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BROOKLINE – Scooters fly free to Brookline. But where to go?
The city marked the history of Massachusetts on Monday as the first municipality to sanction a program of renting electric scooters in its streets.
About 200 vehicles from California-based Lime and Bird have been deployed on sidewalks and other public spaces in the city, where drivers can use smartphone apps to start using a scooter for $ 1, for an additional fee depending on the price. travel time.
The launch of the Brookline pilot program, to be held in the fall, has not been entirely appropriate; At a launch ceremony, a woman who tested the scooter in the Town Hall parking lot fell and was injured. She was taken in an ambulance on the sidelines of a press conference to mark the event.
Nevertheless, officials celebrated the advent of scooters as an important moment for regional transportation.
"If we want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we need to change the transport behavior of single-occupant vehicles," said Heather Hamilton, a member of the city's selection board who led the charge of the scooter test.
But in a nearby city of Boston, in some areas, runners are not supposed to cross the border.
Boston, like most cities and towns in Massachusetts, is waiting for the state to dispel some confusion in state law that could make vehicles illegal. Brookline essentially ignored these concerns when launching its pilot program.
So what happens if a rider enters the forbidden country?
Bird and Lime officials present at Monday's protest said the immediate consequences would be minimal: riders can finish their trip to Boston, but they will not be able to unlock and start a new one from the city. Company teams will monitor the location of the scooters using a GPS system and recover all vehicles crossing the border within two hours.
But that did not seem to be the case on Monday morning, at least on the Bird model.
A Globe journalist drove Brookline by scooter to Boston. Shortly after crossing the border near the Longwood Medical Zone, the scooter bleeped and stopped accelerating. The application indicated that the journalist was idling because he had entered a restricted area and that he also could not park there. He conscientiously pushed the scooter towards the border to park it.
That may have been a "problem," said Hannah Smith, a government relations officer at Bird. She added that the company wanted travel to continue in Boston because it would be safer not to slow the runners in the middle of a trip just because they cross the border.
"It's a bad transport policy to stop scooters when you cross a physical barrier," she said.
Scott Mullen, director of Lime's Northeast Expansion, said his company has a similar vision, although extra runners can be suspended if they usually travel to Boston.
We do not know how Boston will react to the scooters on its border. The city's transport department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hamilton, the manager of Brookline, said the city had been in contact with Boston before the launch.
Smith and Mullen both seemed optimistic that it might soon become a theoretical issue, if the scooters made their debut in Boston. While the city is waiting for the green light from the state before allowing a rental program, the city council has recently approved the regulation for businesses when this date will be given.
Adam Vaccaro can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.
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