Alamo Heights has become the latest area city to establish rules for dockless electric scooters and bicycles.
The City Council on Monday unanimously passed an ordinance setting the total number of permitted scooters at 75, regardless of how many carriers operate in the city.
Scooter companies Lime, Bird, and Razor have been known to either release vehicles in Alamo Heights or rent to riders who bring the vehicles into the enclave city. Seven companies have permits to operate in San Antonio, with six of them currently deploying vehicles.
The Alamo Heights ordinance does not limit the number of companies that can deploy vehicles inside city limits. The new regulation also carries a $500 permit fee, renewable every year, for each operating company. The carrier also must pay $10 per permitted vehicle.
The City is requiring each carrier to provide contact information of a fleet manager who can respond to local concerns.
Operating companies will be required to extend worker’s compensation coverage to subcontractors, such as individuals who pick up scooters and bikes and recharge them at their residence.
Additionally, the ordinance will allow Alamo Heights to determine where it’s best to deploy and park vehicles and how much time companies should be given to collect improperly parked vehicles.
The Council plans to review the issue in May, along with data from carriers operating in Alamo Heights.
Mayor Bobby Rosenthal said the City had to start addressing an increasing number of complaints from residents.
“We’ve got people who want minimal regulation and we’ve got people want to ban [scooters]. My personal opinion is that this is a good first step for us,” Rosenthal said, adding it was important for the City to immediately establish insurance and indemnification requirements with the carriers.
Police Chief Rick Pruitt said Alamo Heights patterned its ordinance after the basic regulations San Antonio has enacted for e-scooters and e-bikes. Neighboring Olmos Park, too, has adopted basic rules for scooter carriers and riders.
“The ordinance is doing exactly what the community wants us to do,” Pruitt said. “It’s not intending to deprive the community of transportation options but addresses community and public safety concerns.”
Some Council and audience members at Monday’s meeting shared questions they or their neighbors have had about e-scooters.
While calling the initial set of regulations helpful, Mallory Geis, who oversees business operations at Geis Properties on Broadway near Hildebrand Avenue, asked whom property owners can contact if they see scooters improperly parked in their immediate area. Councilwoman Lynda Billa Burke echoed the same question.
Joe Deshotel, government relations and community affairs manager for Lime, replied police and residents are encouraged to promptly contact the company about improperly parked vehicles. Deshotel said because e-scooters are an emerging technology, the company and each city should work together to arrive at reasonable regulations.
“We do want to see an ordinance in place with a very clear role where we work with the city – where there’s rules and we stick to those rules,” he added.
Deshotel and Brandon Martini, operations manager for Razor, pledged to the Council that their companies will try to provide the City with user data. That information will help local officials determine whether the 75-vehicle limit meets the demand for e-scooters and e-bikes in Alamo Heights.
Former Councilman Bill Kiel echoed Deshotel’s sentiment that the City and the scooter companies face a learning curve.
“The compan[ies are] trying to figure out what’s happening,” Kiel said. “It’s a learning experience for them, and it’s a learning experience for the City.”
Wow, only 75 scooters? That’s practically a ban.
Ban them. They are a public nuisance. Go out and buy your own personal scooter and eliminate a safety issue and public blight.
500$ a year (per City?) + 10$ a scooter = disappear due to driving up user costs for customers.
Not one will be available soon..
How are Via, Yellow Cab, etc going to force people to pay more for transportation (so they can continue to pay bureaucrats ) when Bird and Lime keep the youth very mobile in style for way less $?
“subcontractors” = unnecessary cost. Fork over your $ and “provide the City with user data” Bird, etc…
“Mayor Bobby Rosenthal said the City had to start addressing an increasing number of complaints from residents” …
“The ordinance is doing exactly what the community wants us to do,” Pruitt said. “It’s not intending to deprive the community of transportation options but addresses community and public safety concerns.”…
Lastly make complaints public. Then we can see that all this is over a person(s) from AH ego . just because you dont want or like something doesn’t mean force it out. .. Have a good day.
Having been personally injured by a passing scooter on a sidewalk I can attest that these scooters are at the very least a nuisance that the majority of citizens do not want nor asked for, to the very most, a safety hazard for both the user and the citizens of San Antonio. Pedestrians must constantly either dodge them on the sidewalk or be run over while exiting a building not expecting side by side scooters careening down the sidewalk at 15 mph. Drivers must expect the unexpected scooter weaving in and out of traffic, moving from sidewalk to street back to the sidewalk. Most of these riders are not wearing reflective clothing nor helmets. I would venture an educated guess that these scooters are utilized more by the tourists than the citizens of SA. I have personally witnessed scooters with more than one rider, usually one adult and at least one if not two small children traveling down North St Mary’s at top speed. If the “youth” of our city want to be “very mobile in style”, why don’t they ride a bicycle to work? That would solve a couple of prominent problems with the youth of SA. Obesity and cheap transportation. Scooters only partially solve one of those problems and it is not obesity.
It is clear that I think scooters are a blight that should be banned from our beautiful city. People managed to get to work prior to the scooters “falling out of the sky on a night back in June 2018”. Now that the horse is out of the barn, I implore the leaders of our city to take a long hard look at this nuisance before the inevitable happens which at the very worst is a fatality and at the very least a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio for allowing the scooters in the first place.