Dealing With Crap at a Charging Station

What a mess. I pulled into a spot near an EVgo charging station at my local Trader Joe’s this morning. Trash was strewn everywhere. Fast food wrappers, plastic sauce containers, a paper bag and napkins. Did someone have a late night party here?

I hopped out of the car for a closer inspection. That’s when I saw it. A big pile of crap laying naked on the pavement. Right next to ERDEM, the anthropomorphic name that EVgo has given to the CCS/CHAdeMO charger. I didn’t come today to charge, I came to pick up a few items at TJ’s that I didn’t get at the MOM’s Organic Market that I had just come from.

I turned away from the poop and hurried toward the store lest I catch a downwind whiff. As I circulated the store to find my groceries, thoughts gnawed at me. What if an unsuspecting EV driver, eager to get a quick charge, hops out of their car and plants a foot squarely into that squishy pile?

Cleaning up the Crap

It’s really not my responsibility to keep the EVgo charging area clean, is it?

No, it’s not.

But, what am I going to do, let someone else deal with it?

By the time I got back to the car with my bag of groceries, I decided to leave this spot better than I found it. I emptied the apples out of a thin, compostable, BioBag from MOM’s and stuck my hand in it. I found a yellow plastic bag and started stuffing it with the scattered fast food containers, cigarette butts and bottle caps. The napkins that clung to the ground about four feet in front of what I presumed were dog turds revealed brown skid marks as I thrust them into the yellow sack.

Must have been some party!

Two more grabs —the worst — and I was done.

I tossed the yellow bag into a bin and went back into Trader Joe’s to scrub the disgust off my hands with water as hot as I could stand.

As I returned to my car, I couldn’t shake the metaphorical crap that remains at this charging site.

Still Waiting for Enforceable Signs from EVgo

A brief Twitter exchange with an executive at EVgo last October lead to my suggesting that they erect legally enforceable signs at all EVgo sites in the three Maryland counties that have enacted anti-ICEing legislation. That was five months ago and the inadequate, “ELECTRIC VEHICLE PARKING” signs have yet to be replaced with signs that would allow the police to write tickets for ICEing.

After five months of waiting to see new signs, I’m beginning to wonder if they actually give a crap.