Brickbat: Taken for a Ride

After the Raleigh, North Carolina, city council imposed a $300-per-scooter fee and other limitations on electric scooters, Bird scooters added a $2 transportation fee to use its scooters, in addition to the $1 to unlock the scooters and 15 cents a minute to ride it already charged. Company officials say they need the new fee to offset the higher costs imposed on them by the city. But Mayor Nancy McFarlane said the price increase “profit-making decision and has nothing to do with our requirements” and insisted that the new fee is not a tax.