Trial e-scooter program in doubt: DOT boss

The city’s money woes are braking plans to roll out a shared electric scooter program, Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg told the City Council on Wednesday.

The Transportation Department is short of staff, and that’ll make it hard for a scooter program to begin before Mayor de Blasio leaves office at the end of 2021, Trottenberg said.

“We are going to be challenged to run this program,” said Trottenberg. “We don’t want a pilot where things aren’t safe, where scooters are being scattered all over the streets.”

Standup electric scooters, popular in other major cities, were barred from New York until state lawmakers green-lighted them earlier this year.

They will be permitted on streets, but are not allowed to travel faster than 15 mph.

City law requires the Department of Transportation to put out a request for companies to propose a temporary e-scooter rental program by Oct. 15. Under the law, the temporary program must begin by March 1.

Trottenberg said budget cuts passed by the City Council over the summer have hamstrung her agency, which is already occupied with an expansion of Citi Bike docks into the Bronx and upper Manhattan and recently began to regulate the network Revel electric mopeds that killed three people this summer.

“I don’t really have the personnel to do all these programs as well as I want to,” Trottenberg said.

The DOT must still determine where the pilot scooter program will operate. State law prohibits it from launching in Manhattan.

Advocates including the New York League of Conservation Voters last month sent a letter to Trottenberg calling for the scooters to be deployed in areas with little access to mass transit.