E-scooter regulation is overwhelming San Francisco, emails show

San Francisco has been scooter-less for months. 

Other cities, meanwhile, have slowly been filling with electric scooters. But earlier this year, San Francisco cracked down on three companies — Bird, Lime, and Spin — that had been renting e-scooters to riders without any go-ahead from the city. After an initial period of letting them ride wild, the city decided the scooters had to be regulated, and a permit process implemented. Until that happens, all scooter-shares were banned. 

That was June. It’s now August. The permitting is taking forever. And San Francisco transit officials seem way over their heads.

A public records request of scooter-related emails from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, or SFMTA, from March through late July, shows that the city’s scooter triage was in full throttle within weeks of the battery-powered vehicles hitting city streets. 

One transit planner emailed over this Jalopnik article (“I Tried San Francisco’s Electric Scooter Share And It Was A Nightmare”), saying, “Having not tried it yet myself, I found this one illuminating, if not unsurprising.” Another transit official made his thoughts clear with a quip about efforts to “further regulate this emerging goofball mode.”

Thousands of pages of emails over the past four months discuss scooter fee structures; different interest groups’ takes on the scooters for pedestrians, cyclists, neighborhood groups, residents with disabilities, those with impaired eyesight and more; and public comment over why scooters are great or terrible (one email in July said, “I loved having access to this alternative and am anxious to see them back”). And then there were pleas from various companies vying for a spot in San Francisco’s elusive permit program, which will eventually allow 2,500 scooters to be rented from five companies.

One scooter company, Getzigo, tried to guilt the city about allowing competitors to operate for a short period. “But, unlike the other companies, we HAVE NOT placed any scooters in the city of San Francisco, nor any other city for that matter, without permission first,” CEO Astor Birri wrote in April.

Officials seem conflicted. A June presentation from a cross-departmental meeting first praises scooters as “convenient alternatives to driving” and then switches to problems, like sidewalk riding and parking issues.

Research requests keep coming in from other metro areas, like Portland, Oregon; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Santa Clara County, south of San Francisco; and Minneapolis, where a city parking services manager asked the city for guidance about Bird scooters arriving in July. “I was hoping to use some existing language from you all as a starting point,” he wrote. Transit officials from Los Angeles; Santa Monica, California; and San Francisco had a mind-meld at one point to figure out how to proceed with the vehicles. 

It’s great that cities are talking and checking in on best practices. But San Francisco still doesn’t seem to have a strong grasp on how to handle everything. A working draft on city-wide scooter policies seems to lean too heavily upon bike-share rules. Bikes may be similar, but they use a completely different system for unlocking and riding through an app, aren’t motorized or shaped like scooters, and don’t behave in the same ways scooters do. A scooter simply isn’t used the same way a bicycle is for travel or commuter needs.

One email about how police should handle “transgressive scooterboards” admits that the regulations are not in place and “the existing regulatory framework will have to suffice.” Police “aren’t interested in gathering up and storing (scooters)” says the transit official, and the transportation agency “doesn’t have a barn to stash ’em.” In a later email, the same official learns that the city’s Department of Public Works has been impounding scooters found blocking sidewalks or resting against a building and charging the companies $125 a pop. “It looks like the system works after all …” he wrote.

Early emails talk about the San Francisco scooter process wrapping up by the end of June. But by July, city officials were responding to timeline inquiries like this: “My best guess right now is that we announce the companies that will receive permits in late July, and actually issue the permits (including data specification) in mid-August. Scooters would be on the street shortly after that.”

Maybe it’s because applications from 12 different companies came in at hundreds of pages apiece, in some cases. We get it, it’s a lot to sift through. Just figuring out how to deny seven of the companies a permit is a process. An early July email shows a transportation planner emailing the city attorney’s office, asking to have “some sort of quick check-in call to discuss the best way of documenting reasons for permit denial.”

In late June the transit official leading up the scooter permit program wrote in response to a canceled meeting: “=( Don’t you think we should have some scooter check-ins still?” 

On Monday an SFMTA spokesperson didn’t have much to add about scooters. “We are still in the decision-making process,” she wrote in an email.

It’s clear this is a fluid situation. Companies including Lime, Skip, and Jump wanted to amend their applications, and officials had to decide if those new materials could be included in their review. (They weren’t.) When Lime announced its Uber partnership that will let riders rent a scooter through the Uber app, the agency was thrown for another loop, with the director of transportation at SFMTA receiving emails “clarifying” what Uber’s involvement in the company meant. 

When a scooter charging startup reached out, the transit agency didn’t even know if that fell under their jurisdiction. “I just got this inquiry about scooter charging stations. Who is the right person to pass this along to? Is it even an SFMTA thing or would it be PW [Public Works]?” the transit official emailed.

On Monday, Lime kicked off an online and phone campaign for its community-based network of chargers (known as “juicers”) to lobby city officials to allow Lime to operate its scooters. It was holding a midday meeting at Lime’s new SF headquarters to give an “update” on the permit process.

Here’s the pre-made tweet Lime is urging chargers to post:

A market research Qualtrics study released Tuesday about scooters found that 50 percent of respondents think scooter-sharing saves them money. Two-thirds of people surveyed said that scooters are good for the environment. 

With all the pleading and prodding, you’d think San Francisco would be hustling. But it’s mid-August and there’s still no definitive word on when the scooters will return. Might be time for an LA road trip to get your scooter action. This could take a while.