City Plans Test for Electric Scooter Sharing

The City of Omaha (www.cityofomaha.org) is planning a pilot project for electric scooters that would be available for rental. The city is seeking proposals from companies interested in participating in the test, which will run from late March until mid-November.

A scooter-sharing system is a service in which electric scooters are made available to use for short-term rentals. It is similar to car-sharing and bicycle-sharing systems. The scooters would be dockless, with no permanent home, so they could be left anywhere. The scooters would have GPS devices so users can see where they are and the companies that own them can find them and retrieve them to be charged for more use. The first dockless electric kick scooter sharing services started to roll out in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles at the end of 2017, and have subsequently expanded to more cities in the U.S.

The scooters would likely be barred from sidewalks and major thoroughfares, with far higher speed limits than the scooters can scoot (about 15 mph or 24 kph). A company app lets people access the scooters. The rental cost can vary from city to city, but generally $1 to start the scooter and 15 cents per minute of use.

Due to the fact that scooter-sharing is a newer form of transportation, there are no academic studies that can effectively measure its impact. This is why the city is planning a pilot project. Overall, scooter-sharing is noted to create an increase urban mobility with fewer carbon emissions compared to automobiles. They also take up less space than bikes, so they have potential to increase transit ridership to and from bus lines.

Learn more about the City of Omaha’s transportation plans at www.cityofomaha.org.