Ruffling feathers
Company’s scooter drop raises questions here, in other cities
The Bird scooters sure have prompted a lot of discussion about downtown transportation.
When it comes to making downtown streets and sidewalks safer, Cody Lusnia is a social media warrior bringing light to the night by showing all the broken street lamps and calling out contractors who have left abandoned signs and materials blocking sidewalks.
Will a similar public shaming follow the appearance of the first ride-sharing scooters in Oklahoma City?
A 10-month-old California startup — Bird — has been the center of a fuss in cities ranging from Boston to Los Angeles, from Milwaukee to Nashville and Dallas. In each city, the company chose to put scooters out on the city’s sidewalks inviting people to pay to take the scooters for a spin.
Now Bird has chosen the same approach in Oklahoma City even as the company has been thrown out of other cities for the same approach. But during this past week, Bird also has drawn a lot of customers, many of whom seem thrilled to have a new option to get around town.
The upside of these operators is great for cities like Oklahoma City that is attempting to reverse decades of heavily autocentric design. The city sprawled to 221 square miles for 40 years without any sidewalk requirements.
The city is just now figuring out how to properly design bike lanes after attempting the derided sharrow lanes that make bicyclists feel no safer sharing lanes with vehicles. The Oklahoma City Planning Department unveiled a comprehensive plan for improving pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure throughout the city.
The timing couldn’t be better for a company like Bird to approach the city, as did their competitor, Lime, to adapt the plan so bike lanes and infrastructure can accommodate scooters. Oklahoma City, with ample downtown plazas, new sidewalks and embrace of efforts to reduce reliance on vehicles is a perfect test case for these companies to come up with a template for the country.
Bird is showing capability of learning, changing and working with cities.
The company is working with Kansas City to come up with helmet and safety education efforts as part of an agreement to allow for a test phase of the scooters as part of drawing up new rules. As with Nashville and Milwaukee, the company dropped its scooters on the city’s streets without any warning.
After being threatened by Milwaukee with impoundment of their scooters, Bird is working with the city to come up with policies and ways to prevent the scooters from littering sidewalks much like the construction materials called out by Lunisa.
Some of the worst reports appear to be coming from Bird's home state of California, where Los Angeles officials this week are set to send the company a cease and decease letter.
The ugly side of these scooters has been documented by Bird Graveyard on Instagram, which shows trashed out, uncharged scooters littering streets and sidewalks. One photo shows a scooter dropped against a parked car, scratching the passenger's side door. Sidewalks are clogged with people on scooters, leaving no room for pedestrians.
To be fair, the first few days of Bird operations in Oklahoma City seem to be a going a lot better than in places like San Diego, Dallas and Los Angeles. The operator is picking up the scooters, recharging them overnight, and placing them neatly at mostly appropriate locations.
Bird hasn’t had an easy ride. My colleague Brandy McDonnell reported she was almost clipped by a scooter speeding along a sidewalk (amid the confusion about local traffic rules, it is clear they are not legal on sidewalks). A friend who recently visited San Diego shared with me that his elbow was clipped by a Bird scooter passing him on a sidewalk.
We also have a failure to communicate.
In Boston, the company ceased operations after the city ordered impoundment of the scooters because Bird hadn’t obtained vendor permits. Impoundment also was threatened in Milwaukee.
When Bird was kicked out of Nashville, it moved nearby to Memphis where they worked with the city to draw up policies, ordinances and agreements aimed at avoiding the problems experienced elsewhere.
As reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the company agreed with Memphis to pay a one-time, $500 fee for a permit with an annual $250 renewal fee. The company also pays $50 per scooter up to $20,000, with the funds covering any city costs related to the improper use of the scooters.
The company also is paying the city $1 per scooter per day, an approach being considered in each community, to go toward construction of “new shared mobility infrastructure, promotion of safe driving, or maintenance of shared infrastructure.”
The strongest part of the Memphis agreement, one that could work well with the new Project 180 streets downtown, is a requirement that Bird users take photos of their parked scooters before ending their ride as a safeguard against disobeying parking rules.
Again, as reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the new ordinance requires scooters to be parked in “furniture zones” of sidewalks. These zones, which exist downtown and all the surrounding districts, cover the part of the sidewalk between the curb and the pedestrian corridor that includes benches, streetlights and other “furniture.”
What’s ideal about this sort of agreement is that Oklahoma City can proceed on incorporating such zones as it rebuilds sidewalks and corridors throughout the metro as part the Better Streets, Safer City funding approved by voters last fall. Some may say Bird is showing the same sort of arrogance shown early on by ride-shares like Uber. But the Memphis example shows what can happen if the company works with cities instead of trying to do as it pleases.
The upside of having operators like Bird and Lime in Oklahoma City can be huge for a city where the working poor without cars struggle to access jobs, grocery stores and other needs those of us with cars take for granted.
The upside of these scooters also was immediately apparent this past week. The scooters are bringing people out of their air-conditioned refuges, out of their cars, and outside where community is built and creativity can take off.