Scooters are back to SF and people are already behaving badly

The rental electric scooters, banned from San Francisco in June as a result of complaints, returned to the streets of the city on Monday.

And already, the reactions are mixed.

During the morning rush hours, a local startup team distributed free helmets and answered questions from runners near Embarcadero Station. A man fisted in the air while he passed. But Jasmine Wallsmith, head of marketing and events at Scoot, gritted her teeth as she watched another runner take off on the sidewalk. She gently shouted to him to find a bike path and the runner quickly moved into the street.

At the corner of Mission and 1st Streets, Salvadore Reynoso stood in front of his florist shop and took a picture of nine Scoot scooters thrown in front of him. Reynoso said that around 8 am a man toppled the scooters one by one and kept walking. The scooters fell near a bus stop, which, according to Reynoso, prevented some passengers from getting out buses through the back doors. It is against the city's rules to park a scooter in loading areas marked by a yellow or white sidewalk.

"Why would you do something like this?" Said Reynosos, who described the man as angry, but could not tell if he was sick.

After scooters hit the city streets in March, many residents opposed electric vehicles to regularly block sidewalks and entrances, resulting in people tripping and making sidewalks less accessible. disabled. People have also illegally traveled the sidewalks. The city attorney's office heard the complaints and he finally slapped three high-level scooter start-ups who had planned two-wheeled vehicles here – Bird, Lime and Spin – with cease and desist orders. refrain.

Bird, Lime and Skip remain prohibited. Instead, two local companies, Scoot and Skip, have received operating licenses under a pilot program for a period of one year. They must show that they can retrain residents so that they are safer and safer runners.

Skip and Scoot are committed to sharing information with the San Francisco Municipality authorities on the driving habits of residents, including where, when and to what extent, while protecting users' privacy and ensuring that disadvantaged communities have access to scooters. They also have the arduous task of ensuring that riders respect the rules, including not riding on sidewalks and properly parking vehicles (near sidewalks, bike racks, or other specified areas). .

Tom Maguire, Director of MTA Sustainable Streets, told The Chronicle that his agency would "closely monitor" the next 12 months to see "how people use scooters and how companies can be held accountable for the promises made."

Skip and Scoot employees unloaded scooters from vans in the early hours of Monday in the Financial District, south of Market, Castro, Dogpatch, Bayview and the Mission. Skip has also dropped off at Golden Gate Park and Excelsior. Each company is allowed to have 625 scooters in San Francisco at the moment, but it is possible that the MTA will let them double their numbers in six months.

Users can book them through business apps, paying $ 1 to unlock them and 15 cents a minute to browse them.

According to Wallsmith, people can report to parked scooters illegally or to drivers misbehaving by sending an email or tweeting on Scoot.

"The GPS on our scooters lets us know where every scooter is, all the time," Wallsmith said.

The mobile application of Skip allows passers-by to inform the company of a poorly parked scooter on the Skip website or in the application. The goal is to create a "jumper", a worker who moves around the city and monitors parking and driving, to find and move the scooter. Some people also tweet on Skip.

You notice something different on your commute to work this morning, SF? We finally deployed our scooters and they are ready to go for a ride. Simply download our app and find your Skip. You can find out more about the launch of our hometown below. https://t.co/qRXsfMFQM2 #skipthetraffic

– Skip (@ SkipScooters) October 15, 2018

Each Scoot scooter has its own number printed on the gallows, so it's easy to report a particular two-wheeled bike that broke the rules. The numbers of Skip also have their own numbers, but they are more difficult to see.

San Francisco Chronicle Editor Carolyn Said contributed to this report.