Electric scooter rentals approved

St. Clair Shores residents who enjoyed using electric scooters on the Nautical Mile last summer will see their availability expanded throughout the city this year.

Monday night, St. Clair Shores City Council unanimously approved a contract agreement with Birds Ride Inc. that will provide scooter rental in various areas around the city. The item was tabled at the council’s March 15 meeting after several councilpersons suggested amendments to the contract.

Assistant City Manager William Gambill said Birds Ride Inc. agreed to remove automatic renewal language from its St. Clair Shores app and will provide geofencing technology to keep scooters within the city limits and give the city the ability to limit scooter access to parade routes or other areas where the presence of scooters might be disruptive.

Birds Ride also agreed to remove language advising users to ride the scooters in the street as opposed to the sidewalk.

“We know that it is within the state law for people to ride in the street, but we just do not want to entice them to do that,” Councilman Chris Vitale said. “I don’t want to encourage people to ride on the main roads. We asked you to remove that language, and you have.”

Birds Ride Inc. is a new scooter provider for the city. Last year, Gotcha provided them, but that company went out of business. Because of the popularity of the scooters, the city sought a new vendor that might be able to offer expanded use for residents.

Councilman John Caron pointed out specific ways in which he believes the new scooter vendor will be able to offer better options for riders and the city alike.

“I wanted to restate some of the things that Birds Ride has that our previous contract did not,” Caron said. “The slower speed limit for first-time users, the geofencing and being able to shut them down at the city border, and being able to document the location where the scooter is left, I thought were good additions to the technology we had previously. I do think a lot of people enjoyed having the scooters around last year.”

The contract was approved for this year with a plan to revisit the contract in November and decide if it makes sense to extend the agreement for one or more years. The contract was approved subject to a review by city attorney Robert Ihrie.

“We will do this and decide in October or November how we are going to go forward,” Caron said.

Birds Ride representative Michael Covato explained that a sophisticated algorithm will monitor where scooters are getting the most usage and rental areas will be disbursed accordingly. The algorithm will also determine if more scooters should be added to the 100 scooters currently contracted for the city.

“We can determine where people are opening up the app and looking for scooters where they are not located,” Covato said. “The algorithm will let us know if it is a good idea to move a portion of the fleet to a particular area. We can relocate them to places where people actually need them, so it is giving the greatest service to the community.”

Scooter users will be limited to a speed of 25 miles per hour, which Covato said is slower than the speed of an average bicyclist.

“We have about eight months in this contract, and then we can look at it and figure out the next steps,” Councilman Peter Accica said. “I think it is a good, fresh idea for the city.”