Council votes to ban e-scooter riding on San Antonio sidewalks
Bruce Selcraig May 30, 2019 Updated: May 30, 2019 5:27 p.m.
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1of8A woman and and man, left, ride scooters across W. Commerce St. on the side walk at Presa Street on Thursday, May, 30, 2019. The City Council voted to ban riding scooters on sidewalks by June 30.Photo: Bob Owen /Staff photographer
2of8Jose Velasquez, left, and Joanna Escobedo, here in San Antonio from the Valley on vacation, ride scooters on the side walk on Presa Street. The City Council voted to ban riding scooters on sidewalks by June 30.Photo: Bob Owen /Staff photographer
3of8A young girl rides a scooter on a crowded side walk on Commerce Street on Thursday, May, 30, 2019. The City Council voted to ban riding scooters on sidewalks by June 30.Photo: Bob Owen /Staff photographer
San Antonio’s sidewalks might lose the rush and whir of electric scooters sooner than expected.
A scooter-riding prohibition on sidewalks likely would have been imposed this fall, but the City Council voted to speed it up Thursday. By June 30, legal ridership will be limited to streets, along with bicycles and other traffic.
Council member John Courage said he saw no good reason to wait, and most of his colleagues agreed.
“I think the safety factor is very clear here,” Courage said at the council’s weekly session. “Waiting until October is just waiting for accidents to occur.”
But don’t expect tough fines or a city-wide crackdown by vigilant scooter police.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Council member Roberto Treviño seemed to speak for a majority when they said they weren’t seeking strict overnight enforcement that might send an unwelcome message to the tourists who make up a large part of the scooter-riding population.
They recommended that police use “discretion” and spoke of the need for educating the public about the no-sidewalks rule, which cities across the country have adopted in response to a transportation phenomenon that took nearly all of them by surprise.
Since last October, when the city embarked on a pilot program that permitted some 16,100 dockless vehicles, various Council members have said scooters endanger sidewalk pedestrians and create visual clutter even when parked.
Thursday’s amendment to the city’s scooter ordinance passed 9-1, with Council member Manny Pelaez dissenting. The June 30 ban will apply to riding on sidewalks. Riders and scooter company wranglers still can park, drop or otherwise abandon the vehicles on sidewalks for the time being. But more changes are coming.
The Council on Thursday extended the permits of the seven companies currently operating scooters in the city and gave informal approval for city staff to proceed with a request-for-proposals (RFP) process that by October will reduce the number of companies to three and impose a set of requirements on them.
Council member Shirley Gonzales, who was out of town Thursday, has been a consistent scooter supporter and opponent of using the RFP process to regulate them. She has often said their companies and customers shouldn’t be made to jump through any more legal hoops than automobile drivers.
“While I am in agreement with many of the specific parts of this program,” she said in a statement after the Council’s action Thursday, “there are still areas regarding helmets, curfews, RFP’s, staff training and enforcement where we should remain watchful as this program unfolds.”
Pelaez, who said his District 8 constituents were uniformly opposed to scooters, said he voted against the sidewalk ban because he believed it was unworkable in just 30 days.
“How does anyone expect us to enforce that? It’ll be summer. Do we expect all the tourists to know the rules? I don’t see any army of police with ticket books writing citations. I think we just set ourselves up for failure,” he said.
The major points of the RFP, expected to be issued June 7, include:
The three companies permited to rent scooters will operate a total of 5,000 dockless vehicles and be guaranteed 1,666 each.
The chosen companies will pay the city an annual permit fee of $100 per vehicle and a one-time fee of $25,000, which the city says will be used to pay for more police overtime, education programs and administrative costs.
Companies must place on the scooters “visible notification” that riders must be over 16 and must not ride in tandem or on sidewalks, including the River Walk, or go more than 15 mph.
Operators “will be asked” to submit information on vehicle maintenance, rider user agreements, insurance coverage, procedures for reporting accidents, vehicle safety features, policies on parking, and use of “geofencing” to restrict scooters in places like city parks.
The RFP requirements contain no mention of making helmets mandatory, a measure supported by scores of emergency care physicians who say helmets have saved thousands of bicyclists’ and motorcyclists’ lives. Since scooters arrived in dozens of American cities last June there have been at least nine riders killed in various types of collisions.
On ExpressNews.com: Did we actually sign that? The rise of e-scooters and the lawsuits that followed
Council member Ana Sandoval said she wanted helmets to be mandatory, but she didn’t think a majority on Council would back her up.
“If we’re concerned about safety,” she said to her colleagues, “then helmets are absolutely essential, but I don’t see support for that here.”
All Council members have said they strongly encourage riders to use helmets, as do the scooter companies themselves. Two major scooter injury health studies - one involving two UCLA hospitals and the other conducted by the Austin health department with the Centers for Disease Control - have shown that more 40 percent of scooter injuries involved the head.
On ExpressNews.com: Can San Antonio convince — or force — e-scooter riders to wear helmets?
City staff and Council members agree that there should be “incentives” to get the scooter companies to figure out a way to distribute helmets free of charge. Treviño said he plans to work with a local doctor to distribute 800 free helmets.
No scooter company has publicly pushed for mandatory helmets, believing it would be a competitive disadvantage with young riders.
There was also support on Council for removing the current 11 p.m. curfew on scooters. Several said they were sympathetic to late-night workers who needed cheap transportation, but the downside, with the new sidewalk ban, would be more riding in the streets after dark. San Antonio Fire Department records show the frequency of scooter accidents increases significantly late at night.
Companies will have 45 days to submit their RFP proposals to the city. Then an evaluation committee will spend most of August and into September interviewing finalists.
By early October, city officials hope to have the three winners selected from a crowd of at least 14 applicants, including the likes of Bird, Lime, Lyft, Razor, Spin, Jump and San Antonio-based Blue Duck.
Bruce Selcraig is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read his stories on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | [email protected]
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