Scooter store

John and Linda Brucks of New York City own three vehicles, and the gas guzzler in the bunch is a Honda Accord that gets 32 miles per gallon.

When he drives a hybrid car that gets 45 mpg, and she rides a Honda Metropolitan scooter that will go about 100 miles on a single gallon of gas.

“I have to fill up about every three weeks,” Linda Brucks, 24, said this week as she strapped on her helmet for the ride back to the couple’s Waldo home. “And it costs like … $5.”

Probably more like $6 now — a 1½-gallon tank at $4 a gallon — but Brucks gets a pass on the math. After all, she hasn’t been to the gas station since June.

Nobody is ready to predict that U.S. cities will soon look like Rome, where scooters have filled streets for years, but a 25 percent spike in scooter sales nationally so far this year indicates that Americans seem willing to try something new if they can park their cars and SUVs.

A Northland dealership said this week that it was sold out of scooters.

At Scooter World in downtown Overland Park, many units are sold before they get off the truck, and Reno’s Yamaha Aprilia in south Kansas City is out of some models and a salesman said business was “crazy.”

Who’s buying? Everybody: Young and old. College students, blue-collar workers, retirees and professionals. And even some who might have been thought least likely to hit the streets on two wheels.

If you live in Olathe, you probably don’t want to ride to a job in Blue Springs. New York City weather can be an issue, too.

But for shorter commutes or for just running errands in the neighborhood, scooters fit the needs of lots of people.

Depending on size and features, name-brand scooters generally run between $2,000 and $7,500. Most motor sizes are from 49 cc (cubic centimeters) to 250 cc. They get 60 to 100 miles per gallon, and the bigger ones can hit 75 mph, though most riders stay off freeways because of the light weight.