Scooters appear to be here to stay
In Orlando, scooters appear here to stay after vote
Orlando city commissioners are expected to make the 18-month trial of scooters permanent in a Monday vote.
Despite breaking his wrist in a fall on an electric scooter in front of City Hall last month, Jordan Eichenblatt still zips around using them downtown on lunch breaks and on the way to Orlando City Soccer games.
The fall was caused by swerving to avoid a crack in the sidewalk while simultaneously tapping the front brake, which sent him tumbling over the handlebars of the scooter, he said.
“Every car saw me fall,” he said. “I am going to keep riding ... it’s just such a convenient method of transportation.”
His story is indicative of the debate the devices have spurred in city halls across the country, weighing safety concerns and complaints of “scooter litter” against convenience for residents and visitors and “last-mile” transportation solutions.
In Orlando, city commissioners are expected to make the 18-month test of scooters permanent, allowing companies to bid in hopes of becoming one of two or three providers in the city.
If the program is approved Monday — commissioners voted 6-1 last month in favor of it — City Hall will seek proposals from companies like Lime, Bird, Wheels, Spin, Razor and Lynx City, which all operate
in the current pilot.
The permanent program will allow for no more than 1,800 scooters in Orlando, the same as the pilot. But divvied up between fewer companies means each fleet could be larger.
Eichenblatt said the scooters help fill a gap in Orlando, which lacks a robust public
transportation network like other large metros and is an easy way to get around.
“Public transportation is so awful, especially in the downtown area,” he said.
The scooters come in several varieties: some require a rider to stand on a platform
like a kick-scooter and use a throttle to accelerate up to 10 mph, while others have a seat and can travel 20 mph on the street. Riders pay a fee on an app to unlock the vehicle and then are charged an additional fee based on how long or how far they travel.
Since launching in January 2020, the city has recorded 886,426 rides.
In 2020, Orlando Health and AdventHealth, the region’s two main hospital systems, reported a combined 25 emergency room visits attributed to scooters. Figures for this year aren’t available yet.
As life downtown picked back up following a mostly dormant 2020, ridership has skyrocketed to a high of 76,521 rides in May, the most since its inception.
City commissioner Patty Sheehan, whose district encompasses neighborhoods on the east side of downtown, said she frequently fields complaints at neighborhood meetings from homeowners frustrated that the devices are left blocking sidewalks and are strewn all over town.
But as the only commissioner to vote against the pilot and the first read of the ordinance, she sees them as inevitable.
“I’m the only one who is complaining, but I really do feel that’s because the majority of them are in my district,” she said. “[City staff ] say the complaints have reduced. I just think people are so frustrated that they don’t get action that they stop complaining.”
The plan to limit the number of companies could improve the program, by choosing one that is responsive to complaints, she said. And she’d support forcing scooters to be docked, as opposed to allowing users to park on sidewalks.
Meanwhile, scooters could gain more of a foothold in Central Florida. Orange County planners are drafting an ordinance to test them for 18 months, allowing up to 1,800 electric scooters and bikes in unincorporated areas, including possibly the popular International Drive tourist district. Chief Planner Alissa Barber Torres told the county commission a vote could come this fall.
County commissioners banned them in March 2020 due to safety concerns,
and the International Drive Business Improvement District opposes them, its executive director told commissioners this week, citing a variety of concerns ranging from clutter to reckless riders on sidewalks and potential impacts to the I-Ride trolley.
Scooters also are available at the University of Central Florida.
For downtown Orlando resident Jennifer Leacock, scooter rides to neighboring shopping and restaurant districts like Thornton Park and Mills 50 save her a brief car trip and having to find parking. She prefers Lime’s scooters because she’s used to the app from when the company ran bike-sharing
— which she likes over scooters — in Orlando.
She said she is glad the city planned to pare down the number of companies, which means frequent users won’t have to have their credit cards attached to five different apps.
Naqiy McMullen, who doesn’t drive, said he rides the scooters downtown a few times per week but doesn’t feel as safe doing so as he did when bike-sharing companies had fleets on the road. When scooters were permitted, Lime removed its bikes in favor of them.
“They just feel safer to me,” he said. “Just compared to bicycles, I feel less stable and feel like I have less control over them.”
He thought the program could improve by eliminating the cap of 1,800 scooters to allow more devices while creating more designated parking areas for them and creating protected bike lanes that also can be used by scooters.
Eichenblatt attributed many of the complaints with scooters to a lack of infrastructure and information for riders to do so safely and respectfully. He said a campaign promoting scooter manners and places to park them could curb other complaints.
He said the city could do a better job promoting scooter manners and directing people to park them out of the way, as well as marked zones in the app where people know they can easily grab one for a ride or drop one off when they’re done.
Eichenblatt’s fall, which came on a sidewalk, could be prevented with better infrastructure, he said.
“And then also give us a bike lane to ride them on,” he said.