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Today’s Boston Globe reports that a new law will go into effect on July 31, making life more difficult for scooterists. Here are the important quotes:

On July 31, a new state law will kick in that could require license plates for hundreds, if not thousands, of scooter owners whose bikes are smaller and sleeker than motorcycles, yet slightly faster than old-fashioned mopeds.

The new law creates a third category of motorized bike, one that includes scooters too fast to be mopeds but not fast enough to exceed the 40-mile-per-hour minimum of motorcycles… Owners must have them registered, insured, and annually inspected, like a typical car or motorcycle…

With mandatory license plates, such scooters will be kicked off Boston sidewalks, because city rules require any plated vehicle to be parked in the street. And that’s likely to spell parking nightmares for scores of Boston-area scooter owners, who will now have to battle with cars and trucks for precious on-street spaces and metered spots.

Scooter dealers, drivers, and parking officials alike from various cities said they were caught off guard by the new law, which was passed in January but only this week is being publicized.

Phil Eckelkamp of Somerville owns an old Austrian Puch scooter that gets 80 miles per gallon. He’s not sure what he’ll do if he can’t park on the sidewalk anymore.

“The fact of the matter is I won’t be able to lock it to anything, unless you want me to lock it to the bumper of the car in front of me,’’ he said. “My bike weighs 100 pounds. It can be lifted up and put into a trunk.’’

There are several things wrong with this picture:

1. Boston is probably the biggest parking nightmare in America, and the state wants to increase competition for spaces? Many scooterists will now be forced to park their vehicles on the street as opposed to on a clear section of sidewalk. How many altercations are we now going to see when a scooter takes up an entire parking spot that could be used to park a Ford Explorer?
2. What many people may not realize is that parking in a spot — when a rider is lucky enough to find one —  isn’t safe. Scooters are lightweight, and if not locked to a sign post or bike rack, they will be stolen and thrown into the backs of pickup trucks. This isn’t conjecturing; scooter theft is becoming a bigger and bigger issue around the country. The new law will  make things much easier for the thieves.
3. If you want to make scooterists use license plates for identification purposes, by all means do it. But to mandate the same insurance policies and yearly inspections that powerful motorcycles are required to have is senseless, especially if you can’t present any statistical backing to demonstrate such a need. This sounds like a quick way for state politicians — namely Deomcrats — to generate revenue, and it’s a very shortsighted one at that.
4. Making scooters more costly will diminish people’s incentive to use one of the most fuel-efficient forms of transportation available.
5. The fact that this law was passed in January but not made public until 10 days before it goes into effect is terrible. Dealers, too, were out of the loop, which means that people were buying vehicles without knowing what laws would soon govern them.

This is a giant step backwards for Massachusetts.