TAMPA — For Omar Garcia, a developer who works downtown, leaping on an electrical scooter has develop into a part of the workday routine.
He’ll seize one to go to the courthouse or get to the financial institution. If he fancies lunch at a spot farther than is walkable, “I can get a scooter for that,” mentioned Garcia, 54, a companion at Urban Core Holdings. “Convenience,” he mentioned.
Julie Moroney will use one when she goes to dinner along with her husband. He has his personal e-scooter, so once they exit downtown, she’ll lease one for herself “and we’ll both take off,” mentioned the Plant High School English instructor.
Her tackle Tampa’s e-scooter program?
“If we can just find a way for people to be reasonable with them, not blocking the sidewalk, not throwing them into the river,” mentioned Moroney, 60. “I think it’s a great thing for our community.”
And sure, she did say throwing them into the river.
Since 2019, the metropolis’s pilot e-scooter program has made 1,800 rentable, eco-friendly scooters a part of the city panorama in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods of Hyde Park, Ybor City, West River and Tampa Heights.
In Tampa, the scooters have traveled 3 million miles and logged 2½ million journeys at a mean of 1.2 miles per journey — a quantity, metropolis officers say, exhibits that persons are utilizing them for precise transportation and never simply enjoyable on weekends.
“The pilot’s been a major success,” mentioned Brandie Miklus, the metropolis’s infrastructure and mobility program coordinator. Sister metropolis St. Petersburg is having fun with its personal scooter increase, with officers just lately voting so as to add scooters and lengthen hours in its personal pilot program.
Next up, Tampa’s e-scooters will unfold to neighborhoods that need them all through the metropolis, including 1,500 seated Razor scooters for many who choose to journey sitting down and 45 adaptive scooters and e-bikes for riders with disabilities. The program is predicted to be citywide by yr’s finish.
But Tampa’s trek into the world of e-scooters has not been with out velocity bumps. A persistent criticism: Scooters left blocking sidewalks, dumped on roadsides and littering parks as a substitute of correctly parked in designated corrals.
[ MARTHA ASENCIO-RHINE | Times ]
Then there’s that Tampa-specific drawback of scores of scooters getting tossed into the Hillsborough River alongside the 2.6-mile Riverwalk.
“We really had to wrap our heads around it,” mentioned Debbie Evenson, govt director of Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful. Volunteer divers pulled 67 sodden, muck-covered scooters out of the water in a November cleanup and 62 extra in February. “It’s mind-boggling,” she mentioned. “Why?”
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“We believe it’s a combination of drunks, jerks and buffoons who are responsible,” mentioned metropolis spokesperson Adam Smith.
A 2018 report estimated the lifetime of a shared electrical scooter in Louisville, Ky., was simply shy of a month — though Lime, one in every of three firms working in Tampa, disputed that in an emailed response to the Tampa Bay Times. “We expect our e-scooters to last years, not months,” mentioned operations supervisor Jad Hayek.
Here’s how the pilot program labored: Companies together with Lime, Bird and Spin every paid the metropolis a $20,000 payment plus $1 a day per scooter. For the citywide program, the three firms every pays $5,000 a yr and 30 cents per journey.
For Tampa, there’s been a studying curve. Early on, pedestrians appeared startled by the inflow of scooters zipping previous at as much as 15 miles per hour. Ditto automotive drivers unused to sharing the highway with them. In 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis accepted a regulation permitting scooters to journey in streets and bike lanes throughout the state.
“And scooter operators, the users, are still feeling their way to where they’re comfortable to ride,” mentioned Christine Acosta, an area micro-mobility advocate and security guide. “All cities have had to learn.”
Riders use an app and a bank card and are presupposed to be 16 with a driver’s license or allow. It’s one individual per scooter — although it’s not unprecedented to identify youthful drivers or two and even three riders.
A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report final yr discovered accidents to individuals utilizing e-scooters, e-bikes and hoverboards jumped 70 % over the earlier 4 years as they gained reputation. A 2020 University of South Florida report on Tampa’s program discovered that “hospital visits increased significantly after the program started,” though it additionally mentioned most scooter accidents led to both no accidents or to minor ones. The report famous that preliminary information confirmed “very little helmet usage” by these injured. Helmet carrying is inspired, however not required.
In July, a rider was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Ybor City. In January, a person on an e-scooter in St. Petersburg died after he fell and was hit by an oncoming car at 3:30 a.m. Local lawsuits have blamed malfunctioning scooters and a damaged sidewalk for crashes.
“Injured in an e-scooter accident?” asks a webpage for Robert Sparks Attorneys in Tampa.
One of the largest complaints about Tampa’s well-liked program has been that “the scooters are just parked all over the place,” mentioned Karen Kress, director of transportation and planning for the Tampa Downtown Partnership — a state of affairs officers and distributors say they’re addressing.
Riders quickly can be required to lock the autos in designated hubs, mentioned Miklus, with potential penalties for many who don’t, equivalent to an out-of-hub nice for the person to pay. “We think this will be smart — it will reduce vandalism,” she mentioned.
In excessive instances, “for riders that break the rules repeatedly, we have the option of issuing fines and banning rule breakers from our platform,” mentioned Hayek from Lime.
Joyriders in downtown parking garages have been thwarted by the similar geofencing that’s supposed to keep the rented scooters from being purposeful in forbidden zones together with the Riverwalk, the Bayshore Boulevard sidewalk and Seventh Avenue in Ybor City.
“Those are some of the lessons learned and growing pains,” mentioned Kress. “Overall in my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons.”
In St. Petersburg, officers just lately sounded happy with their very own 15-month shared scooter pilot program, which boasts excessive parking compliance and is regarded as a mannequin for cities nationwide. In truth, the metropolis council voted to resume agreements with e-scooter firms Razor and Veo for 3 years and to extend the variety of scooters and lengthen working hours. As of February, the metropolis had 975 licensed scooters of each the standing and seated selection.
Apparently the penchant for placing them in the water shouldn’t be unique to Tampa. In March, a 20-year-old man was charged with prison mischief in St. Petersburg after police say that simply after midnight, he and his pals dumped eight e-scooters into Tampa Bay.
With Tampa’s new scooters and the deliberate addition of rentable e-bikes throughout the metropolis, Miklus mentioned, “I can’t believe this, but we’re going to have 8,500 micro-mobility vehicles” on the streets.
Scooters have gone “from toys to transportation,” mentioned Acosta. “They’re making that transition in every city where they are.”
[ MARTHA ASENCIO-RHINE | Times ]