SAFE SCOOTING
Marie Ortiz of Milwaukee takes a Lime scooter for a ride Monday as Keven Duran, a regional launch manager with Lime, looks on outside Boo Boo’s Sandwiches and Soup Brothers on South Second Street in Milwaukee. Scooter company Lime hosted a First Ride Academy, encouraging first-time riders to learn how to use scooters safely and appropriately.
Ahead of an electric scooter extravaganza that could hit Milwaukee any day, e-scooter company Lime hosted an educational training seminar for Milwaukeeans to learn how to safely use them.
“We are very very close to getting a program up and running,” said Nico Probst, director of Midwest government relations for Lime.
The training sessions, or as Lime calls them “First Ride Academy” sessions, are meant to showcase “proper ridership” for users. They train people on everything from how to download the app, how to ride the scooters and how to park.
“We don’t just want to be a tech company that comes in here, dumps our product on the ground and tells the community ‘go figure it out for yourself.’ We want to be a partner in this effort,” Probst said.
Lime said it will be holding the training seminars at multiple times throughout the pilot study program in Milwaukee.
When the pilot program starts, 500 Lime scooters will arrive on the streets of Milwaukee, Probst said. And that number could increase, based on demand, as the study progresses.
Lime already operates in 100 cities, 27 countries and five continents, according to Probst. It is one of the three scooter companies to officially apply for the pilot program study in Milwaukee.
Probst said there is only so much Lime can do on the front end to keep riders safe and that the company has no way to ensure riders are wearing a helmet or obeying traffic laws.
But one thing they can do, Probst said, is track where people are parking, which has been a nuisance in other cities.
“If a scooter is reported as misparked or blocking ADA access, because we have photo verification on all of our parking spots, we can go back and trace that to a user and fine or ban folks from the app if we are seeing consistently bad practice.
“...[I]n most cities we have been operating in, as time goes on we see the behavior get better and better.”
Richard Dollhopf, a parking enforcement manager with Milwaukee, tried out a scooter and said, “I think they’re pretty nice. I think they drive pretty smooth, pretty easy use.” Of parking, he said: “pretty simple.”
The department isn’t taking any special precautions ahead of the scooter launch, but it will be keeping an eye out for how things go regarding parking, Dollhopf said.