Segways for Everyone!

A trailer filled with machinery parked itself on Third Street at Eighth Avenue on Sunday and will be stay there until Wednesday.

But this trailer isn’t filled with lawnmowers or landscaping machines, but rather green, eco-friendly, personal transporters: it is filled with Segways.

The electric two-wheeled, futuristic scooter-like vehicles have a top speed of 12 and half miles per hour and only use six cents of energy to charge.

These Segways are here thanks to a man named Machy Lerner, a community organizer who took a Segway tour on Boston’s Freedom Trail a couple of weeks ago. He then asked the tour company, Boston Gliders, that brings Segway fleets around the US, to come to Park Slope for the last three days of Sukkot.

The tours cost $60 per hour, which includes a training session and then a guided ride through the park, and of course, helmets are included. The tours are open to anyone who wants to hop on the novel machines from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“You can make it dance, you can make it do whatever you want,” said Allan Danley, a public relations representative for Boston Gliders who was giving a lesson to a group of Orthodox Jews on Sunday.

Danley was making the Segway bob, weave and literally dance during the training session. He explained that the Segway has five gyroscopes inside of it to make it level, so it is hard to fall or tip over. He said in comparison, airplanes only have one gyroscope.

While standing next to his fleet of 15, Danley spoke about the Segway in the urban world.

“Unless you don’t have great urban transportation, cars aren’t going anywhere. But I can take this on the T, the bus and train with me in Boston, hop off and get to where ever I need quickly,” he said, explaining that the electric transporter only weighs 100 pounds and are legal to bring on public transportation in Boston.

“People need to get rid of that giant cavity they call the trunk,” he said. “It is hard to change and adapt, but the Segway is here to make that change.”

Lerner, who was busy taking phone calls and telling friends about the tours on Third Street, said there wasn’t much to the scene happening here.

“Everything is what you see,” he said quickly between calls.

“The tours are not only for people who celebrate Sukkot,” he said. “Segways are for everyone.”