Mountain View to motorized scooter companies: not so fast

Citing serious safety issues caused by electric scooters in cities across the Bay Area, Mountain View has decided to temporarily ban the devices.

Although the city plans to launch a pilot program in early 2020, city staff says the ban will give them time to determine how to regulate the e-scooter operators moving forward.

“The temporary moratorium gives us the opportunity to craft regulations to address issues that we’ve heard other cities have experienced,” Mayor Lisa Matichak said in an interview. “In particular, I want to make sure the scooters are parked in areas where they don’t pose a hazard to others.”

The Mountain View City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to enact a temporary ban on “shared mobility devices”, including bicycles, electric bicycles and motorized scooters.

Shared mobility programs that are already offered within the city limits, such as the bicycles Google provides for its employees, will be exempt from the ban.

“In the absence of regulation, shared mobility device operations present serious concerns related to parking, sidewalk riding, user behavior, equipment standards, and maintenance that negatively affect public peace, safety, and health,” a city staff report states.

The council’s decision came several months after e-scooter operator Bird applied for a city business license and several other e-scooter and bicycle share operators — Lime, Gotcha, Spin and Jump — inquired about launching their devices within the city, according to Dawn Cameron, the city’s assistant public works director.

Over the last couple of years, interest and ridership in e-scooters has soared.

In 2018, 38.5 million trips were made on e-scooter shares across the U.S. — topping the number of trips made on city-sponsored bike shares for the first time, according to an analysis by the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

In May 2018, Mountain View launched a bike share pilot program and awarded permits to Chinese-owned startup, ofo, and Bay Area startup, Lime. Both operators, however, withdrew from the pilot program before the end due to “shifting business plans and volatility in the device-sharing industry,” according to a city staff report.

Lime, for instance, announced its withdrawal from bike share in nearly all Bay Area cities in order to shift toward scooters.

City staff plans to present the city council with an evaluation of the bike share pilot program in the fall and then launch an e-scooter program in early 2020. The ban will remain in effect until a pilot program is launched.

Operators that violate the ban and deploy scooters or bikes within the city will be contacted and asked to remove their devices from the city, according to the ordinance.

Mountain View is not the first city in the Bay Area to take this approach.

In January, Santa Clara adopted a temporary ban, after receiving an email from Bird indicating that the company planned to deploy scooters on city streets.

In late 2018, San Jose passed regulations to limit scooter speed to 12 mph, provide customer support in multiple languages and offer discounts to low-income residents. Although the city allowed operators like Wind, Lime, and Bird to deploy e-scooters before regulations were put in place, the city officially awarded its first and only e-scooter permit in June to Lyft.

In March, Palo Alto extended its bike and e-scooter pilot program for another year, but it has not issued any permits yet, according to Lisa Caracciolo, the city’s communications manager.