Hermosa the latest city to cage Bird scooters
A Bird scooter is left on the sidewalk in North Hermosa last month. The city has decided to temporarily ban the devices as it studies how to craft regulations to minimize associated impacts. Photo
Hermosa Beach has instituted a temporary ban on app-based scooters like Bird and Lime, as well as dockless bike-share programs, but is looking at how the vehicles might be integrated into the city’s future mobility options.
The City Council unanimously supported an ordinance last week that bans the “deployment and operation” of scooters and bike-share programs in the city until it updates its regulations. Staff is expected to return to the council within three months with recommendations for how to regulate them.
App-based scooter programs like Bird rely on a GPS-enabled mobile phone app to help users find the closest scooter. Riders then pay a $1 fee, plus 15 cents per mile, to unlock and ride the scooters, and can leave them anywhere they want when finished, instead of having to find a designated drop-off spot. Backers say the scooters close gaps in regional transit networks and encourage people to leave their cars behind.
But opponents point to the way that the scooters are often strewn on sidewalks or other public rights of way, and say that people riding them at excessive speed, often without helmets, create danger for themselves and others. This has prompted resident outrage — an Instagram account “Bird Graveyard” depicted the scooters in various states of destruction and racked up almost 40,000 followers before being banned last month — and caused several cities in the region to crack down on the companies. Last month, Manhattan Beach approved an emergency ordinance that banned motorized scooters and bikes on public rights of way for six months.
Hermosa council members said they saw both the promise and the peril of the devices and characterized the ban as a way to figure out how to prevent future problems.
“This technology has a lot of promise. It has extraordinary potential to take vehicles off-road, to solve the first mile-last mile problem. The flip side is, they also have the ability to create a nuisance. They have in several cities in our region, and those cities have taken a step back from them,” said Councilmember Justin Massey.
The rise of electric scooter operators like Bird and Lime comes as e-bikes also are becoming more common. The devices allow for “assisted pedaling” and have become a popular way to rely on a bike while getting help climbing the South Bay’s many hills. But, as with scooters, the e-bikes have created safety concerns.
There have been no serious injuries associated with e-bikes or motorized scooters in Hermosa in the past year, said Hermosa Beach Police Department Lt. Landon Phillips. But there have been “lots of complaints,” Phillips said, especially about e-bikes, and with the speed at which they travel, “the potential is very high” for injury to occur.
Hermosa’s municipal code currently prohibits operating motorized vehicles on The Strand. But the dual embrace of e-bikes and motorized scooters like Bird and Lime has prompted state regulators to update the California Vehicle Code in recent years with more exact definitions, said Leeanne Singleton, an environmental analyst with the city. As a result, Hermosa’s code is a bit behind the times.
“The previous use of ‘motorized vehicle, which was our way of regulating The Strand, now needs additional definitions to clarify all the different types of ‘electric,’ which might not be considered a motorized vehicle,” Singleton said.
But even with updated laws, enforcement will remain a challenge. Although residents often call in to report e-bikes and scooters whizzing by, Phillips said ticketing typically requires an officer to be present when the violation occurs. Last week’s vote is unlikely to stop Bird or Lime riders from entering the city, although it may result in abandoned scooters being picked up more quickly by the companies.
“It certainly is going to be a challenge. Staff time is always a precious resource to be able to put officers in the right spots,” said Phillips.
Phillips compared the enforcement difficulties to those the department has faced in recent years with Lyft and Uber. Unlike taxis, which pay an annual fee to the city to pick up fares from a designated area on Hermosa Avenue, the ride-hailing services pick up passengers anywhere. But as they have grown more popular, complaints about their drivers picking up passengers in the middle of the street, and the danger the practice creates for pedestrians and vehicles, have also increased. Phillips said that the department has pooled resources with neighboring agencies to surge into particular cities on a given night to try to improve driver behavior, something it also plans to pursue with bikes and scooters.
Morgan Roth, community relations director for Bird, said that promoting safety was the company’s “top priority,” and that it was working on several initiatives to reduce the blight associated with abandoned scooters. This includes the creation of a new team of “Birdwatchers,” Roth said, who will go out to areas where the devices are left and pick them up if they have fallen, or move them if they are creating access issues for the disabled.
Roth pointed to the city of Santa Monica, which was one of the places where the scooters debuted and now has among the densest concentrations of Birds anywhere in the country. Last week, the city approved regulations allowing Bird, along with Lyme — as well as Uber and Lyft, who are starting their own scooter-share apps — to offer a set number of app-based scooters in the city. By establishing an associated fee of $1 per day per device in exchange for being allowed to operate in the right of way, Roth estimated that Santa Monica would raise more than $1 million per year, which could be plowed back into both associated enforcement as well as general infrastructure improvements.
The similarities between ride-hailing outfits like Uber and Lyft and scooter companies like Bird have prompted some critics to accuse them of embodying the ask-forgiveness-not-permission ethos of Silicon Valley and to urge a more aggressive regulatory approach before the issue gets out of hand. But Massey, who had asked for the issue to be brought to council, said that there was reason to think that cities would have better luck this time.
“These companies, if they are going to succeed, are going to have to develop a solution that works across local governments, across jurisdictions. They can’t really have a patchwork of regulations. We’re going to have to be part of that,” he said.