Atlanta has been an early market for both scooters and various food delivery robots. Both have been a boon for the city.
We've had these delivery robots for about six months now, and they've grown to the point where I see hundreds of delivery robots on the sidewalks each week. Scores of them daily. They're flooding our city, making the long commutes people don't want to.
The reason this is great is that Atlanta's infrastructure is car-centric and spread too far apart to make walking or even biking make sense.
The biking infrastructure we have does no good when it rains and you're twenty minutes from your destination. That same infrastructure also doesn't serve our children or our elderly. Or help when you're sick or tired and need a pick me up.
It's easy to order for a group of people from one of these. To imagine the same group of four people hopping on bikes together to travel twenty minutes to food - that's never once happened in my life. Only certain types of people bike, and you'll invariably find yourself in groups with lots of non-cyclists.
I feel that cyclist culture is bright eyed and idealistic, but not practical. You need a city designed around it, and all the people need to grow up loving it. These delivery robots, Waymo, Lime bikes - they're much more sensible middle grounds for cities like ours. Where people can't bike, or simply don't want to.
Why don't the delivery people bike and you can stay at home.