Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee - Lunch & Learn - 5/9/19

My sister and brother-in-law came down to visit.

Oh, yeah?

Nice.

Visit the baby, but I'm not sure for my brother-in-law.

Oh.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to a special committee meeting of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I am chair of the committee.

Today is May 9th.

It's 1134 a.m.

We have a lot of folks that are outdoors right now on the plaza at City Hall.

There is a demonstration going on.

with a couple of the electric scooter share companies.

But we're going to go ahead and get this meeting started.

I'm expecting that a couple of my colleagues will be joining me as they get up here, but we want to get things rolling.

Really quick, the agenda today has just a single item, which is the presentation on the scooter share.

We're going to hear from a number of different folks into that single item.

Before we get to that, we will take public comment.

I expect there's some people that may want to provide public comment that aren't here yet.

And so we're going to do public comment at the beginning.

And then if we have time at the end, I'll come back and do public comment for those that maybe arrived a little later.

I'm going to go ahead and move to approve our agenda with that addition of a second public comment period at the end.

And I will approve that.

So let's go ahead and move into public comment.

And Kelly, are folks signed up there?

Okay, I have five folks signed up.

We'll do up to two minutes each.

Richard Barron, followed by Michael Schneizler, I think, and then Marcy Carpenter.

Both these mics hot?

Both.

Okay.

My name is Richard Barron.

I'm with SAFE, S-A-F-E.

And that acronym stands for Seattle Safe Sidewalk Access for Everyone.

And I am encouraging this committee and the council to table, disapprove or decline any approval for any current SDOT efforts regarding scooter related activities.

And rescind any current and pending agreements between SDOT and bike share vendors until.

and I've listed four categories of untils, and I'm gonna briefly mention just the titles of them.

The first one is bike share, bicycle vehicles presence on sidewalks is not consistent with other Seattle Municipal Code ordinances.

User education is terrible and beneficial only as a marketing device, for bike share companies.

I have, I'm going to put on the table, and I would appreciate it if Kelly would share them with the members of the table.

And I also have extras if other people here would like to have one.

You can either use them by wearing them, or you can use them by putting them on bike seats, which is the original design that I created.

simply to begin to try to educate users.

Please don't park your bikes or obstruct sidewalks.

There's, I think, 12 or 14 there, Kelly, if you don't mind.

Another until is not penalizing bike share, bicycle vendors or users.

The system allows the vendors to skate.

And as far as I've been able to discern, pay no penalties or costs.

Other than this, we're gonna reduce your bikes.

And it's such a massive strategy to entail, there's no penalties, real penalties involved.

Your time is up, Richard.

Change behavior, you have to penalize.

Richard, your time's up.

Thank you for your comments and thanks for submitting that.

I'll say one last thing, even though my time's up, and that is the counting that's going on is ridiculous.

I walked over here, seven blocks, 24 bikes, 11 of them were blocking.

Michael?

Good afternoon, Council Member.

Michael Schutzler, sorry for my spelling, it's apparently abysmal.

I'm here as an avid bike commuter and bus commuter, as well as the CEO of the Washington Tech Industry Association.

Bike and scooter share is an essential element to mobility for the city.

I think that's well acknowledged.

I heard you speak outside, so I know you feel the same way.

And it's green, so it doesn't really get much better than that in terms of mobility options.

There were nine million trips in the U.S. last year on bikes, on bike share, and there were 39 million trips on bike scooter share.

Scooters are way more popular than bikes.

And there's a really simple reason for that.

Not everybody's in physical shape to ride a bicycle, especially up and down city hills, even with e-assist.

But also scooters are particularly useful for people wearing a sport coat or a dress, much more so than a bicycle.

So in terms of short mobility of somewhere between a half a mile to two miles of going to meetings or catching light rail or getting to a bus, they're really quite essential.

And scooters are a really excellent addition to bike share.

The Portland Board of Transportation, which I think you're going to be seeing later, published a study last year that showed that there was a 6% increase in bike share as a result of introducing scooters.

So there's clear evidence that this is not a zero-sum game.

Bikes and scooters are not mutually exclusive.

There is, I believe speaking again as an avid cyclist and commuter on a bicycle, there is a need for safety as a foremost concern for this city.

I definitely applaud the thought on that.

There's two comments I have on that.

The first is total indemnification blanket is unreasonable because the number one issue for cycles, bicycles as well as scooters is traffic.

Red lights in the city are being run every day by buses.

People are still texting while driving.

That's the number one safety concern.

The second is the roads themselves.

I live in West Seattle.

It's been a long time since West Seattle's seen anybody do any road rebuild.

I don't like riding a bike on there.

I would never ride a scooter in West Seattle.

So if there's actually a public policy issue that I would strongly urge the council to consider, and I'm probably not gonna be super popular with anybody on this, speaking as a cyclist, I go to work with this.

and I have this at work, and I have another one at work, if I'm gonna use a rideshare bike, I use this.

This city should mandate helmets for everybody on a bicycle and everybody on a scooter, because the number one issue for injury on a scooter, on a bicycle, is a head injury.

Everything else is easily recovered.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Marcy, you're gonna be next, and Marcy, you're gonna be followed by Dan Wise, and then Catherine Toll.

And we've been joined by Council Member Scata.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Council Member O'Brien and Ms. Queda.

And here's my very improvised sign, which says no blocking scooters.

I'm a proponent of alternate modes of transportation.

I think they benefit everyone in the city.

But I'm also a disabled pedestrian, and there are very clear dangers currently with the bike share system in Seattle.

Appropriate parking is not anywhere near acceptable levels.

My message to the city is clear.

Do not start any pilot program with ScooterShare until the bike share blocking issue is much more under control and the ScooterShare companies can guarantee that there will not be such a huge problem as there is with bike share.

Thank you.

Thank you, Marcy.

Dan.

Hi, I'm Dan Wise, and I live in Northwest Seattle, Ballard-Greenwood neighborhood, and I work in the Central District, and I come downtown a ton, and I use bike share a lot to reduce my car trips as much as possible into the city.

I'm a proponent of the scooters.

We have a lot of hills, and I've seen where the scooters are a lot easier to navigate on the hills than bikes have been.

I do agree that we should, as a community, have good public design that allows people to park so that they're not obstructing folks on the sidewalk.

But I think we can do that as a urban planning issue and not a ban alternative modes of transportation.

Thanks.

Thanks, Dan.

Catherine.

Hi, my name's Catherine Hull.

It's my first time doing this.

It's very exciting.

I feel really strongly about scooters.

I used them in San Diego a year and a half ago, and it was fun.

I was so happy to not have to deal with how do I take buses in this new city.

I think for tourism in this area, it's really easy to hop on and hop off to the point of you know, riding them in business wear between the link and office is much more accessible than being on a bicycle.

As someone who lives in Ballard and got their bike stolen last year, I now rely really heavily on the bike share program and would really, really love to have the scooters around because they're much more fun to ride.

To the point of parking them in a safe location, I noticed that in Ballard, there are now areas on the sidewalks where you're supposed to park them, and I absolutely love that, because I also am really concerned about, oh no, where should I park this?

So if that could be something that we rolled out more broadly, like this is the recommended place to park them, I don't know if it's something that we can necessarily enforce really strongly, but user education seems like a really big part of this.

And if there was some part of the applications where you had to confirm that you went through a certain small tutorial, you know, wearing bicycle helmets being strongly recommended and things like that, I think it would help a lot of the problems that we've heard today.

And go scooters.

I love them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katherine.

That's all that's signed up.

I'm going to close public comment for now.

We will open public comment again up at the end of the meeting and try to reserve some time for that.

So, why don't we go ahead and jump into the agenda?

I'll go ahead and read agenda item one, which is the only agenda item.

Lunch and Learn, Scooter Share Presentation.

And I mentioned being staffed by Kelly Reefer today.

Thank you for being here, Kelly.

We have folks from Oregon joining us remotely.

So, thank you all so much.

And I'm guessing this is Brianna.

Hello.

Okay, we can hear you and we can see you.

So this is amazing.

Thanks to our technology team.

Eric, thanks so much for getting things working.

So Brianna, tell us a little bit about what you've learned in your pilot down in Portland.

Great.

Well, thank you so much Council Member for having me virtually.

I really appreciate you all taking the time and I'm happy to share with Seattle since we've learned actually so much from Seattle's experience with Dockless Bike Share as well.

So with that, I will get my screen share going on.

And All right.

Are you able to see my presentation?

Yes, we can see that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Great.

Wonderful.

Well, again, my name is Brianna Orr.

I'm coming from the Portland Bureau of Transportation and I'm joined by Brendan Haggerty from Multnomah County Health Department, who will be chatting a little bit about more of our safety findings.

So I wanted to give an overview of our pilot, you know, what we ran, and then talk a little bit about the data that we used in order to discover and find out some things about scooters and their use in Portland.

So specifically we'll talk a little bit about our user survey, the trip data, and then Brendan will talk about safety.

And then I'll just give a brief overview of where Portland is headed next and leave hopefully a lot of time for questions and discussion.

So when we first started thinking about e-scooters in Portland, we really wanted to make sure that e-scooters fell in line with our PBOT transportation goals.

And so wanted to really assess how this potential new option could fit into our existing goals of reducing private motor vehicle use and congestion, preventing fatalities and injuries on our streets, so our Vision Zero goals, expanding access for underserved communities, and how it could be a part of reducing air pollution and our climate pollution goals.

And so we ran a 120-day pilot from late July through late November of last year.

We ran that pilot in our entire city boundaries so operators could operate anywhere in the city of Portland.

We put a cap on the total number of scooters at a little over 2,000.

And on those 2,000 scooters, folks took 700,000 trips, rode 800,000 miles, which is about almost 6,000 trips per day.

And average trip length that we saw in Portland was a little over a mile.

And then in East Portland, which is one of our underserved communities, we saw a longer trip length of 1.6 miles.

And we can talk a little bit more about why that might be.

Since we're also talking a little bit about, we're talking about Oregon, and I just wanted to give you an overview of what the laws are in regards to e-scooter use in Oregon.

So we have both state laws and then city laws that govern e-scooter use.

At the state level, we have a minimum age requirement of 16 years old.

We do not have a driver's license requirement as is common in some other states.

We do have an all-ages helmet requirement for e-scooter users.

And then we have a max allowed speed for users at 15 miles an hour.

So that really informed a lot of what our requirements were for the operators.

And then for Portland specifically, we also have city code around use of motorized devices in our parks.

And so e-scooters as a motorized device are not allowed in our parks, including several of our multi-use paths, such as the Waterfront Trail, East Bank Esplanade, Springwater Corridor.

So this would be akin to not being allowed to ride on the Berkelman Trail.

So data sources, like I said, we had a lot of questions and wanted to understand how that fits into our goals citywide.

So in order to answer those questions, we look to the companies to provide availability and trip data, as well as let us know about any collisions that were reported to them and any complaints.

And then we also went out on the street and did rider observations to understand more about that user behavior.

And we also did a user survey as well as a public opinion poll to understand both how users were using the system and how the general public felt about it.

And then injury data, so we collected, Multnomah County will speak a little bit more to this, but essentially looked at ER visits and urgent care visits as well as self-reported injuries and collisions came to PVOT throughout the pilot.

And then PBOD held three separate focus groups, which were very helpful to kind of do some deep dive conversations.

And we held those focus groups with people from our disability community, folks from East Portland, where we have an underserved community, as well as people of color in Portland.

And then finally, we had an open-ended community feedback form that anybody could respond and provide feedback throughout the pilot period and then also submitted complaints.

Next thing, we put out a report in January.

So this slide summarizes that 36-page report into one slide.

But essentially what we found is e-scooters are very popular.

I think as someone in the public comments spoke to a little bit, in Portland we saw 700,000 trips and just a lot of potential to reduce trips from autos and potentially reduce congestion as well.

We saw a positive response overall from Portlanders.

So in our public opinion poll, 62% of Portlanders felt positively about the pilot.

And then users overall preferred low-speed streets and bike lanes.

So I'll talk a little bit more about that.

The big negatives that we saw in Portland was around sidewalk riding, improper parking, and generally inequitable access to scooters.

So those were all big issues that I'll talk about in more depth as well.

And then, you know, we still have some questions.

I'm not sure if it's a plus or minus around the net environmental impact.

You know, we know if folks are shifting modes from private automobile to scooters, that has a positive environmental impact.

But then there's also the operation and driving around of picking up scooters at the end of the day and deploying them in the morning.

So that's something that we have a little less information on.

So overall, going into the findings a little bit more detail, 71% of users said that they used e-scooters for transportation.

So they were either going to work, going to school, they were going to a restaurant.

They really had a destination in mind, and e-scooters filled that gap for them.

This is also supported through some of our trip data.

So we have the blue and orange.

The orange just highlights our most heavily used times of the day and days of the week.

So you see that on the weekdays, Monday through Friday, we see a pretty strong p.m.

afternoon peak period, as well as on Sunday and Saturday, we see an afternoon peak period as well.

And through our user survey, again, we asked folks, what would you have done for your last trip had an e-scooter not been available?

And this is the result.

34% of folks said that they would have driven a car or taken an Uber, Lyft, or taxi instead of using that e-scooter.

So it's a really strong number.

And that number was higher for folks who were visiting Portland.

So 48% of visitors said that they would have taken either a personal car or a ride-hailing replacement.

And then we also learned that e-scooters in general really attracted folks to the bike lane for the first time.

And, you know, this is not something that what we thought was just going to be folks who typically use bike share, also typically use e-scooter.

But 70, 74% of folks said that they had never used e-scooters.

bike town, our bike share system before.

And about 40% of folks said that they really never rode a bike regularly before otherwise.

So the folks that are using e-scooters do seem to be different than the folks that we see overall biking in our city.

And then I went into this a little bit, but 62% of Portlanders really viewed this pilot positively.

And I'll just add here that these numbers were higher amongst people who are low income, people of color, and people who are under 35 years old.

All those groups felt even more positive about the pilot.

And then I just wanted to provide a little snapshot of what sort of trip data we gathered and how that's informing our thinking going forward.

So this map is pulled from our report, and it shows some of the most heavily traveled streets in Portland for e-scooters.

And this is throughout the whole pilot period, so where we see heavier blue colors, you know, that's where we had the most use.

And then as lighter, as the color gets lighter, that's where we saw a little bit less use.

And so when we zoom into this a little bit more, what we really see is our bikeway network really starts to pop out.

So that north-south area that's highlighted is our North Williams-Vancouver stretch.

They're both two-way street or one-way streets in either direction with buffered bike lanes or wide bike lanes in some sections.

So that's really positive.

And then that east-west route.

that I highlighted as Northeast Going.

It's one of our neighborhood greenways.

And so looking at where people are riding, this is really, you know, really supports the investments that Portland has already made in the bike network.

And so it's really heartening to see that.

Of course, we also saw areas where we don't have bike infrastructure and seen use.

So one of the furthest, let's see if I can use my mouse, one of the furthest north-south routes here, MLK, we know that there's no great infrastructure.

And so we know that folks are likely to be riding on the sidewalk in those sections.

And so this can really help inform and prioritize where we should be making additional investments in our transportation system.

And then I mentioned East Portland, which is an area we knew was underserved overall in our transportation network.

And we had requirements for the companies to place at least 100 scooters in East Portland every day.

And so we can see that on the left side of the screen.

In inner East Portland, we saw use really start to drop off.

But once we crossed over into our boundary of this orange line, we saw e-scooter use pick up again.

And so for us, and overall, we had 44,000 trips.

For us, this shows that if you make e-scooters available, they are used in an even context where we have maybe less bike infrastructure than we do downtown.

And it really is a way that folks were able to fit into their transportation overall.

So we asked Portlanders, after we put out this report and as we were thinking about our second pilot, what do you want us to focus on?

What should our next step be as we're thinking about bringing scooters back into the city?

And so what they really asked for was more enforcement on sidewalk riding and parking especially.

They asked for safer places to ride, especially folks living in East Portland, who I mentioned have fewer options.

They asked for dedicated parking.

And then they also asked for more equitable access to scooters.

more education, you know, some of our communities of color said that they just didn't know how to use the scooters and no one ever reached out to them to give them that information.

And so that's something that we'll focus on.

And then finally we heard from communities with disabilities really saying is there a way that we can have more accessible scooter designs overall?

You know, scooters that are seated or three wheeled options.

And so as we're bringing into this new pilot, we actually just started our one-year pilot in April, April 26th.

These are some of the strategies that we're using in response to what we heard from Portlanders and what we learned in that first pilot period.

So we're going to have our city parking enforcement staff going out and monitoring and issuing parking tickets through the company.

It's very similar to how we do with Car2Go.

You know, it's not a ticket left on the windshield because probably no one's going to come back to that same car, but it's going through the app and to the user themselves.

geofencing requirements, so we have no parking zones and no riding zones, which require different things that companies are required to notify users if they go through a no riding zone.

And then they also are required to prevent users from ending a trip in a no parking zone.

And so those are things that we're testing out and seeing how they work in this next pilot period.

We're also requiring companies to report on overall life cycle analysis of their scooter and vehicle miles traveled for the operational side so we can really understand, again, what the net climate benefit might look like for this.

And then lastly, as I mentioned, Portlanders ask for more safe places to ride.

And so we built in surcharges to both companies and the users themselves that will fund dedicated parking places for e-scooters as well as safe infrastructure such as bike lanes or other neighborhood greenways.

And so with that, I'll turn it over to Brendan Haggerty to talk a little bit about our safety findings.

My name is Brennan Haggerty.

I'm a research analyst for Multnomah County Health Department.

And during the pilot period, I queried our emergency department visits through a statewide data system.

Washington has a similar system, to identify emergency department visits that were likely related to a scooter injury.

And as you might expect, we saw an increase with the introduction of scooters at the end of July.

peaked in mid-September or so, and came back down to pre-pilot levels by the end of the pilot, toward the end of November.

You know, since we've done this, a number of other jurisdictions around the country have reached out, and we're finding that this is a similar method that's used in other places.

So Los Angeles and Austin, for example, have used a similar approach to identify injuries.

On the next slide, you can see some of the summary statistics.

And this is something that I think we're beginning to see across jurisdictions.

But one of the things, the takeaways for me is that of all of these injuries, the vast majority were a simple, like a single party crash or a fall.

rather than a collision.

And that same pattern holds across jurisdictions.

So we're seeing north of 80% of all injuries were due to a fall rather than a collision.

A couple of other takeaways is that, you know, we didn't, we weren't able to gather very much information on helmet use.

That information was missing from most emergency department records.

And then we saw I think in the range of 10% of the records had some evidence of intoxication.

So those were kind of two items of interest.

But overall, I think we try to emphasize that the entire transportation system has injury risk inherent in it.

And that's why we're partnering with the city on Vision Zero.

Great.

Thanks, Brendan.

And I'll just note, too, that in our staff observations when we went out on the street, we noted about 10% of riders used the helmet.

So it is quite low on helmet use overall.

And then, I'm almost done here, just wanted to give you a sense of where Portland is overall.

So, as I mentioned, we just, in January, we put out this findings report.

And then, since then, we were drafting new rules, new permit application for companies to apply for.

And then, we just launched our second pilot, which will be a year-long pilot, and really help us understand What does a full annual cycle of this look like?

How does user behavior change, if at all, throughout that pilot period?

And it gives us a little bit more time to test out these new management strategies.

And then next year in 2020, we'll be taking recommendations to our city council.

And then I just wanted to include our contact information, and we do have a pilot website and a report, as well as data that's available to download from escooterpdx.com.

Thank you, Brianna and Brendan, so much for this.

It's really helpful to get an overview of where you are, considering that you're, you know, a year or so ahead of where we are.

I have a couple questions, if that's okay.

One of the things that...

We heard in public comment today, and we continue to hear, is concern about parking.

And so I'm curious, I appreciate the safety data on users.

What have you seen as far as response to parking?

And in the original pilot, were there fines or were there no fines?

And you've just added those in the last month.

And I know it's pretty early, but have you seen any behavior change there?

Yeah, great questions.

We didn't have a fine for users in this first pilot, that first four months.

And so what we did is we had staff out monitoring on the street and educating users on proper parking.

And then we really worked hard with companies to educate both companies and their employees on where the best places were to park.

And so we've added in new measures into this pilot such as, you know, companies must be able to stop deploying to any address that we provide them.

You know, we really, I think, are a lot more communicative on where precisely were saying folks can't park.

We not only gave those park geofencing, but we also gave geofencing for bus stops that are in our downtown areas.

That was one area that we saw blocking access was around bus stops and our streetcar.

and MAX platforms.

So we really wanted to prioritize making sure that people knew not to park there.

Overall, in the number of complaints that we received throughout the first pilot, parking complaints were relatively low in relative to the other sort of issues that were highlighted with number one being folks reporting riders who weren't wearing helmets.

And the second one was reporting riders on the sidewalk.

Parking was actually fifth or sixth down the list.

But when we talked to our community with disabilities, that was one of the number one concerns that they had, even above sidewalk riding was about illegal parking.

And which is why we've raised our efforts there quite substantially.

This question might be for Brendan.

On the slide showing the rate of injury, the number of injuries in the graph drop off as we head into the wetter season.

But I'm curious, does that also reflect, I mean, is it declining because there's just fewer users?

Or did you find that the actual rate of injury declined over time as people became more familiar with it?

It's a great question and an insightful one.

And I'm not sure we have a clear answer to it.

The rate appeared to kind of gradually decline over time.

But I think it's something that we want to explore in the current pilot again to see if, you know, were we seeing an artifact of the data or what.

But it did appear that, you know, There may have been sort of a higher rate of injury early on in the pilot.

And then do you have data to compare it to other modes, bicycling or even cars, as far as injuries per 10,000 miles or per 10,000 trips?

Yeah.

So we don't have, unlike e-scooters, we don't have comprehensive information on the number of trips or the amount of travel that's taken place by other modes.

Maybe with the exception of transit.

So we can't really make an apples-to-apples comparison.

But we saw that I believe there were about twice as many injuries for bike-related injuries.

And we would expect the number of bike trips to be probably several times higher than the number of scooter trips.

That's the closest comparison that we could make, and that would suggest that there is a slightly higher injury rate among scooter users than bike users.

Colleagues, do you have any questions of our neighbors to the south?

Sure.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate the opportunity here.

I'm looking at the screen, not at the camera.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate the opportunity to hear from you.

This is a big issue.

As Council Member O'Brien knows, we have been working to try to get this multimodal option here in Seattle for a very long time.

I think with the intent to make sure that as we have more people using alternative types of transportation, we are then able to beef up our bike network as well.

People who may never bike will then also see the importance of having these protected lanes as they jump on scooters to get to places of work or to go, you know, grocery shopping.

I used them in Washington, D.C.

with my high heels on to get between meetings.

I've used them in Portland when I came down for a weekend vacation and had a great time and loved the infrastructure, especially in the new bridges that you all have that connect the city across the water.

It is an incredibly important asset.

And I just want to see if you also want to comment on the momentum that you have seen provided When you have this additional alternative transportation being scooters added to the queue of options for your residents, how have you seen the call for protected bike lanes and corrals and greater pedestrian safety, especially for those with disabilities?

How have you seen that all kind of culminate to actually push for the protected lanes and pedestrian safety that many of us have been asking for for years?

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

And you know, we only ran a four month pilot.

And so this and I would say overall, right, the the industry or the mode is very, very young, only being about a year and a half old since when the first scooters launched in Santa Monica, California.

So Overall, I don't know that we're seeing the kind of advocacy that we've seen from our bicycling community for decades.

But that may just be because this is a new group of people.

Our data seems to indicate that these folks are not necessarily people who were biking before, but maybe were driving or maybe taking Uber and Lyft primarily to get to where they needed to go.

So we have certainly heard from communities who don't feel ready to hop on scooters that they want to see that bike infrastructure first before they feel like this is something that really can work for them.

So we heard that pretty strongly from folks in East Portland.

Although at the same time, we saw thousands of trips taken in East Portland.

So I'm really interested to see how the community continues to embrace e-scooters and how that may or may not manifest itself in another advocacy kind of constituency.

We certainly know that through our data both observationally, and I didn't mention this, but where we went out in Portland and took note of where the highest sidewalk riding instances were, were the areas where we didn't have bike infrastructure at all and were areas that we had high speeds.

So if speeds were over 35%, nearly 95% of people were riding on the sidewalk.

And so that alone, I think, tells us that as a bureau, we need to be really thinking about if you don't have bike infrastructure, that means that everybody is sharing the sidewalk space.

And that doesn't mean a great experience for any of those people, especially people with disabilities who really rely on that sidewalk space to navigate the city.

And then we'll jump to, unless you have another question, we'll jump to bringing Lyman Bird up after you're done.

Oh, great.

Okay.

I will probably ask the same questions of Lyman Bird.

So in Portland, I see on your chart here that you do have a helmet requirement.

And in theory, we have a helmet requirement here in Seattle as well.

When I ride our bike shares, I never wear a helmet.

When I wear my personal bike, I do wear a helmet because I can go a lot faster and, you know, it's a little bit more of an aggressive ride.

When I'm riding on a bike share, I think it's a little bit more leisurely.

I have, you know, multiple bags like I did the other day with my workout bag and a little shopping bag and then I had my backpack on.

So, you know, I'm taking my time and it doesn't feel as as dangerous.

I think the big question for me, though, is when I was in Portland, I didn't put a helmet on.

And I was riding and having a great time because you guys had protected lanes.

I felt very safe.

When I ride here in Seattle and not wearing a helmet on the bike shares, I've never had a problem.

with being pulled over by the cops.

And I'm a fairly light-skinned Chicana.

But my staff member, who is a woman of color, Indian-American, when she and two of her friends went out to ride on a bike share, they got pulled over in the South End.

The cops pulled them over, and the guy said, I never want to catch you riding a bike in this area again.

which mind you, there are no bike lanes in that area.

So the only place for them to have ridden safely was in the street, which is something I do every single time I jump on a bike share.

Have you seen incidences of increased citations from individuals who are trying to enjoy scooters, use them as a multimodal transportation option, disproportionately seeing citations for communities of color because of this helmet law?

And let me also note, I do think that we want to protect people's safety, but without additional bike infrastructure, I understand why it's important to have a helmet law.

I'm also, though, not interested in putting in additional policies that may disproportionately affect communities of color.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think we have the same concerns around enforcement and our, you know, at PVOT Vision Zero has done a really tremendous job on their efforts around ensuring that, you know, the enforcement that they do doesn't increase inequitable policing and profiling and things of that nature.

When we're talking about the enforcement that Portland's doing, it really is done by our parking enforcement officers.

So these are PBOT staff, not police officers.

And the sidewalk writing and monitoring will be done by our regulatory staff, not police officers.

So far, I've heard of a handful of citations or warnings that's been given out by Portland Police.

But there, from my understanding, hasn't been any concerted effort or certainly no sting from our police department.

And so, you know, while again, we heard from the public that that lack of enforcement was a major concern around how we how we encourage people to follow the laws without that.

And so what PBOT has done to try to get at least the parking pieces and around sidewalk writing is to provide that ourselves.

Great.

One last question about the pilot.

Thanks again.

This is Teresa Mosqueda.

When you rolled out your pilot, I didn't catch, and remind me, was it restricted geographically to a certain section of Portland?

It was not.

No, we allowed operators to operate anywhere in the city of Portland.

And the only requirement we had geographically was to place a minimum of 100 scooters in East Portland.

So it was more of an equity distribution, which I believe Seattle has your bike share system as well.

And I think most cities are noting that having some sort of minimum requirement to ensure that these are accessible throughout the city is best practice.

Great, okay, I think that's a really important point that I'd like to come back to later.

And you used the word equitably and equity.

I think that if we are to do and when we do a pilot project, it is critical that we don't limit the placement of scooters geographically because I think there is a disproportionate impact if individuals were to use it as we hope they would if they park it outside of that geographic limitation for people to then be cited, especially in areas north and south where We have high numbers of our communities who are from communities of color.

I don't want to see the same thing that happened to our jump bike situation where people are getting fined $25 for riding at home as we want them to do.

It'd be better, in my opinion, to have a pilot project that does look citywide so that we don't have that disproportionate impact, especially on communities of color.

Thank you for those points, Council Member Skada.

I'm going to invite representatives from Byrd and Lyme to come on forward.

Brianna and Brendan, thank you so much for your time.

I don't want to take too much of your time, but if you're free to stick around for these presentations.

We may have more questions for you, but I totally want to respect your time, and if you need to go, I appreciate everything you've done so far.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

I'll stick around, but I may turn my video off.

Sounds great.

I've got to head out, but it's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Brendan.

I should mention, I failed to mention that we were joined by Council Member Patayko.

Thank you for making it up here.

And why don't you guys introduce yourself?

Yes, Paul Steely White.

I'm the Director of Safety Policy and Advocacy at BIRD.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jonathan Hopkins.

I do government affairs for LIME.

Great.

I want to give you each a chance to talk for just a couple minutes each.

Tell us a little bit about your experiences elsewhere.

Feel free to comment on what you've heard about and learned in Portland, and any thoughts you have on some of the public comments.

I'm not sure if you heard them today, but I can tell you they're consistent with what we've been hearing at other outlets to date.

Yes.

I think definitely consistent, I think, what we're seeing at Byrd and probably at Lyme across cities in terms of both the enthusiasm for the benefits and also concerns about some of the potential downsides.

I really appreciate the line of questioning about helmets and selective enforcement.

Equity, you know, Texas and other jurisdictions in America have actually repealed their mandatory helmet laws because of the selective and unfair enforcement that they saw.

I think there are better ways to get more compliance with helmets.

And in fact, BIRD is working with the UCLA Medical Center researchers on that other report that was alluded to earlier on how we can move the needle on helmet use through various incentive programs.

We provide thousands of free helmets, but we can and must do better to see those rates go up.

The 10% compliance rate in Portland is actually on the high side.

compared to what other cities have found.

But I think we also might agree that safety is much bigger than just helmets, right?

It comes back to infrastructure.

It comes back to rider education.

And Council Member O'Brien, you had that great question about, you know, do we see rates of injury decline as people become more experienced?

And I think the answer was, you know, maybe a little bit.

in Portland.

The CDC Austin study that was released just last week found that, in fact, a disproportionate number of the injuries are occurring among new riders.

So people who've never been on a scooter, something like a third of the injuries they saw in Austin were to new riders.

So that tells us at Byrd that we need to do more to educate new riders.

And so working with the researchers, we're working on new programs so we can do an even better job of the existing in-app, online, and in-person education that we're doing.

There may also be some operational parameters that we want to look at for beginners that make it less likely that they will be involved in a crash.

I think it's also true that among all of the studies that we've seen from, you know, PBOT, UCLA, Austin CDC, you know, Bird's own study where we found variable injury rates between cities depending on how good their safety infrastructure was.

You know, Seattle already doing a pretty good job compared to other cities rolling out bike infrastructure.

I've heard today a real urgency to do more, and we must do more.

But I think, you know, the bike ability that you've already achieved, I think, bodes well for scooters.

But really, all of these studies point to prevention.

Right?

These are preventable injuries.

And that was really the main takeaway from the CDC study.

So I think the question for operators moving forward and cities as well is what are we doing to operationalize and apply the lessons that have been learned from these studies.

As the studies concede, we have to do a better job of injury surveillance and comparing injury rates across modes.

If I may just quickly before we move on, or was there a question, Council Member Mosqueda?

Yeah.

If we're going to compare injury rates across modes, we should absolutely include cars.

Because the number of cars that I see parked in sidewalks, the number of cars I see parked in bike lanes, and the number of cars who are hitting and killing and injuring people quite exceeds any of the injuries that we've heard of or that I've researched from scooters, let alone bike shares.

So we'd love to, if you're going to go down that road, make sure that we also include that in there.

That's an excellent point.

I couldn't have made it better myself as the safety person at Byrd.

And I think, you know, the data is also telling us that those more severe injuries, as you pointed out, are coming from motor vehicle collisions.

So even if some of the single injury falls are happening, those do tend to be more scrapes and abrasions versus the more critical injuries.

You know, the few deaths that we've seen on scooters to date, almost invariably they have involved, you know, hit and run drivers, you know, drunk drivers, reckless driving.

And so I think getting that in check is key.

From the earlier testimony, we also heard, you know, big concern about sidewalk clutter, not obstructing the public rights of way, particularly for disabled individuals, elderly individuals, because it's more than just a nuisance issue, right?

It can be a safety issue if it's not addressed.

And I'm very proud of how we have led at Byrd on addressing this issue from exemplary rider education to active management of our fleets, right?

We actually employ people whose sole job it is to go out there and, you know, if a scooter's tipped over, pick it up, move it to where it belongs, pay special attention to ADA issues, ramps, wheelchair access.

And we actually enforce this among our riders.

So if a rider is doing this, we ban them from our app.

There are consequences.

We are fining riders if they repeatedly do this sort of thing.

And our detection and our in-app enforcement is getting better.

We talked a little bit about geo limitation.

You know, we're getting better at preventing riders from engaging in those kinds of behaviors that do obstruct rights of way.

I think another key thing, and this is what Paris is now learning, you know, Paris is really amazing right now with scooters, but designating parklets, right?

Paris is about to roll out 2,500 new designated scooter parking areas, mostly carved from car parking bays, but also from underutilized space elsewhere that's not, you know, blocking public rights of way.

But you have to provide people with that space to park So that's really a critical part of the solution as we improve our rider education, active fleet management, and automated enforcement.

And then we'll go to Jonathan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Are parklets in addition to the corrals?

So parklets would be dedicated parking spots and corrals would be on the sidewalk in areas that are outside of the way of pedestrians or wheelchairs and allow for people to know exactly where they should park the scooters and bicycles.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all the above.

Different cities have different nomenclature, but you touched on really the main strategies that are working.

Parklets in the street, and sometimes those are also called corrals, depending on the city, but then the stenciled parking that's out of the public right of way.

And the more you can put these parking bays and areas on the curb in the street, the better, because as Portland has found, there's this relationship between infrastructure and the rates of sidewalk riding.

and the rest, and so, you know, being mindful in that way.

But I also just want to come back to equity because we know that there's this connection between infrastructure and equity, and, you know, very encouraged to see it being touched on in the public testimony and also in the questioning.

But, you know, historically, you know, neighborhoods that have been underserved, you know, black and brown neighborhoods, low-income neighborhoods, those individuals much more likely to live and travel on streets that are deficient by design.

And so as we look to scooter companies and users and, the city to improve and fund infrastructure improvements, let's target those improvements where they're needed most and where they will have the most impact.

We are excited, as we've been in other cities, to deploy scooters disproportionately in areas where people do absolutely need that access to transit, where they are captive to transit because they don't have cars.

I think it's true that 16% of Seattle residents have access to a private vehicle, so most don't.

But if we're going to make good on that promise, we have to provide the safe infrastructure as well.

Great.

Council Member Patiño?

Good to see you, Jonathan, I promise.

The employees you mentioned, are they independent contractors or employees of Line Bike?

I think there's...

Sorry, or Byrd.

So our bird watchers are full-time personnel.

Those are people we employ.

They're not contractual workers.

Our chargers are most often independent contractors.

It's also true that in many cities we are moving away from that model and moving more towards dedicated personnel.

Jonathan, why don't you jump in if you want to address that question first and then you can jump in your...

Yeah, I think like Bird, there's a lot of practices that are fairly similar between the companies.

We have full-time personnel in all the cities we operate.

currently with bikes and everything else out to ensure compliance and quick responsiveness to issues that we find on the street.

But there are the independent contractors.

The intent is not for it to be a full-time job for anybody, but it's a way of getting additional income because it's folks, no matter what part of the city, that they're both able to provide better mobility for their neighborhood and also make some income off of it.

If somebody is charging a scooter, it takes about four hours at night.

It costs $0.25, and out of that $0.25 of clean, renewable, great Seattle City Light energy, that's about 25 miles of mobility for somebody the next day.

And somebody who does that gets $4 to $20 for every scooter they charge.

And so in Portland and Salt Lake City, in four to six months, we paid a quarter million dollars out into the local economy.

And unlike paying for gas at the gas station, most of that money leaves the local economy and to pay for value that's added elsewhere.

while polluting our own community.

This is all clean and all the money stays in that local community.

Just on the recharging model.

So when I did a mini vacation down to Venice Beach, California, two summers ago was my first time riding a scooter and loved it.

I did see people bringing home the scooters to charge them up.

Is that a model that's used by every company and in each city that you're in?

I think pretty much all of our cities have that model.

And so people only get money for recharging a vehicle if it drops below a certain level.

There's kind of like a shadow world version of our app where the vehicles that are low suddenly pop up on the chargers app, the juicers we call them.

And you guys call them bird watchers or chargers.

These are a fruit if you didn't get the cheesiness.

Yeah, so then they only get money for that if they're taking a vehicle that is a deficient charge that showed up on that app, and if they place it in the pre-prescribed zone appropriately and appropriately parked the next day.

So it encourages compliance.

And it also means that the cityscape is kind of like reset every day.

Unlike the bicycles, the scooters are set in hotspots that kind of evolve, but we work on those in collaboration with both the local community and even local businesses.

We just want to put a plug in for a future conversation as the chair of Seattle City Light.

One of the things that we're trying to do is encourage charging at alternate hours or, you know, not high peak hours.

So if that's a model that you've used in other cities, I'd like to chat with you all about what that recharging strategy looks like so that we're balancing out our energy.

Overwhelmingly.

It's between 9 p.m.

and 7 a.m.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Thank you.

Jonathan, do you want to take a few more minutes, make a few more overall points?

So we put together some slides.

There might be a few of them, but we'll go fast.

I think there's some really important points.

Our company's mission is to reimagine urban life through the wonder of mobility.

As an urban planner who cares about getting people out of the cars, that's a really exciting phrase.

So we wanted to talk about this.

I think there's a Deloitte report that came out earlier this year that is really actually kind of fascinating, very balanced.

Talks about a lot of things, but what it leads with is small is beautiful.

And comes from a quote by an economist in 1973 saying that we've oversized everything and essentially we're destroying our planet, right?

And he says, is it necessary to insist on the virtues of smallness where it applies?

I think the question is, does it apply to mobility?

The data from the last year would say yes.

By bringing in small scooters that people enjoy, you'll be able to double the amount of people in the country that are using shared mobility.

And in just one year, we've exceeded 10 years of efforts on shared bike.

infrastructure.

And for a total of 84 million trips.

When we did this in Portland, it was also very successful.

A city of 650,000, over 100,000 individual users.

Different unique users on our system.

Reduced car trip, vehicle miles traveled by 200,000 with the combined bird was there as well when you combine all the data.

and recognized that 34% of people in Portland would have been in a car if it hadn't been for a scooter, and 48% of visitors.

We get 40 million visitors in Seattle and King County a year.

That has a big impact as well, saving lots of fuel and 60 tons of CO2 emissions.

So I think we'll talk about where we are.

I think a lot of the data that I'm going to show is very similar between us and Byrd.

So this is the data that we had available, but pretty descriptive of the industry.

You know, we're over 100 cities around the world.

We're launching in Spokane on Monday.

There'll be other Pacific Northwest cities coming in the coming weeks and months.

We reach a lot of people in a lot of different places.

Over 51% of our households make less than $75,000 a year, but the average income in America is 81. 34% make less than 50. And we find that economically, our ridership fairly well mirrors the economic distribution in a city.

There are more people of color riding than there are, like, say, 36% people of color, but it's only 25% of Americans.

And more women ride scooters than ride bikes.

20% of our trips, the last trip was to transit.

30% nationwide, reflecting similar to the Portland data, is to replace an automobile trip, and that's split evenly between personal vehicle and ride hailing.

When you look at Mexico City, for example, that public transit connection is huge, and we're a big fan of it, because that philosophically is the line.

It's getting people out of cars, taking up less space, doing great things in our city.

40% connected to transit in the last week, 64% in the last month.

57% of our users nationwide have not ridden a bicycle in less than six months.

So this is creating, like the city of Portland and Peabody said, it's complementary.

There's overlap, but it's complementary.

We're inviting a lot of people in that don't already use the system.

And that fulfills our goals to increase people using the infrastructure.

In Portland, 78% of people had never used Portland Bike Share.

And 45% say they never used a bike to get around in one of the bankiest cities in America.

People overwhelmingly prefer protected bike lanes for usage.

When people are riding on sidewalks, the real reason they're doing that is because there's no space created for them.

And so this is why I think one of the big thesis of what I want to convey today is when we really want to solve these big, hairy problems about congestion, emissions, getting people around better, it requires really good partnership.

We can't all put everything on the city and say solve this.

The community can't.

The community can't put everything on the companies and solve it.

It's actually solving it together.

And we'll show some examples of good partnership.

And I think maybe there's a point to actually say thanks.

I wanted to start on the outset.

For the councils interested in this and finding new ways to solve problems in micromobility, Thanks to PBOT, they demonstrated like one of the best pilots in the country and created some absolutely great data.

And thanks now to the mayor for her interest in doing this as well because this statement is very true.

Again, from the Deloitte study, an ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

That's why cities around the country are doing these pilots.

And some of the best practices we see from those we'll talk about now.

One, we've mentioned sustainability and all the CO2 saved worldwide.

We also care a lot about equity.

Portland had a required minimum amount of vehicles in a low-income zone.

We are fans of that.

We support that.

34% of the users I mentioned make less than $50,000.

If somebody is part of a low-income program, and Bird has a similar program, if somebody's part of a low-income program of any type, city, county, state, federal, and they send a picture of some proof that they're on it, like, let's say, Orca Lyft or housing vouchers of some sort, then they get half off, 50 cents to unlock, 7 cents a minute.

That's more than half off to ride our vehicles.

And we recognize, like, if you look in the Rainier Valley, there's not bike lanes down there, there's no express bus service.

All express bus service goes north.

How do we solve these gaps?

We don't know of many industries that have these sorts of equity and some of them self-imposed equity requirements to solve these problems, but we think it's a requirement.

It's essential.

And so that's why we want to be good partners to the city to do that.

If people, you know, 16% of people don't have cars in the city, I don't use a car, you can save 74%.

If you combine scooters and transit, we're big fans of that.

We're working with Metro on stuff as we speak, trying to figure out how can we can solve problems.

Another piece about safety and good partnership.

We launched Monday in Spokane.

The Spokane Parks Department wants to host scooter trainings because remember, the data says it's a little bit more dangerous when you're brand new, just like riding a bike.

Well, they want to host scooter trainings.

We'll be the trainers, they'll be the hosts.

That's good community partnership.

In Portland, we're working with the Coalition of Communities of Color, the 16 different equity groups representing people of color and some groups focused on climate change that have inequitable impacts.

We're working with them to get information out about Lime Access, the Lincoln Program, help people in training so they can safely ride these vehicles.

We heard the mentions that PBOT had earlier.

That's how we solve this.

Again, working together as part of the community.

Parking, it's, again, collaboration.

We see corrals in different places.

I agree with what Paul said about corrals on the street are a little bit more helpful.

It already indicates it shouldn't be on the sidewalk.

And some people ride it off the sidewalk to get to the street or just stay on the sidewalk.

We saw from the earlier data when people are riding on the sidewalk, it's fundamentally because they just don't feel safe on the street.

And that's why it's imperative that we get good infrastructure.

Then we saw Portland.

Their approach is, I think, this is an area where looking at rental cars actually makes sense.

If I drove a rental car and if I sped in it and never, like, the ticket always went to Avis, Like maybe people would speed more, but the ticket comes to me.

And so I think it's really important to, we care very much about making sure these vehicles are not in front of people with disabilities or people who are blind.

But we have done a pretty good job of figuring out, establishing norms for cars over a hundred years.

Over two-thirds of SDOT focuses on working on cars.

A bunch of people in the police department.

There's a bunch of rules and there's consequences, both good and bad, for what we do.

And so we know how to solve these problems.

We just have to do it and delegate the space we've inequitably invested in car infrastructure.

So we have to over-invest to solve that gap, to make up for it, or else we'll be stuck in the same position we are now, which is not meeting climate goals and not getting as many people as cars as we could.

So Portland, again, partnership and collaboration in some of the cities has really worked.

Ongoing in most of our cities, talking with transit agencies.

Transit agencies and SDOT have presented about mobility hubs.

Those could require a lot of infrastructure and investment, but you can do a micromobility hub for the cost of a can of spray paint.

to identify how do people do that first and last mile connection.

And we know that 72% or so of residents have 10-minute access to 10-minute frequency transit.

I would say among those who can use a scooter, you could take that number to close to 100%.

by just having scooters available throughout the city, because we know that Metro's not able to increase the number of buses, bus drivers, whatever else, to the degree that we have the money to pay for.

So these are examples of how we can all work together.

I think a lot of other cities kind of highlight that, and we're very eager to solve problems as good members of the community.

Did you have a question earlier?

Well, thank you for the survey, actually.

I was one of the people that completed it and received a helmet, so thank you.

But just to really echo Councilmember Musqueda and Councilmember O'Brien's point about the need for safe infrastructure, because I'm living proof of that.

providing that infrastructure and the need for it is really not just important for the scooter usage, but also for bike usage and so forth.

Have you, and this is building on Council Member Mosquitto's point, Have you seen in other cities the momentum just with the ridership and the services, just the momentum building for the infrastructure being built?

So I think in Tacoma, Mayor Woodards, I almost promoted there for a second, but Mayor Woodards went to Denmark, Copenhagen, came back and saw scooters, and two weeks later, scooters were launched in Tacoma because he said, we're building bike infrastructure, but for me to build more as a mayor, I need people on it.

And then that protects everybody.

When we build bike infrastructure, it's safer for the cyclists, the people walking, and people driving cars.

So we've seen that.

And in a bunch of other cities that I work in, where you wouldn't maybe expect amazing bike infrastructure, they are finishing their bike master plans, and they're so excited to have people out on it.

So I've been in this job about four months, so we don't have that long tail, and the scooter's been around for just over a year.

But we're seeing that excitement, and people are using it for that purpose.

Paul?

Yeah, thank you.

Council Member, your question was very similar to a topic that came up this morning at the Downtown Seattle Association meeting where we were talking about the perennial chicken and egg problem where you can't get the political will you need to get the infrastructure done until you have the numbers of people on your side.

And with scooter riders proliferating in so many cities, we are really seeing a groundswell of new political support.

for the kinds of infrastructure reforms that we need to keep people safe.

In Baltimore, we're seeing it.

In Washington, D.C., we saw it just last week.

There was a tremendous event, a demonstration after a bicyclist was killed, an activist, actually, and a new complete street bill gaining momentum in the city council there in Washington, D.C., to make these kinds of safe infrastructure improvements absolutely mandatory.

In New York City, the city council members who are leading on shared e-scooters are precisely those in transit deserts, serving underserved communities, who have a few bike lanes in their district already, but they want to see them used more often.

So Council Member Cabrera, Idana Sarrigas, they're saying, you know, we want to be first because we see e-scooters as a vital link to transit and also a way to continue reshaping streets so that they are much safer for particularly those communities that have unjustly been burdened with unsafe streets for so long.

Oh, I have a bunch of questions.

I just am so excited about today.

Thank you for hosting this and allowing me to be a part of it.

We have gone to Tacoma just to use scooters for, you know, an afternoon before going to a concert down there.

Rode the train down, used the scooters, rode the train back, and it was such a great day.

I've done that in DC, as I mentioned, to get to meetings.

I've done that in Los Angeles.

And the fact that we have hills here should not be a deterrent.

I have ridden up these hills to City Hall on a scooter and can get up the hill faster than I can on some of our electric bikes even.

partly because I can put my foot down and push.

But I think one of the things that is very exciting about this is we have this, you know, quote, period of maximum constraint, which is frankly years long, right?

And ideally, it would have been nice to have these scooters prior to the tunnel opening, prior to the viaduct going down so that people had alternative options.

We currently have a crisis with the last mile concept of people not being able to get to buses.

To your point, even in some of our communities, especially in communities of color, we haven't even created Rapid Ride yet, but it will be coming.

We want people to be able to quickly get to these bus stops so that they can get in a dedicated lane to come to work if they're going to complete the rest of their commute by bus.

And also, if they do want to ride an electric scooter or take their bike and get more comfortable with the road infrastructure, that this becomes an entree into that.

So one of my questions is just about the timeframe that we're talking about.

You know, you mentioned two weeks in Portland.

I think we started talking about this three months.

Well, you've been talking about this for a long time.

But I think we started talking about this two months prior to the period of maximum constraint earlier this year.

And, you know, we're sort of told, well, it's just not possible.

We also didn't have the legislation that was passed.

And I want to thank our colleagues at the state legislature for passing 1772. And we spent a lot of time working on that legislation as well.

I was very interested in making sure that that passed this year and spent a lot of time on the phone with our friends in Olympia.

So, I appreciate the work that you all did to come around on some of the amendments and the harmony that was accomplished in that.

We now have a blueprint for what it looks like to create a safe network or a safe user experience.

I shouldn't say network because our network of bike infrastructure still has a lot to be improved to actually make sure that our Vision Zero goals can be accomplished.

But we have a blueprint for how to make it safe.

So two things.

One, can you tell me how fast have other cities actually stood this up?

Because two weeks is very impressive versus the 10-month time frame we're currently talking about.

And have other cities gone through this environmental impact assessment that it sounds like some may be calling for?

Have they had to do an environmental impact review prior to launching something like this?

I think that's a great question, Council Member Esqueda.

We know a lot of the, there are templates, as you mentioned, for this, with respect to indemnification, safety efforts, and everything else like that.

Ogden, Utah, launched in two to three weeks.

Spokane, or Tacoma, in three weeks.

I don't know the timeline on Portland, but a lot of places have turned this around quite quickly, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

If we wanna do best practice language on some of the rules about sidewalk riding and everything else like that, It's the same in almost every city.

And if we want to be innovative and do good solutions, then just copy Portland on the incentives to innovate.

They already did it for four months.

Their values, as you heard, are very aligned with ours.

And it is actually quite amazing with respect to the incentivized portions of their code that, oh, we need to cure sidewalk writing.

You guys are going to get more benefits if you have innovations that reduce it, or parking.

And there's a lot of collaboration there.

An ounce of practice is better than a ton of very expensive $100,000 studies.

They're going to tell us the same things that every other city has already told us.

I don't think there's a need for that.

And every day that we don't have this, or every day that we just have 200 scooters on the ground instead of 4,000, are people taking car trips, polluting, driving and not doing other better things they could and not riding transit more and everything else like that.

So if we have the same sort of emergencies we say we have about climate, congestion, taking care of people in an equitable way, this is an equity solution, then we do it tomorrow.

But it takes that level of urgency or else we'll be stuck in the same situation we've had that gets us to a situation where we're not meeting our climate goals and where everybody's just stressed out in traffic.

I miss you, Portland.

They just left, I guess.

I just thought I'd jump in.

I think I've been really impressed overall with how the scooter companies have been able to really push timelines and get scooters on the ground so quickly.

It's remarkable.

And I'll say, and maybe just as an advocate for your SDOT staff, to give them time to really be thoughtful about regulation, about what Seattle wants, what Seattle needs.

in order to make the scooter pilot successful because ultimately, you know, what Seattle needs, I think the people of Seattle and you all as leadership, you know that a little bit better than the private business.

So make sure that your pilot works for what you need and so you can answer your questions there.

That part is honestly going to take the most time.

And so for our first pilot, we did that in two months and had zero public engagement.

And that was really hard to start that pilot without any public engagement.

In the second pilot, we took four months to engage the public both on what we learned in the first pilot and then what we wanted to change.

And I still heard from a lot of community groups that that wasn't enough time for them to properly engage.

That would be my answer on how long to spend.

Great.

Thank you, Brianna.

I appreciate that.

And we've, as part of our budget last year, we actually did a statement of legislative intent where we asked the department to start doing some of this engagement.

Not just about scooters, although those are the highest profile ones, but just generally, you know, I don't know, you all probably have some secret technology you're not telling us about that's ready to roll out in a year.

You know, we're talking about things that didn't really exist a couple years ago, and I imagine we're not done innovating.

And how do we as a city have the infrastructure, both the physical infrastructure, but also the capacity, the institutional infrastructure, to allow this technology to continue to evolve that will give us more mobility options.

I think another place where Seattle and Portland share is wanting to get broad community feedback and balance that with urgency for both mobility needs, climate needs, and how to do that equitably pretty quick.

On that point, I would love, Portland, if you were able to share with us your four-month public engagement process, that might be helpful for us to take a look at to see, you know, what the strategy was, how many meetings did you have, where did you go, what were your targets?

That might be helpful.

And then you mentioned the community coalition from Communities of Color.

We have a number of community-centered folks who are coming from Communities of Color who work specifically on transportation.

I know with your office a lot.

It might be interesting to see who was part of that coalition in other cities and then who we are currently working with and take this up with some of those discussions.

You talked a little fast.

I think I talk fast.

I just want to make sure I understood one statistic.

How many people did you say here in Seattle do not have a car?

I think it was 16%.

16%.

I heard 60. I was like, wow.

And we're doing great work over at Community Seattle, my last place apparently.

If any of you have any final comments, and then I want to open it up to public comment in case there are people that showed up that weren't here for the beginning public comment.

But go for a couple more minutes.

Okay, you know, one of the issues that I think is critical that we address head on is sort of the misperception around data.

And the earlier presenters from Portland, and if you all want to chime in still, that would be great.

And if you, you know, looking across cities have anything else to add, I think it's important for us to sort of clear any misperceptions around what the data actually says.

And I wanted to offer a few data points to build on some of the earlier presentation.

You know, a lot of us have looked at some of the information about injuries and if you look at it just on the face value and you don't actually understand the issue or don't want to understand it more, you can walk away thinking that yes, there has been injuries associated with scooters.

But the reality is if you look at the JAMA network emergency department admissions that the study that looked over a two-year period in Los Angeles reported by Mother Jones and others that there was extreme danger.

The reality is much more complex.

While a head injury is a common injury associated with riding a scooter, the majority, 95%, were minor head injuries.

And the majority of the injuries overall were minor enough not to require any ambulance transportation.

Also, I think importance is that almost every single person injured was discharged to go home.

94% of the people were discharged to go home with 73% of those who were in and out of the emergency room within four hours.

And I'm reading from our friend at hashtag hashtag who has summarized some of this data and has provided it in a way that I think helps to pull the layers back on what could be misleading data if you just were to look at injuries alone or admissions to the hospital.

Yes, the first time I rode a scooter in Venice Beach, California, I rode it right into a garbage can and then realized, okay, I have to hit the brake a little sooner, you know, let off of the gas faster, and immediately I was back on that scooter.

It is not, you know, I rode a scooter, I think, when I was six.

I had a tiny little yellow scooter.

It wasn't electric, but having to have that muscle memory come back and just get used to the new functions, It takes a quick second.

Somebody earlier talked about rider education, and you mentioned some of the programs that are being publicly funded.

Can you talk a little bit more about the actual data behind some of the statistics around injuries?

And then I have another stat.

So I think one of the most, thank you, I think that's a great question.

I think one of the most important things to point out is a lot of the what I would call slightly more alarmist articles about this will say dramatic increase in scooter injuries, but you know.

There were no scooter injuries.

Yeah, there was a dramatic increase in train injuries between 1800 and 1900. The train was invented in 1830, right?

So that's not really necessarily the measure.

It's really about exposure and rates.

Some of the best stuff is gonna be looking at the actual hospital intake, but in the article last night, There's a quote from Salt Lake City saying dramatic increase, but the Salt Lake City Police Department took police reports that are generally going to reflect incidents that were major.

And they found effectively the same rates per month of injury of people walking, biking, and scooters.

I think the numbers were like eight, seven, and eight.

Right?

They're essentially the same average per month.

We heard from Multnomah County, which looked at this very thoughtfully.

And they said specifically, we do not see any reason not to continue this pilot.

That said, just like every other aspect of this that we need to work on, it's through great partnership.

And like when the CDC is allowed to do their work, you know, looking at, okay, what are the causes?

Like targeting those with good policies and collaboration.

Spokane Parks, they want to do scooter training for people that want to not run into the garbage can, right?

And so that's an opportunity to collaborate, but through doing that we can reduce some of the risks and then solve these intractable problems that we haven't been able to solve yet.

Yeah, I mean, I think the Portland study was instructive.

I mean, their conclusion, if I can remember the exact quote, was we found no disproportionate risk associated with these scooter use.

And so I think as we heard, you know, there's still more work to do to situate the rate with other modes, and especially cars, as you pointed out, Council Member.

But I think, you know, what we're seeing are, you know, preventable injuries, nothing out of line than what we've seen with bicycling.

And, you know, I was talking with John McDonald yesterday at Portland State, and we were talking about just how chronically bike injuries have been underreported, and scooter injuries are really under the microscope right now because it's a new thing.

But we can agree that one injury is one injury too many.

And so, you know, Dr. Tarak Trivedi of UCLA Medical Center, who, you know, did that JAMA published study, who led that, they did find 15 of the injuries over that million, or I'm sorry, it was more like three million scooter trips, actually, if you combine the data during their study period between what the different operators did.

So an enormous number of scooter trips done in Santa Monica and Westwood during that period.

But only 15 of those injuries over that year period of millions of trips required more than, you know, just hospitalization, right?

So as you pointed out, Councilmember, most of the injuries minor, most not requiring extended hospital stays.

But all of us subscribing to Vision Zero, you know, we must and can do better.

And the data.

Yeah, this is Brianna from Portland.

Sorry, I just wanted to chime in with two other pieces.

I think one, Portland had a similar experience with ambulance rates, a little bit higher here.

13% of folks represented in our study were transported to the hospital or emergency room via ambulance.

And then, you know, I think the other lens, which has been brought up around Vision Zero, but, you know, I think one of the interesting things to note around that 83% of our injuries here happened via fall is that we know that those injuries are happening at a speed of 15 miles an hour or less.

And so when we know kind of the statistics around people being more likely to survive that sort of crash versus a car car, scooter crash, which may happen at much higher speeds.

I think that's also, you know, something that we should take into account is just the speed overall of the vehicle.

Council Member Pacheco?

No, I was just going to say, four years ago, I sold my car, and it's probably one of the best decisions I ever made.

So I'm one of the 16% that we speak about.

And I remember when I first sold the car, I thought to myself, I'll keep going for as long as I can.

And it just, the city started making more and more, more options became available.

ReachNow, Car2Go.

jump, line bike, and so forth.

So with scooters, I feel like this is another opportunity, another option to continue my lifestyle, which is good.

But I also think, and this goes really where, building on the work of Council Member O'Brien and Council Member Mosqueda about the importance of the infrastructure and the momentum that's necessary, because it's like the old adage, if you build it, they will come.

And so, you know, I, really want to emphasize the point of how not just this option and this mode of transportation potentially can be beneficial in terms of us building the momentum, continuing the momentum to be more aggressive about building the infrastructure that will be necessary for not just myself, but for others who don't have a car or would like to give up their car and being supportive of our climate action goals to move forward.

One other note if I might.

So as you mentioned the CDC and it might be interesting to see any additional data that you have from the CDC related specifically to scooters and traumatic brain injury because Councilmember Gonzalez just sent some data points that she would love to have shared.

The CDC reports that 26,000 traumatic brain injuries are sustained by adolescents and treated annually when dealing with bikes.

But let's compare that, and that's nationally, let's compare that to what happens when you are in a traffic accident.

There's 500,000, half a million people per year who sustain traumatic brain injury.

So let's, you know, let's all put this in perspective back to the first item that you mentioned.

I'd love to see that data.

Yeah, thank you for minding the data.

It's so important to actually make policy according to facts.

And your point about the extent of traumatic brain injuries that are sustained by motorists and passengers is shocking, right?

Half a million.

And there's a good case there for car helmets, right?

And that's one of my favorite Twitter feeds, actually, is car helmets.

You know, and I think really as helmets we know are part of the, you know, basket of safety solutions.

I mean, I just love the focus on infrastructure and also operators, right?

We do have a responsibility to manage our fleets, you know, construct and maintain the most durable and safe vehicles and really mind our operating parameters, right?

Like, you know, keeping kids off scooters, you know, where kids aren't supposed to be off on scooters.

You know, a lot of the epidemiologists who've been looking at, scooter-related injuries for many years, they've paid a lot of focus to the extent to which kids are on high-speed private scooters.

And that's something I think we don't want to see, absolutely, right?

We talked a little bit about speed and the need to mind that as a risk factor if it's too high.

So I think the bottom line for us is that rider responsibility, operator responsibility, in concert with cities, you know, we can actually make real progress on Vision Zero.

My favorite stat from the Portland report was, you know, the 34% car trip replacement rate for scooters.

And then they flagged that as a safety benefit, right?

Like, we know that when we're replacing cars, we're actually making everyone on the road more safe.

Yeah, 40,000 motor vehicle deaths, I believe, countrywide in 2017. You could imagine if there were 40,000 deaths for a whole host of other things, how rapidly we would respond to that.

And I appreciate the focus of safety on this mode of transportation, because that is important.

We're not saying that that's not.

But we, for whatever reason, seem to be comfortable with the injuries and deaths associated with automotive vehicles.

And when we compare it to that, we're going to be much better off as we shift modes and really pay attention to how we do it safely, too.

I'm going to, if folks are okay, I'm going to pivot to public comment and just invite folks, I don't know if anyone else has signed up, but if people want to come to a microphone, we'll take public comment for a few more minutes for folks that weren't able to be at the beginning.

You folks are welcome to sit here, you can move to the audience, that's up to you.

Are we on the hot seat?

Not on the hot seat.

Is it hotter out there or here?

We're just listening.

We're not having a conversation, but yeah.

So Brianna, again, thank you so much for sticking with us.

You're obviously welcome to listen to our public comment, but really appreciate it.

And we will certainly be in touch with you and our colleagues down in Portland as we navigate what's next for the city of Seattle.

Absolutely.

Happy to be here.

Thank you.

Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment?

Come on forward to microphones.

Just queue up and do it this way.

If you just say your name for the record, that'd be great.

Yeah.

My name is Yesagura, and I'm the founder of Smash the Box, but I'm also a bicyclist, pedestrian, and multi-mode user here in Seattle.

I want to say thank you for bringing these agencies here to Seattle and educating us on what's going on throughout the world.

Yeah, so I wanted to say that I am in favor of scooters.

I believe that this type of new mobility helps to reduce our carbon footprint.

It's affordable.

It's a healthier option versus driving a car.

It's fun.

I know our council member was saying that she actually uses them in her heels.

That's super impressive.

And that also it's faster than traffic.

I was just in Portland where I had the opportunity to ride my bike and I rode on the telecom crossing bridge which is a zero car bridge and I noticed that along the waterfront that they had signs that said no scooters and that this actually might be part of the reason or the correlation to why there's been a decrease in people using the scooters down there is because you're limiting the places of where they could be used the most.

Along with that, I think that when it comes to affordability for this new type of mobility, that it would be awesome if you could put it on the ORCA card and just have it on one app.

They're doing it in Berlin, which is all on one app, and that would be great.

Thank you.

Thanks, yes.

I see, Gordon, you signed up too, so you can go next and then folks can come up and line afterwards.

Yeah, my name is Gordon Padelford.

I'm the Executive Director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

We're working to make every neighborhood a great place to walk, bike, and live.

And now I'm wondering if we need to update that mission statement, if we're going to bring scooters to Seattle.

We're in support of a scooter pilot in Seattle.

And briefly, we think there are sort of four areas to pay attention to, in addition to some of the other good ideas that have been shared today, and I'm sure will be shared over the coming weeks.

One is, you know, really having a focus on safe sidewalks and reducing conflicts with people walking.

We really need to legalize and recommend that scooters be operated in separated bike lanes, trails, and the roadways of neighborhood greenways.

But as a number of you pointed out, we also need to build out that connected network so people have a safe place to ride.

And then orderly parking is obviously a critical thing, especially for the disability community, making sure that we are building those corrals in the corners of streets so that way people have a place to park.

And the great thing about those corner corrals that also reduces the speed that drivers are going around the corners, sort of making it safer for everyone, slowing down the turning motion, and it increases visibility so you don't have those cars that are parked right up to the crosswalk and you can't see beyond it.

And then third, really we've heard a lot about safe scooting and keeping the users safe.

There's obviously some education to do, probably some encouragement, there may be some vehicle ideas that are going to be innovated, but making sure that we're keeping the users of the scooter system safe as well.

And then last, the data collection and reporting requirements that we are learning from this pilot because we will be learning and it is a new and evolving area and no one has all the answers yet.

Thank you.

Thanks, Gordon.

So I did not sign up, but my toddler is still asleep.

So is it OK if I talk now?

Jump right in.

Sorry.

So my name is Carrie Nathan.

And I just recently moved back to Seattle from Tacoma.

In Tacoma, I was on the Transportation Commission for the city.

So that was a really good experience to learn a lot about how these decisions are made.

Sorry, let me take a look at my points here.

So I sometimes have to use a cane.

And I have in the past had to use a wheelchair.

So I understand what it's like from the perspective of a person trying to get around with a disability.

So from that perspective, I do understand the difficulties when there's bikes on the sidewalk.

People do that.

I still think it's worth it to have the scooters, to try the scooters here.

We already have the bikes here.

We already know that that can be a problem.

We can work around it.

We can do things.

We can try new things to make that work.

I don't like to drive.

I have to sometimes.

Thankfully, I don't have to so much anymore.

And I think the biggest danger for these scooters, for people using these scooters is vehicles.

And I think the more we educate people driving, the more we can keep people safe.

I think if we want to, as a community, keep people safe, we need to address climate change issues and danger to people from vehicle drivers more than anything.

I don't think scooter related injuries are really the top priority to consider.

So that's my perspective.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Sir.

Hi, my name is Larry Wyatt and I'm currently a resident at Shag Washington Terrace downtown here.

And I'm a senior citizen.

I've lived and worked in Seattle all of my life.

I'm 70 years old working on 50. And so all senior citizens aren't the same.

I can't wait to take my first scooter ride.

This is just fantastic for tourism, and it's fantastic for everything that's going on in this city.

So I just want to give my full support to the scooter project.

Appreciate you coming down and testifying today.

Does anyone else would like to fight comment today?

It's an exciting day, exciting 24 hours for discussions of scooters.

We're obviously going to have a lot more going forward.

Council Member Pacheco, thank you so much for being engaged in this.

It's great to see your helmet in your office when you first came to work.

And it's great to see you out there on the scooter today.

Any last comments before we go?

Great.

Well, thank you, everyone, for your work today, and we'll be adjourned.

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