Before the pandemic, ride-sharing electric scooters were a divisive topic in Bloomington.
IU Student Government filed a recommendation against a ban, calling the scooters ‘vital’ in the ‘University’s culture.’
Yet the city of Bloomington’s uReport system had no shortage of complaints about the scooters, with one user calling them “an ongoing frustration.”
Regardless of what citizens thought of the new tech, scooters had made a sudden appearance in their town seemingly overnight. Bird was the first company to make an appearance in Bloomington, making an abrupt drop off of about 100 Bird scooters in September of 2018, ignoring the city’s request of advanced notice.
From there, the fleets moved in.
Rival company Lime rolled out its scooter-sharing service two weeks after Bird’s surprise launch, putting 450 into circulation. The motorized scooters saw an impressive first month of usage, totaling 100,000 rides, according to Bloomington’s city website.
But as their popularity grew, so did complaints.
***
Today, scooters are sparser after coronavirus upheaved much of our way of life. I sat down on a Zoom call with LeAaron Foley, Lime’s director of government and community relations in the Midwest, to discuss how the virus affected ridership in Bloomington.
“We pulled our devices right at the top of the pandemic. . . because we were following public health guidelines and really understanding the spread of the coronavirus,” Foley said.
Foley joined the company in 2020 and was not present for Lime’s launch in Bloomington, but he has been responsible for managing relations with upper Midwest governments to ensure scooters are being used appropriately.
He reiterated the company’s stance on safety while riding and how that applies to how Lime responded to the COVID-19 virus.
“We engaged an independent medical professional who then conducted research on surface transmission for the next month or so,” Foley said.
The report found that because handlebar surfaces were exposed to sunlight along with insular metal surfaces, they were at low risk for surface transmission of the virus, Foley said.
Lime then resumed their operations, requiring their employees to complete sanitation courses and requiring sanitation to be done in high traffic operations such as inventory warehouses, according to a statement on their website titled “What does COVID-19 mean for shared mobility?”
Foley confirmed that the coronavirus had a major effect on Lime ridership in Bloomington, dropping from 400,000 trips in 2019 down to 100,000 in 2020.
***
Prior to the arrival of shared-mobility scooters, Bloomington’s citizen uReport system was rarely used to share grievances of mobile transportation.
When searching ‘scooters’ in uReport, only seven reports were filed before 2018 regarding scooter usage. Now there are close to 70, almost exclusively about ride-sharing scooters.
One user posted on September 13, 2018, the day Birds arrived in Bloomington, about a scooter blocking a shared bicycle rack in front of Bloomington Bagel Company. Another user called them “the latest scourge on Bloomington”.
According to uReport data, the first three months of Birds and Limes occupying Bloomington streets saw a significant spike in citizen complaints against the scooters. Many of these complaints focused on scooters blocking sidewalks and disrupting city life.
In August of 2019, the city of Bloomington adopted a new ordinance designed to govern the shared-use motorized scooters that had become such a divided topic.
Ordinance 19-09 implemented ‘dismount zones’ where both cyclists and scooter users must “dismount and walk their devices, operate their devices in a bicycle lane, or operate their devices in the roadway.” The Ordinance also required motorized scooter users to leave a pathway of at least 4 ½ feet when parking on sidewalks.
***
In the midst of the pandemic, a new challenger approached.
The company Veoride did a soft launch in Bloomington in April of 2020 with a limited number of scooters available. According to an Indiana Daily Student article, Veoride was approved to operate in Bloomington in November of 2019 and was working closely with the city to ensure their product wouldn’t interfere with existing transportation and abides by coronavirus safety measures.
The uReport data shows that despite a slight uptick in the summer of 2020, user complaints against scooters have decreased.
The limited number of students in the immediate aftermath of the campus shutdown forced companies like Lime and Veoride to re-evaluate their Bloomington operations.
“There were very few college students left in
Bloomington. . . That is a primary driver of the pandemic’s impact on ridership in a city like Bloomington,” Foley said.
Bird did not respond for an interview
Contact the reporter:
Clayton Young
Twitter: @ClaytonY17
Source information:
LeAaron Foley
Lime’s Director of Government and Community Relations in the Midwest
City of Bloomington Ordinance 19-09
BSquare Beacon:
Dave Askins
Hoosier Times
Kurt Christian
Indiana Daily Student
Cate Charron
Indiana University – Bloomington Scooter Policies
Comments