The four-month electric scooter pilot in Chicago, both celebrated and reviled by residents, comes to an end Tuesday.
As of last week, people had taken 772,450 rides on electric scooters, according to the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection. That’s about 7,000 trips a day.
The city’s goal for the program was to determine if scooters would improve transportation access, reduce single-occupancy car use and provide a way to get to and from public transit.
Was it a success? It depends on how you measure it, and whom you ask.
If you tried it and got where you were going unscathed, your opinion will likely be pro-scooter. If you tripped over one left in the middle of the sidewalk, not so much.
“The vast majority of people who use scooters regularly will say it’s a huge success,” said Bryant Greening, co-founder of the law firm LegalRideshare. “However, we’ve heard from many people who have been injured, and community members dismayed by the clutter and the reckless operation of some of the riders.”
In a new report, the Active Transportation Alliance said if Chicago decides to try scooters again, it should continue to keep them out of the central business district, and require them to be parked in docks or corrals, or locked to fixed objects.
“The accessibility and safety issues are real, especially how it affects people on the sidewalk and older adults and people with disabilities,” said alliance spokesman Kyle Whitehead.
The report also concluded that scooters, which are battery-operated and distributed through neighborhoods using vans and trucks, offer fewer health and environmental benefits than walking, biking and transit.
But there is no denying that the scooters are fun, Whitehead said. “If you can introduce an option like this that people really enjoy, especially in comparison to sitting in a car, that’s exciting,” he said.
The city is evaluating the pilot to decide how and whether to roll out a permanent program or another pilot next year. The analysis will include studying where and when scooters were used and examining hospital injury reports, said Isaac Reichman, spokesman for the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.
As of Oct. 6, more than 7,300 people had taken the city’s Scooter Survey, which also will be used in assessing the program.
Rules and rule breaking
On June 15, 10 companies introduced 2,500 scooters to a 50-square-mile area roughly bordered by Irving Park Road on the north, the South Branch of the Chicago River on the south, the city’s western border and Halsted Street. Permits were issued to Bird, Bolt, gruv, Jump, Lime, Lyft, Sherpa, Spin, VeoRide and Wheels.
The scooters could be located and rented using a phone app, and pricing varied, with most unlocking for $1 plus 15 cents a minute. Each scooter came equipped with a laminated brochure, outlining traffic rules, but not every user read it, or followed it.
There was scooter riding on sidewalks, little kids rode devices intended for adults and older teens only, and scooters traveled outside the designated pilot area, including on the Lakefront Trail and The 606. There was also questionable parking — with some scooters left out overnight, despite the city rule that companies round them up at midnight and redistribute them in the morning.
The city issued 39 citations to scooter companies, for problems ranging from not having a working front light to not responding to complaints. Of the 10 companies, only Lyft, which operates the city’s Divvy bike share system, received no citations. Lime was cited just once. Bird and Chicago-based VeoRide had the most, with seven each.
Helmet use was rare, though both scooter companies and the city urged riders to wear protective headgear.
Dozens of people went to local emergency rooms with a variety of scooter-related injuries — Rush University Medical Center, for example, saw 26, said spokesman Charles Jolie.
Injury reports from area hospitals have not been released publicly. Hospitals have been asked to report scooter injuries to the Chicago Department of Public Health, which will make the data available after the program ends, said health department spokeswoman Elena Ivanova.
Among the most seriously injured was Allyson Medeiros, who was riding his bike home from work when he was hit by a scooter rider who was going the wrong way, and took off after the crash. Greening, who represents Medeiros, said his client required reconstructive surgery to his face.
Greening also represents Eloy Scheunemann, a 27-year-old rider who shattered a kneecap after hitting a pothole, and sued the city.
“I find it irresponsible for the city to put 2,500 scooters on the street and not do anything to fix the potholes,” Scheunemann said. “I can’t even look at them (scooters) without major anxiety.”
Acceptance over time
Despite the problems, the scooters have been popular, and they gained in acceptance the more people tried them, according to polls.
“At first it was kind of a mystery: What are these scooters? Are they free? Can you rent them? Can you buy them?” said Jeremy Cuebas, youth organizer for the Northwest Side Housing Center, a nonprofit. “But as time went on, people got the idea.”
Cuebas said he has enjoyed the scooters and is embarrassed that he has spent $250 to $300 on them. “They’re very fun to ride,” Cuebas said. “When you are a riding on a scooter, you see a lot more than if you’re driving. You notice things.”
A study by DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development found that most scooter rentals took place during the morning or evening rush hours, indicating that people used them to commute to and from work.
The most popular spots for scooter use tended to be in the eastern part of the pilot area, in trendier, wealthier neighborhoods, the study found. The Near West Side, for example, saw 622 scooter departures and 465 scooter destinations on July 24, while only 23 trips started in the West Side neighborhood of West Garfield Park on the same day.
“We’re seeing patterns where the users are disproportionately higher income,” said Kate Lowe, associate professor of urban planning and policy at University of Illinois at Chicago.
Lowe said that low- and moderate-income Chicago communities, which also tend to be less densely populated, may benefit more from better bus service than more scooters.
Active Transportation recommended that vendors offer discounted rates to low-income residents, and that scooter revenues be used to create more bike and bus lanes.
Not surprisingly, scooter companies want to see the program expanded. Nico Probst, Lime’s head of Midwest government relations, said the company wants to serve the whole city, including downtown. He noted that having scooters in busy central areas has been successful in other big cities, such as Paris.
“It becomes a normative part of the transportation ecosystem,” Probst said. Chicago’s downtown could handle scooters with the help of parking corrals, and scooters could help reduce the congestion caused by ride-share trips, he said.
Whatever the city decides to do, the scooter pilot was a “grand experiment” that sets the stage for a bigger rollout next year, said Joseph Schwieterman, transportation expert at DePaul University.
“It brought something new and different to a part of a city that has seen transit improvements stuck in low gear for a long time,” Schwieterman said.
Transportation song quiz
Our last song is about coming across a crash. Whiskey claimed another victim, mixing with the blood and the glass. The song is “Wreck on the Highway,” a bluegrass standard written by Dorsey Dixon but commonly associated with Roy Acuff. Greg Klaiber, of Evanston, was first with the right answer.
This week’s transportation song included both a Chicago Symphony Orchestra musician and a trippy double-entendre. What’s the song and who did it? The first person with the right answer gets a Tribune pen, and glory.
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