City's downtown welcomes workers riding Segways

[Casey]

September 30, 2002 - The Union Leader - Nearly every day, they come whirling into the Fusion coffee shop in downtown Manchester, Segways ridden by engineers looking for a morning jolt of coffee. Full Article

[Casey]

quote:City's downtown welcomes workers riding Segways
By MARK HAYWARD
Union Leader Staff

Nearly every day, they come whirling into the Fusion coffee shop in downtown Manchester, Segways ridden by engineers looking for a morning jolt of coffee.

Carlos Pineda, co-owner of Fusion, welcomes them. The riders are polite, and his customers get to see the revolutionary Segway Human Transporter close up.

“It’s funny because they almost have lunch right on it,” Pineda said. “They’re experts riding it.”

For four months now, downtown Manchester and the Millyard have served as a laboratory of sorts for inventor Dean Kamen’s Segway company.

Employees at Segway and DEKA Research have a fleet of 20 machines they can sign out. A 15-minute walk downtown to grab a sandwich or run errands now takes only minutes, said Tobe Cohen, marketing director for Segway LLC.

Another 20 employees have taken advantage of an employee-purchase program and commute to work on Segways.

“It’s getting pretty common around here,” said Mike Rodgers, an electronic technician who works at Texas Instruments. “They seem to be fitting in fine; they haven’t hit me yet.”

But the Segway, with its quiet motor and top sidewalk speed of 9 mph, has some on edge.

The machines are cool, as long as there’s not too many of them, said Rachel Dowd, who works at Junior Achievement in downtown.

Dowd said Segways have come from behind her and whizzed by on the sidewalk.

“They’re very fast and very quiet,” Dowd said. “You can’t hear them. If they had a lane on the street, it’d be great.”

Motorists also have had to get accustomed to the machines. Although New Hampshire law allows them on sidewalks, they still must cross streets at times.

Monica Mercier, who works at Abacus Communications in the Millyard, said she’s seen Segway riders scoot in front of her as she approaches a corner.

They’re difficult to judge, she said.

“You don’t know how fast they can be,” she said. “They didn’t seem very cautious.”

Manchester police, however, report no problems with Segways. No collisions. No pedestrian accidents. No tickets.

Cohen compares the Segway to joggers. Joggers move quickly on the sidewalk and overtake pedestrians. And joggers sometimes race to beat traffic at a corner.

“What we tell people is, do what you do when you’re jogging,” he said.

The company bills the Segway as not so much a vehicle as an extension of a person. Cohen said the Segway doesn’t need its own lane; it takes up no more space than a person and can balance while idle.

“The great thing about the Segway is its ability to integrate into the infrastructure,” Cohen said.

Across the country, Segway has been leasing and selling machines to organizations, most of which are piloting them for commercial applications.

Utilities, police departments, the National Park Service and Disney Cruise Lines are some of the organizations using the commercial Segway model.

But Manchester is the only community in the world where so many non-uniformed pedestrians are using the Segway as it was designed — to replace automobiles and other forms of transportation for short-distance travel, Cohen said.

“That’s really our vision for communities across the world,” Cohen said. “There isn’t that novelty, gawking factor (in downtown Manchester). We’re just part of the landscape.”

“They’ve become a little more commonplace,” agreed Shane McDonough, manager of Margaritas Mexican Restaurant. Most of the Segway riders come in at dinnertime, riding the machines right to their tables.

“I don’t agree with them riding them into the restaurant, but I know why they’re doing it; they want to sell it,” McDonough said.

Cohen said riders are told to get permission from businesses before bringing a machine into an establishment.

Overall, the Segway transportation experience in Manchester is getting high marks from the people using the machines, Cohen said.

And riders are telling the company what else is needed — bags, lights and ways to customize a model.

“A cupholder is our No. 1 requested item,” Cohen said.

Currently, Segway employs about 140 people in the Manchester area, the majority of them working at the Segway headquarters on Commercial Street. The remainder work at the manufacturing plant in Bedford.

The company does not discuss how many Segways it has manufactured so far, Cohen said.

Plans call for consumer models to be made available in a few locations late this year or early 2003. The price will be somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000, he said.

Cohen said Manchester will be among the first communities to see the machines available for purchase on a limited basis.

“We all have friends in this area,” Cohen said. “All of our friends would have major problems with us if we didn’t.”

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