Complaints roll in over scooter crush
City officials weigh action against stand-up vehicle firms
San Francisco, whose sidewalks and streets have seen just about everything, were invaded by something new at the tail end of March — hundreds of motorized stand-up scooters meant to be shared for short rides.
The scooters, capable of speeds up to 15 mph, appeared suddenly, and since their arrival, they’ve drawn praise from early users and a flood of complaints from people who don’t like one of the slender two-wheelers’ biggest features: They can be parked anywhere. And they are. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said his office has received numerous complaints, particularly about sidewalks becoming “dumping grounds for commercial scooters.” His office, he said, is “examining all of our legal options to protect the more than 1 million people who use San Francisco’s sidewalks every day.”
Detractors complain that riders are leaving the scooters — sometimes piling them — in the middle of sidewalks and bike lanes, and blocking building entrances with them. Pedestrians say they’ve tripped over them, and people with disabilities say they’re unwelcome and difficult obstacles to navigate around.
Some users exacerbate the problem by illegally riding the scooters on sidewalks, buzzing pedestrians as they weave in and out of crowds.
The scooters, deposited on the sidewalks by three transportation startup companies, have quickly become common sights downtown, South of Market and in the Financial District.
“Kids, parents with strollers, seniors or people in wheelchairs shouldn’t be tripping over scooters or forced into traffic to get around them,” Herrera said. “San Franciscans’ safety and public resources are not commodities for these companies to monetize. San Francisco has had enough of the mantra ‘move fast and break things.’ ”
Some cities, including Austin, Texas, and Santa Monica, have adopted ordinances or policies that allow scooters left on sidewalks to be impounded. And San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency also wants to regulate scooters, beginning with requiring the companies that own them to seek operating permits and agree to comply with regulations yet to be established.
The MTA is working with Supervisor Aaron Peskin on legislation.
Peskin said he gets daily complaints from constituents, often including pictures of people riding scooters on sidewalks or of scooters parked where they block people walking or using wheelchairs on city sidewalks.
“They decided to dump these things on the streets and not ask for permission first,” he said.
The shared electric scooters arrived in San Francisco en masse during last few days of March, following previews at the city’s St. Patrick’s Day and Sunday Streets events a couple of weeks earlier.
Three companies — LimeBike, based in San Mateo; Bird Rides, headquartered in Venice (Los Angeles County); and Spin, located in San Francisco — own the scooters and lease them to people who unlock them with a mobile phone app. For now, all three charge the same rates: a flat $1 fee to unlock the scooter plus 15 cents per minute of use.
The companies scatter the fully charged scooters around the city at locations where they believe they’ll be used. The scooters are popular with people trying to get from BART to work, heading to a meeting a few blocks away, or visiting the city and observing the sights.
Juliana Greene, 28, an education administrator, has become a regular user, even renting a scooter near AT&T Park on Sunday to get back to BART after a Giants game.
“It was better than waiting for Muni,” she said Monday, as she unlocked a scooter near Fifth and Mission streets to get to a South of Market destination several blocks away.
For now, the MTA can’t do anything about the scooters, agency spokesman Paul Rose said, because they’re not mentioned in any city or agency ordinances. Peskin introduced a bill on March 6 giving the agency that power. The soonest the MTA is likely to be able to adopt regulations is the end of this month, Peskin said.
The MTA sent all three companies letters on March 29 notifying them that permit requirements are imminent and encouraging their cooperation in keeping sidewalks and streets passable in the meantime.
State law does impose some rules on electric scooters that the police can enforce. They’re banned from sidewalks, they can be used only by licensed drivers older than 18, and riders must wear helmets. The scooters can’t be parked where they’re an obstruction, according to the law. But the city wants tighter regulation.
The scooters are widely viewed as a problem. Representatives for all three companies, however, say they’re following the laws, and that they have processes that require users to acknowledge that they’ll abide by the rules before they rent the scooters.
All three also acknowledge the parking issue, and have told the MTA they’ll work to resolve it. Bird, which ran into trouble in Santa Monica, settling three complaints for breaking city ordinances for more than $300,000 in February, created a “Save Our Sidewalks” pledge about the same time its bikes appeared in San Francisco.
The program vows to pick up scooters nightly, reposition them to areas where they’re most likely to be used, and remove any that aren’t used at least three times a day in an effort to limit the number of scooters. The pledge, which Bird has invited other operators to sign on to, also promises to pay $1 per scooter per day to the city. So far, no one else has agreed, said David Estrada, Bird’s chief legal officer and head of government regulation.
Estrada, who formerly held the same post for Lyft, said Bird is committed to working with the MTA and suggested that the scooters could be accommodated by taking a parking place on each block, applying diagonal stripes and reserving it for scooter parking only.
Joe Arellano, a spokesman for Lime, said his company is working to set up hubs at businesses where riders could park scooters. He also suggested that the city could mark spots on sidewalks to advise renters where to park.
People who rely on the city sidewalks say something needs to be done. Allen Johnson, 61, relies on crutches to get around. He hasn’t had a run-in with a scooter yet, but he says they’re additional obstacles, and challenges, for people with disabilities.
“Just putting these things everywhere and anywhere doesn’t make sense,” he said. “As a person who has a mobility problem, I have an issue with that.”
So does Cathy DeLuca, policy and program director for Walk San Francisco, a pedestrian advocacy group. The group successfully battled to keep delivery robots off of sidewalks and has turned its attention to motorized scooters.
“We don’t want people using motorized devices,” she said, “on the one safe place to walk.”