Mount Vernon Trail · Arlington & Alexandria, VA
The dumping slowed. The collecting did not.
I ride the same corridor most weekdays. Across three measured windows, new improperly parked scooters and e-bikes fell from 3.3 to 0.6 per pass. The trail did not get meaningfully emptier: the devices still there stayed longer, in the same recurring places.
Period 1 · August 3–13
The accumulation
New arrivals stayed broadly steady while the standing population rose 70%. Devices were entering the corridor and not being collected.
- Devices
- 49
- New/pass
- 3.3
- 7+ days
- 12%
Read period 1 →
Period 2 · August 24–September 3
The abandonment
Fewer new devices appeared, but the ones already there stayed longer. The corridor carried more obstruction from fewer devices.
- Devices
- 29
- New/pass
- 1.3
- 7+ days
- 24%
Read period 2 →
Period 3 · September 21–October 2
The persistence
New dumping nearly stopped, but the corridor was no emptier. The smaller group that remained stayed longer than ever.
- Devices
- 17
- New/pass
- 0.6
- 7+ days
- 41%
Read period 3 →
The three-period trend
Fewer arrivals. Longer stays. The same places.
The surveys are separated by unobserved gaps, so matching coordinates show that a place recurred, not that one device remained between periods. Even with that boundary, seven of the 14 period-three locations were occupied in all three windows, and four held a device for at least a week in both of the last two.
| Measure | Period 1 | Period 2 | Period 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Observation window | Aug 3–13 | Aug 24–Sep 3 | Sep 21–Oct 2 |
| Passes (riding days) | 14 (8) | 16 (8) | 16 (9) |
| GPS-tagged sightings | 144 | 150 | 130 |
| Reconstructed devices (strict upper bound) | 49 (70) | 29 (43) | 17 (26) |
| Clustered locations | 39 | 24 | 14 |
| New devices per pass, after the first | 3.3 | 1.3 | 0.6 |
| Standing devices, first half → second half | 8.3 → 14.1 | 8.6 → 10.6 | 8.4 → 8.0 |
| Stayed a week or more | 6 (12%) | 7 (24%) | 7 (41%) |
| Present for the entire window | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Mean stay per device | 1.5 days | 2.9 days | 4.9 days |
| Device-days of obstruction | 73 | 83 | 83 |
| Morning-to-evening repeats | 31 | 50 | 43 |
The distinct-device count fell by nearly two-thirds, but cumulative obstruction held at 83 device-days in both later periods. Lower turnover is not the same thing as a clear trail.