City council re-ups on electric scooters
The company behind the scooters promised to retrain its local fleet manager, be more responsive to resident complaints, and find a warehouse for its recharging station that doesn’t violate city code.
Electric scooters are here to stay following a vote last week by the Laramie City Council.
Councilors voiced concerns, received assurances, and praised the introduction of scooters to Laramie before approving a memorandum of understanding with Bird Rides — the company responsible for the current scooters around town.
“It makes sense to me that there would be some hiccups and some headaches along the way toward really integrating this as an alternative transportation program,” Mayor Paul Weaver said. “The support for this program is still there and still high and we just have some adjustment we need to go through, and we are, and improvements are being made.”
The Bird scooters have been polarizing. On the one hand, having a widespread “micro-mobility” option provides residents with a cheap, low-carbon mode of transportation in a city where public transportation is severely limited. On the other hand, the city has been flooded with 200 new scooters that can be and are abandoned on roads and sidewalks across Laramie, inconveniencing drivers and pedestrians while hurting a neighborhood’s aesthetic.
Introduction and successes
Bird Rides landed in Laramie during the summer of 2021. Council originally approved the scooters on a trial basis through the end of that year, but extended the original MOU to cover all of 2022.
There are 200 scooters in Laramie — of which, about 60-70 percent might be out and about at any given time. The company reports Laramie took more than 23,000 rides in the first 10 months of 2022, traveling more than 40,000 miles and saving an estimated 5.68 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
“Staff does believe there’s value in a mobility sharing system,” Assistant City Manager Todd Feezer said. “I’ve witnessed it myself. I know of people that may not have vehicles who utilize these systems.”
Feezer added Laramie has been contacted by another scooter company eyeing Laramie as a potential market.
“We do not have an exclusive agreement with Bird, so we may be seeing another forthcoming request to deploy scooters within our community,” he said.
Problems and solutions
But it’s been a bumpy ride for the scooters in Laramie, as city staff detailed in their report.
“Over the past few years there have been complaints and concerns regarding the scooters,” the report states. “Most revolve around the placement in the (right-of-way), blocking of sidewalks and a lack of rebalancing the scooters. Bird’s local Fleet Manager has received those complaints and worked to correct those issues.”
But the fleet’s recharging station is facing some legal trouble.
“In August of 2022 staff was notified that the Fleet Manager operations were occurring in an area not permitted under Municipal Code,” the report states, noting that the fleet manager and the actual owner of the property were two separate individuals. “An enforcement letter was sent to the owner of the property. However, as of November 29, 2022, and a 2nd violation letter being sent, there has been no response. A third and final letter was sent on November 29, 2022, allowing 10 days for compliance, at which point enforcement will be handled through the City Attorney’s Office.”
The council seemed confident this issue would be addressed given the assurances they received from Garrett Gronowski, a longtime Bird Rides employee recently assigned to manage the Laramie account.
Gronowski also told councilors last week the fleet manager would be retrained and the company would respond more quickly to resident complaints about abandoned scooters. When scooters return to Laramie’s streets on the other side of winter, Gronowski said the problems Laramie has seen so far will be greatly reduced.
The new MOU is set to auto-renew annually at the end of December; it can be canceled at any time by either party with 30 days notice.
Do those calculations on carbon emissions reductions take into account the large amount of petroleum needed to continually move these scooters back and forth for recharging? How much is the public paying for treatment of injuries at the emergency room?
It seems to me that improving and publicizing the bus system would be a better thing to do.