E-scooter businesses have their sights set on Boulder, and city officials are prepping for their arrival.
Despite a temporary ban on e-scooter companies operating in the city, packs of riders have been rolling up and down streets for a couple hours at a time over the last two weeks, including midday Wednesday.
The Boulder Chamber hosted one of five demonstrations on Wednesday in the Flatiron Business Park off of 55th Street with several e-scooter companies present with vehicles ready to test ride. Dozens of workers in the multi-building office complex turned out to take a spin, and some tried more than one or all of the five e-scooter brands featured at the event.
“This saves a lot of time, especially for a person like me who doesn’t own a car,” Monkek Thind said after testing a scooter. “This is going to help a lot (during lunch hour), actually.”
University of Colorado Boulder last week held similar e-scooter test runs on campus, while the city hosted two Monday and Tuesday on 13th Street near the Dushanbe Teahouse. A final e-scooter demo is planned for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the Center for Community, 2249 Willard Loop Drive.
“I was a little bit terrified at first,” Jillian Morrow said after a test drive Wednesday. “It was faster than I thought. Once I got the hang of it, it was lots of fun.”
City council in May imposed a moratorium on issuing business licenses to e-scooter companies through February 2020, giving Boulder staffers time to propose regulations on where, when and how the electric vehicles can be ridden.
“We know we don’t want them on sidewalks,” Boulder Senior Transportation Planner Dave Kemp said.
He added city officials are looking into regulatory proposals that could prohibit e-scooter use on major arterial roads lacking bike lanes, in addition to disallowing e-scooters before dawn and after dusk, to prevent, in part, drunken operation as well as riding in the dark. But all the considerations are preliminary, and any rules will have to gain council approval to trigger an end to the moratorium.
“Safety is paramount,” Kemp said. “… It would behoove us to have, if not a law, encouragement of helmet use. Denver is playing catchup on building regulations for e-bikes and e-scooters. We’re going to build the most constructive regulations for council consideration.”
Boulder resident Caitlin Jacobsen earlier this year was involved in an e-scooter crash after leaving Coors Field in Denver, and was in a medically induced coma for some time after the incident. Her sister, Jennifer Jacobsen, last month testified to Boulder City Council that the woman’s condition remained serious and urged the city to approach e-scooters with extreme caution.
Despite the tragedy, hopes are high for e-scooters, along with e-bike sharing and micro-transit options, such as cars smaller than buses, to be part of the formula to deter Boulder-based employees from driving into work, Kemp and Boulder Chamber leaders said.
Their availability near Boulder bus stops for regional routes could tilt the scales in favor of transit over single-occupancy vehicles, giving bus riders a convenient option to complete the “first and last miles” of their trips without walking or sweating through their work clothes while pedaling a standard bike, and help draw down transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions from Boulder residents and workers.
In 2018, people took 38.5 million trips on shared e-scooters in the United States, according to a National Association of City Transportation Officials report.
“Our goal is to fully explore all possible opportunities to improve mobility for Boulder’s workforce and residents,” Boulder Chamber Director of Public Affairs Andrea Meneghel said.
Kemp also said the city will be looking to e-scooter companies to gear their smartphone applications to promote good behavior by riders when it comes to parking and cruising in properly designated areas, perhaps by warning users they could be charged higher fees for bad placement or riding habits picked up on by companies’ location tracking technology.
The city also is looking to ensure equitable access to e-scooters and e-bike sharing programs by finding ways to get them into the hands of residents and employees who could use them, but may not have a smartphone model able to start up a scooter, or a credit card to plug into a mobile application, Kemp said.
“They’re getting the full shakedown, but ultimately we see the value,” Kemp said.
