The electric scooter companies which operate in Bloomington have been granted permission to keep doing so.
The city’s Board of Public Works renewed their operation licenses by a 2-1 vote at its Tuesday meeting.
Licenses for the companies — Bird, VeoRide, and Lime — expired July 31. The renewals will go into effect after Tuesday.
The board approved renewals for Bird and VeoRide, which had a representative attend the Tuesday meeting, but not for immediately Lime because the company had no representative present.
The board approved Lime’s license renewal a week later.
Board member Jennifer Lloyd voted against the renewals. She said she is frustrated by the companies’ failure to ensure its users are using scooters properly.
“The company has the ability to know who their customer is, to fine their customer for inappropriate use or parking of the equipment, and has staff that can patrol to make sure that there are not parking issues and accessibility issues,” Lloyd said. “Despite those things, we have gone through a four-year period with the scooters in which the problems we have keep coming up again and again and again.”
Jennifer Lloyd (Courtesy of Community Access Television Services)
Lloyd said the companies have assured the city they will comply with license requirements but have not done so.
She also cited a common complaint against scooters: they’re frequently left in the middle of a sidewalk or other public right-of-way.
“The citizens who are getting the most use from the scooters tend to skew toward younger customers and fully-abled customers,” Lloyd said. “The citizens who are being hindered by this tend to skew toward older citizens and people who are not fully abled. There seems to be something inherently unfair about that.”
The companies’ licenses were supposed to go through renewals last winter — but in December, the city declined to renew them, saying it needed time to come up with new recommendations to improve safety.
That decision was prompted in part by two e-scooter-related deaths in Bloomington between August and December 2022. In one of those instances, a scooter user was struck by a suspected drunk driver.
In April, the board approved a list of recommendations on e-scooters from the city’s planning and economic and sustainable development departments. They include adjusting hours of operation and possible fines for riders who park in the public right-of-way.
Adam Wason, the city’s public works director, said the city reserves the right to impose fines on operators if there’s a clear violation of where scooters are allowed to be parked.
In addition, he said public works is working with the city administration to add more resources for parking enforcement as part of the department’s 2024 budget request.
“With that, we will then be able to ask the entire staff to address improperly parked scooters in the areas of the community in which they’re doing their normal course of job duties,” Wason said.
(Courtesy of Community Access Television Services)
The city has collected data on scooter parking violations since last fall as part of a pilot project. Wason said that data will let the city know which companies have the most violations and which are the most responsive.
Wason also said the city may consider requiring shared micro-mobility companies to partake in a competitive process in the future if they want to continue operating in Bloomington.
Earlier this month, the city installed about 60 parking corrals for e-scooters and e-bikes downtown.
As part of that project, the city is implementing a coding system that will require users to end trips by parking in one of the corrals. If they don’t do so, their trip will not end, and they’ll continue to be charged, according to Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator Hank Duncan.
The caveat is that riders must download the smartphone application for the manufacturer of the vehicle they’re using.
