Are Flagsticks and Bunker Rakes Worse Than Electric Scooters?

Over these months of quarantine (or years? I don’t know—time has lost much of its meaning lately…), with a wide variety of businesses (including golf courses, which are my area of concern) forced to close for months, and then to reopen only with wide-ranging restrictions in place, and under threat of closure for non-compliance, I have noticed one sector that seems to have sailed right along with no slow-down or even significant interruption in their business: the operators of those ubiquitous little electric rental scooters and bikes, outfits like Lime and Bird (which are the most common in San José, California, where I live.)

Except for a slight slowdown in their business as a secondary effect of fewer people going to work and going out to eat, etc., resulting in some reduction in the usage of their vehicles, nothing seems to have changed for these companies. I know that I still see them littering the landscape in my suburban neighborhood on my daily walks with our dog—which is what prompted me to wonder, “If I can’t touch a flagstick or a bunker rake when I go play golf, why are these little scooters and bikes still out and about, where anyone can touch them, and with no one rounding them up and disinfecting them?”

Given that a little bit of common sense and the observance of appropriate hygiene protocols are all that is really required to guard against the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, it seems awfully unfair that golf courses were shut down for two months, putting a lot of financial stress on their employees and owners, when these scooter & bike companies were not. And while golf courses are now open they are under strict protocols, such as no bunker rakes in use, flagsticks must be left in the hole, restrictions on the number of people in the clubhouse/pro shop, etc., and they can be shut down for non-compliance—yet the use of rental scooters & bikes is totally unrestricted.

I sent a query to the my local County Health Department about the situation, which yielded this response:

“There are currently no restrictions in place such as those that you have described unlike a grocery store that can assign workers to clean and sanitize the carts between users. For anyone that wants to use these devices for travel, it is strongly recommended to wipe the surfaces that must be handled/touched by the user before riding a scooter or bike. Also consider wearing gloves* as a precaution as well as washing your hands before and after riding.”

* ( The reference to gloves is disappointing coming from the county health department, as it has been widely advertised that gloves are just another surface to pick up the virus. Unless you remove and discard them before touching another object, or your face, they are pointless.)

Scrolling through the website for Lime scooters I found this statement on a support page entitled “Keeping cities safe during COVID-19”:

“We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.”

Elsewhere on their site they have this:

Steps we’re taking to keep our communities safe

• We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.
• We are distributing hand sanitizers in our facilities. All of our mechanics and operators in the field are required to wear gloves and wash their hands regularly.

I have contacted Lime asking about their protocols for “cleaning and disinfecting” their scooters and received only a parroting of the statements on their website in response. Frankly, I don’t see how they can keep up with maintaining cleanliness on such publicly accessible vehicles, which stay out on the streets for long periods of time and are handled by untold numbers of different people.

Compared to a golf course, which is a contained, controllable environment, and one in which, with a little common sense and attention to hygiene protocols, a safe environment can be maintained, rental scooters and bikes which are widely accessible to the public at large, and which are not regularly accessed by the business which owns them for maintenance or cleaning (only when they are reported broken), are a relative menace.

I don’t intend to condemn the scooter-rental folks here; in fact, I feel that the application of common sense by folks who make use of them—such as a quick squirt or wipe-down with an alcohol-based cleaner, would make them perfectly safe to use. No, I am taking to task the local health authorities for an uneven and prejudicial approach to locking down businesses as part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The disruptive, and in my mind, over-the-top, restrictions which have been placed on golf-course operations, on top of the financial burden of two months of non-operation in prime golf weather (well, at least here in California) are indefensible in comparison to the shoulder-shrug response to the uninterrupted operation of rental bikes and scooters. Members of the public who use golf courses and other shared public-access recreational facilities have not been trusted to be proactive in their attention to hygiene when confronted with potentially shared contact surfaces, yet the county health department’s response to queries about the use of rental scooters and bikes is, basically, “You handle it.”

Update: On the evening of July 27th I received the following message from Lime customer support – “For now, we’re temporarily pausing Lime service to help people stay put and stay safe. We'll keep you updated.”

The quarantine has resulted in a significant financial hit to golf courses for the shutdown period, followed by operation under severe restrictions and hastily contrived half-measures such as raised cups or cup inserts to avoid touching the hole when retrieving a ball, removing bunker rakes, shutting off on-course water fountains, and requiring that flagsticks remain in the holes at all times—all under the threat of permanent closure if the operational restrictions are not adhered to

I expected better from the people whose business it is to look out for public health—but unfortunately I have, in recent months, become accustomed to being let down by public officials in whom I should be able to place my trust.