 1960s, Co-Op City is home to about 45,000 people, most of whom are minorities. Bordered by the Hutchinson River on one side and I-95, built in the 1950s, on the other, people moved to the suburbs and began living a car-centric lifestyle.

Like many other minority communities in the country, Co-Op City is cut off from the rest of New York by highways, isolating its residents in much the same way that I-95 has divided other parts of the Bronx.

There are only two roads in and out of the area, otherwise one must jump on I-95. At the southern end of Cope City, Bird riders must travel about three-quarters of a mile from the end of Baychester Avenue to the Gun Hill Road subway station. At the north end, it is about a half-mile from the Taco Bell at Tillotson Avenue to the Eastchester-Dyer Avenue station. If you are in the middle of Co-Op City, you would have to take the pedestrian bridge to the Baychester Avenue station and then walk nearly half a mile to the nearest subway station.

It is admirable that Bird and others are trying to shorten this distance, to curry favor with NYC, and to expand the scooter-share program to other parts of NYC and to more affluent customers. But even if someone were to take one of the few public roads out of Co-Op City, they would be faced with the fact that their neighborhood is not the best place for a scooter.

They have to share the road with New York City drivers, as there are few protected bike lanes in the East Bronx. Furthermore, as The Verge points out, some protected lanes, such as the Bronx River Parkway, are closed to electric scooters.

New York City has announced that it will add up to 30 miles of protected bike lanes by December 2021, but the official New York City bike map shows that the East Bronx, where this pilot program will begin, has far fewer protected bike lanes than the wealthier neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn It shows that there are far fewer bike lanes in the East Bronx than in the wealthier neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Providing transportation for more people is a good thing. But I am skeptical that this 21st century technology will solve a problem that has been around for over 50 years.