Scooters arrive in New Orleans

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• PHOTO OF GRENDELKHAN / CREATIVE COMMONS

• Electric scooters of birds in California. Lime wants to bring his fleet of scooters to New Orleans.
  Be on the lookout for electric scooters sharing the bike path.

  The administration of Mayor LaToya Cantrell works to rent scooters on the streets of New Orleans, pending the approval of the New Orleans City Council and arrangements with third-party companies.

  Lime scooters – spawning across the United States and all over California and recently launched in Atlanta and Dallas, to varying degrees of ridicule and success – work the same way that leasing companies do. bikes. & # 39; Blue Bikes: download an app, find a kiosk, unlock a 1990s Razor-esque electric scooter for $ 1 using a QR code, and shop around 15 cents a minute. Scooters are then picked up and reloaded in a warehouse

  On June 28, the New Orleans Transportation Committee heard the launch of Lime for a New Orleans outpost before the municipal authorities created a frame. Todd O 'Boyle, director of business development, told the committee that about 100 local companies have expressed interest in scooter caravans outside their doors. The benefits, he said: fewer cars on the road, less traffic congestion, more parking and less emissions.

  The company plans to hire about 20 employees at a higher minimum wage and use a warehouse to house its fleet of scooters. People can also sign up to be a "juicer" to pick up scooters and load them at home, earning money per charge.

  The scooters would also report rider data to the company, which according to O 'Boyle could be used for O' Boyle says that the launch of Lime in Charlotte saw a ridership. about 1,000 scooter trips daily for two months. He said his attendance in the regions is strong among "professional adults" as well as those under 35 years of age.
  Electric scooter rental companies did not have a warm welcome – the scooters were already in use in San Francisco and Denver. city ​​officials set up pilot programs and by-laws for their operation, putting businesses in a "break" and sending notices of cessation and abstention until the laws governing their operation are regulated. pedestrians feared being mowed down by characters from Silicon Valley capitalizing on the "last mile" route. With workers being transported from surrounding areas and drivers making long commutes to crowded business centers, start-ups and shared start-ups are seeing signs to draw people to their places work, their home, etc.

  They are pretty fast, quiet, can be parked pretty much anywhere, and constitute a fairly effective protest instrument in the ongoing Google wars and as a symbol of the l & # 39; 39, technological gentrification. 19659006] During the past year, companies like Lime, Bird and Spin have moved relatively quickly to move scooter hubs into cities across the United States

  According to a report prepared by the city In the first months of 2018 Santa Monica, California, was involved in 575 traffic stops, 273 tickets and nine accidents.

  In May, that counted up to 1,400 stops and 600 citations.

  In an addendum of the executive director of the New Orleans Ride, Alex Posorske, tran The human rights group said support the idea of ​​more mobility options in principle, nor does it support a culture where all new private sector mobility options are launched by companies flooding the streets with their products. try to obtain a legalization / regulation a posteriori of their model. "

  " We therefore recommend working with electric scooter companies to try to run a pilot program to see what works best, "according to Posorske, Kristin Gisleson Palmer, District C Council member, said the city ​​would likely adopt a pilot program before approving an order authorizing scooter rental companies.

  "It's a new industry," she said. you would be grateful to work with us and not to put scooters before the process is refined. [The City Council and Cantrell administration] would be very aggressive if someone came in and threw scooters on the ground without warning. "

  Palmer also asked if the cost of the application – including the police kicked the scooters on the sidewalks and kept them on the bike lanes.In 1965, Cantrell's administration believes that municipal agencies that pick up poorly stored or abandoned scooters in the city could cost up to $ 200,000 a year, and the costs of implementing additional regulations, if necessary, could add to this. from revenue from the company's fleet of 300 scooters, the city would earn only $ 10,000 a year, however.

  "That does not seem to be a lot of money," said Palmer. "This is not enough."