Electronic scooter company makes pitch to Orangeburg as Columbia ban continues

Updated: Aug. 23, 2019 at 6:18 PM EDT
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - In one year, electronic scooters went from being in less than five cities to over 70 cities in the United States.

in South Carolina, these companies have been met with pushback. There are over four months left in the yearlong ban on electronic scooters implemented by Columbia City Council in January.

Meanwhile, Orangeburg City Council said this week they would start looking into the matter after a manager from Blue Duck Scooters made his case to the city council, according to the Times and Democrat.

Part of Blue Duck Scooters’ Government Relations Manager Akeem Brown’s Tuesday pitch to the council was the appeal to college students.

“I strongly believe that this product will get more students from both South Carolina State and Claflin to the downtown footprint,” Brown said, according to the Times and Democrat.

To test whether the scooters are a good fit, Brown proposed a month-long trial period in Orangeburg.

Blue Duck’s business model is similar to many of its competitors like Lime and Bird. The Times and Democrat reported the council was told the electronic scooters cost a dollar to start up and 15 cents for every minute a rider uses it. The company maintains the scooters, charges them, and tracks them using GPS. They only go 16 miles per hour, according to the T&D’s reporting, but Brown told the council that number can be raised or lowered.

These companies have expressed interest in coming to Columbia.

“We have been in conversations with the city and are eager to provide new mobility options to Columbia in the near future but have no further updates to share at this time,” Lime scooter wrote in a statement in January.

However, Columbia Councilman Howard Duvall, Jr. doesn’t anticipate electronic scooters zipping all around Columbia once the ban is lifted in 2020.

“My suggestion would be to limit them to certain geographic districts,” he said. “I can’t see allowing them on Main Street Columbia.”

Duvall said these scooters present a “danger” and statistics from nearby cities like Charlotte back up his claims.

In Charlotte, there were 16 scooter-related injuries from January 2018 to May 2019, according to an analysis of state records by the Charlotte Observer.

This is a higher proportion of crashes per mile traveled than car crashes according to the paper’s findings.

In one year, there were 28 scooter crashes per one million miles in a year in Charlotte. In comparison, there were 3.4 motor vehicle crashes per one million miles in that same time period.

There have been no scooter deaths reported in Charlotte at this time.

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