Scooters fleet reaches 1,400 as another company enters

A fourth company deployed 350 new electric scooters on Denver streets over the past two days as city officials work to educate users on safe use of the stillgrowing fleet.

Razor — the same company that makes the nonelectric scooter popular among groups of neighborhood kids — deployed 100 scooters on Tuesday and 250 more on Wednesday, Denver Public Works spokeswoman Heather Burke said.

That brings the total number of scooters in the city to 1,400, she said.

The herd could grow to 1,750thismonthifSpindeploys its expected batch of 350. But Burke said that addition is tentative because the city hasn’t heard from the San Francisco company recently.

Razor’s redandblack scooters will join those of Lyft, Bird and Lime, which already are already scattered across the city as part of a oneyear pilot program to assess the usefulness of scooters and dockless bikes.

Dozens of cities across the country have adopted — or tolerated — the scooters.

In Los Angeles, people apparently unhappy with the newest transportation trend have set the scooters on fire, dangled dog poop from their handles and tossed them into the ocean.

Denver has had its own struggles with the scooters, which riders unlock and rent through a phone app — and which must be ridden on sidewalks, not on city streets.

A few weeks after Lime and Bird debuted their scooters in May, the city told the companies that staff would confiscate any bike or scooter parked in a public right of way.

Over the next few weeks, the city confiscated more than 260 scooters.

Lime and Bird wrangled their scooters back while city officials created the oneyear pilot program. The companies redeployed the scooters in July and Lyft followed with its scooters in September.