Long Beach residents can expect more e-scooters throughout this year after the Long Beach City Council’s decision Tuesday during its meeting at City Hall to expand the pilot program for six months.
The current e-scooter population– 1,800– will increase to 4,000 during the next six months. After the extended version of the program is concluded, City staff will evaluate further findings, assess a proposed permanent version of the program and potentially increase the number of e-scooters to 6,000. The increase in scooters will happen gradually, officials said.
“I think that this technology is new,” said Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia. “And like all new technology, there are growing pains of learning what’s the best way of adopting the technology and ensuring that people are safe and that enforcement is also happening. […] Having talked to mayors who have had these scooters in their cities and the companies who are at the table, we in Long Beach have done a much better job with our rollout than I think other cities in the state of California.”
Garcia concluded that implementing the program could be a “very successful opportunity for us.”
Craig Beck, City director of Public Works, detailed the information that has been collected over the past few months from the program.
In July 2018, the City of Long Beach launched its e-scooter pilot program. E-scooters are owned and operated in the city by participating vendors, who include Bird, Lime, Razor, Skip, Spin and Uscooter. Currently, there are 980 scooters citywide with 230 drop zones. According to Beck, the scooters must be deployed at designated drop zones each morning. The City also paid for a call center where residents could initiate contact with officials and ask questions about the program during the pilot.
“There [is] a blend of rules that [are] required under the California Vehicle Code (CVC) and also the Long Beach municipal code,” Beck said at the Long Beach City Council meeting about e-scooter requirements in the state and the city. “And then [we implemented] things that we thought were important for safe scooter use.”
The City required riders during the pilot program to be at least 18 years of age, although Beck noted that the state law since changed, and riders must now at least be 21. Users also had to have a valid driver’s license and ride and park scooters outside of the sidewalks– which would be in the bike lanes. As of Jan. 1 of this year, riders are no longer mandated to wear helmets when riding, per the CVC.
Beck said the City didn’t have much compliance from the e-scooter vendors to garner data.
“We did receive some compliance from the vendors, so we used those reports and did a little estimating,” he said. “While I don’t have firm data to back up what we’re presenting, we do believe that it’s relatively accurate and important information to share.”
Over a three-month period– Aug. 1 to Oct. 31– Beck said there were about 180,000 rides, which exceeded the amount the City initially estimated. The average distance was 1.2 miles for riders. Beck said the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) did issue citations to roughly 85 riders, which was mostly for operating the vehicle without a helmet– something that, as aforementioned, is no longer a requirement.
Other documented violations include driving on the sidewalk and having no valid driver’s license.
Injuries were also reported, Beck said.
“Some of them were simply people who fell off the scooters and either hit a crack or, for some reason, stopped too quickly,” he said. “And, they had bumps, scrapes and bruises. We had a couple of head injuries. There were some scooters versus vehicles. The data we collected shows that there were about a dozen of those.”
Beck said there were community members who utilized the call center “very readily” to file complaints. Beck said the data shows there were 858 unique calls, meaning they were all different people. Some called to report riders who wore no helmets (34 percent), users who were on sidewalks (18 percent), abandoned scooters (18 percent) and improper parking (14 percent).
An online public survey for residents, yielding 1,965 total responses, had some community members write that: They had never ridden an e-scooter before (56 percent); they think e-scooters are necessary to fill a gap in the city’s transportation network (55 percent); and they believe that the city drop zones are an effective way of organizing the scooters in the public right of way (58 percent).
“We do believe that it’s a viable mobility option that Long Beach should embrace,” Beck concluded. “We should transition from a pilot to a permanent program.”
The following are some of the City staff recommendations for moving forward with the e-scooter program on a permanent basis: Enforcing or disincentivizing improper use of the scooters; establishing a rate structure; providing equal access to the vehicles citywide, including discounts for low-income residents; incentivizing the use of drop zones; and other details, including fee structure.
One woman who lives on Ocean Boulevard said during the public-comment period that she considers the e-scooters a nuisance.
“I might be in the minority,” she said. “[…] I can’t count the number of times I have had to jump out of the way of scooters riding on the sidewalk. […] It’s pretty unsafe for elderly people or my friend, Adrian, who is partially blind. The scooters on the sidewalk are a big issue in my area.”
A 7th-district resident said he is in favor of the e-scooters, adding that it’s an opportunity for residents to embrace “greener” and “environmentally friendly” transportation options.
“I just encourage people to be open about this,” he said. “Look at this as a ‘green’ initiative to help our city stay on the map for [environmental programs].”
