When “available” scooters are still the wrong scooters
Status pings can look healthy while promenade docks empty — how side-street drift fools a simple availability count.
A corridor can report dozens of available vehicles while riders at the main stand insist nothing is there. The contradiction often sits in the geofence, not in the battery van.
What the events show
Trip-end events cluster a short walk from the promenade — a shaded street, a hotel driveway, a quiet lane behind food stalls. Status pings keep labelling those vehicles available because the fence still includes the side street. Heartbeats look fine. Rider complaints rise anyway.
Pairing with depot notes
Ask crews where they expect vehicles to finish tourist loops. If the diary mentions the same side street on dry afternoons, you are not looking at a mysterious demand collapse. You are looking at a fence that is wider than the stand riders actually use.
A practical first move
Before rewriting rebalancing routes, try a temporary end-trip fence that pushes park-outs back toward the promenade docks for two weeks. Compare empty-dock tickets and trip-end density. If tickets fall while completion rates hold, the “availability” metric was masking location quality.
What not to blame first
Battery health still matters, but it should not absorb every empty-dock complaint. Separate vehicles with low charge from vehicles that are simply parked out of the rider’s mental map of the stand.