The Green Miles

Many people’s first scooter encounters are probably a bit like mine: clutching a friend’s torso, flushed by the wind and grinning in the sunshine of a semi-crowded city street. And long after that sweet ride I still remember how the bike handled simply and intuitively, was immensely practical, and suggested a fantasy of Quadrophenia or Roman Holiday — even while spooning the driver.

With the price of gas heading skyward, it’s no surprise scooters are drawing people back into the saddle seat. In June 2008, the Toronto-based Motorcycle & Moped Industry Council (MMIC) reported scooter sales had spiked 22 per cent across Canada so far this year. More than 2,000 Canadians bought scooters in the last 30 months alone, and nearly 44,000 mopeds were registered with transportation ministries in 2006 (in addition to 500,000-plus motorcycles).

Surely our collective urbanism hasn’t been infiltrated by that many flare-wearing, cappuccino-swilling hipsters, has it? Think again: Style points are incidental when you’re dealing with fuel efficiency of at least 20 km per litre.

“When we started, the fuel prices had just started going up, so [we received] a lot more interest,” says Rob Pellegrini, general manager of Bridge City Auto Sports in Saskatoon, which began selling Piaggios soon after opening a few years ago. “The more we brought in, the more we’d sell. When you can sell 75 to 100 scooters a year in Saskatchewan, that tells you what’s happening in the market.”

Pellegrini describes a wide range of scooter buyers in Saskatoon, from savvy adults (young and old) looking to reduce their carbon footprint to commuters from rural outskirts who have parked their gas-guzzling trucks. According to Jo-Anne Farquhar, media and public relations director for the MMIC, men and woman of all ages are buying in dense urban areas like Toronto, where driving a car can be nightmarish, and public transit is not always the answer. “They have purchased scooters because they are no longer of an age where pedaling a bike is an option, and [they] find that a scooter gets them where they need to go, without taxing their physical strength,” she says.

The reasons for embracing two-wheeled transportation are ample (as are the options available), and dealers admit the bikes usually sell themselves. Potential riders love the idea of cheap insurance, low maintenance and a much lower gas bill, not to mention dodging both gridlock and parking headaches. Timely, targeted promotions may also prove a draw, including the Canadian Scooter Corp.’s recently introduced carbon offset program, which will funnel an estimated three years’ worth of emissions for every Vespa sold in 2008 towards protecting the habitats of pollinators like bees, butterflies and, naturally, wasps. (Vespa means “wasp” in Italian.)

Perhaps for some, it’s as Dylan Lilley, the iconoclastic owner of Top Gear scooter shop in Edmonton, succinctly puts it: “There’s just no joy in a car once you start driving a motorcycle or a scooter.”
To some, this visceral draw is everything. Tanis Fishman, a 29-year-old yoga instructor from Calgary who began riding last summer — “the best summer of my life,” she says — now shares her boyfriend’s trio of 1980s Japanese scooters for commuting between studios and running errands downtown. “Just being on a scooter you feel more a part of the street. You feel more exposed, not living in such a bubble, like in a car,” she says. “I like feeling the air. You can barely tune out when you’re on a scooter. It heightens your awareness, which is nice.”

“Men and women of all ages are buying in dense urban areas where driving a car can be nightmarish”

So owning a scooter is both fun and fiscally prudent, but making the leap to two wheels can still seem a bit daunting. “We focused, from the very beginning, on the transportation aspect and let pop culture portray it as a cool vehicle, and we never really pushed that,” says Lilley. “At the end of the day, you have to go home and tell your wife or your partner that you’re buying a $6,000 motorcycle — not very popular! They’re kind of a new thing, and there has to be some way to justify it.”

Lilley points towards durability to bring customers around on the initial investment. “You focus on the quality of the bike and the idea that [when] you buy a Vespa it’s going to last the rest of your life,” he says. “It’s such a change from North American manufacturing concepts, where they want you to buy a new car every three years. With a Vespa, the idea is that you buy one and you give it to your kid.”

Ingenious design and durability have been Vespa hallmarks since it was introduced some six decades ago. Perhaps the one hurdle that’s held it back all these years is the notion that driving one is precarious. “They are dangerous, there’s no question. You’ve got to be really careful,” concedes 34-year-old Kurt Krumme, who navigates downtown Toronto on a pair of two-stroke Vespas built in the ’80s. “Most people are really polite. They’ll let you in; give you a wide berth.”

“There’s just no joy in a car once you start driving a motorcycle or a scooter”

And moving nimbly through heavy traffic becomes invaluable once you’re comfortable at the helm of those antennae-shaped handlebars. “It’s super-fast. You don’t get caught in traffic... whenever I leave people and we go meet in a second location, I’m waiting for them to show up,” says Krumme. “It doesn’t go fast enough to be awesome, it just goes fast enough to kill you,” he quips.

But who needs fast enough to be awesome when choosing to buy a scooter is smart enough to save you money, if not a little too much fun for its own good? “We’ve always thought it was like a lawn mower,” says Lilley. “It’s only a matter of time before every house in Edmonton should have a scooter in it.” •