Professional scooter rider Chandler Dunn was on hand at Razor’s community e-scooter pop-up in downtown Long Beach Aug. 10 to show how the electronic scooter works.
The company set up the event in the courtyard outside One World Trade Center from 11am to 1:30pm that day and distributed free helmets to attendees. Professional scooter rider Chandler Dunn was on hand to show how the electronic scooter works.
The event kicked off the City’s new e-scooter rental pilot program, which allows participating vendors to deploy e-scooters for program members to use for a fee. However, unlike the City’s bike-share program, the e-scooters are dockless and use an app-based system whereby riders are able to find a nearby e-scooter along rights-of-way, rent it for a period of time and then park it at their destination. Officials say a fee structure is in place to encourage riders to return the scooters to station locations.
In an interview with the Signal Tribune last month, Eric Widstrand, city traffic engineer, explained that the rights-of-way are basically the same as where bicycles are allowed to ride. In other words, riders are not allowed to use them on sidewalks. Upon the completion of the ride, the user must lift the scooter and place it into a designated “drop zone.”
“E-scooters should be ridden in the street, in bike lanes,” Widstrand said. “They should not be ridden on sidewalks. The max operating speed for the e-scooters is going to be 15 miles an hour, so that is a more appropriate speed for that vehicle to be in the bike lane, where bikes are traveling in that speed range as well. We don’t think it’s appropriate to have e-scooters ridden on the sidewalk where they’re with people who are walking [at] a much slower speed, not expecting e-scooters to be zipping by them.”
Widstrand said the pilot program will end on Oct. 30, after which vendors will be required to pick up all their scooters.
“We’ll evaluate the pilot [program] and then decide how best to move forward with a permanent program over the months following the completion of the pilot,” Widstrand said.
Part of that evaluation will involve city staff monitoring vendor compliance, as well as tracking complaints and responsiveness to address concerns.
“We want them in our city,” Widstrand said. “Scooters provide another mobility option for people. It gives people another chance– much like Bikeshare, bicycling and walking– to get around town without driving.”
