Those electric scooters which have become all the rage downtown, may be coming to a neighborhood near you, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Councilman Roberto Trevino says two California-based companies, Bird and Lime, have entered the scooter market in a big way, by dumping hundreds of scooters downtown. And now a local company is ready to get into the scooter business as well.
"What is exciting is they are local," Trevino said. "And what that means is they understand the city, and what the city needs are."
And Trevino says unlike Bird and Lime, which have so far placed their scooters downtown, in Southtown, in the Pearl Complex and in the area around the UTSA Downtown Campus, the new start-up plans to place scooters in neighborhoods.
"They're not just in downtown, they are all over the city," Trevino said. "They have expressed an interest in investing in scooters throughout the city."
Trevino says the locations that the new local company will place scooters have not been released, but they are expected to include areas around college campuses, like UTSA and University of the Incarnate Word, as well as neighborhoods around office complexes and retail centers where scooters would be a useful form of transportation, like The Rim, La Canters, Stone Oak, the Medical Center, and Broadway in Alamo Heights.
The way the scooters work is simple, which makes them so popular.
Users sign up through the company's app, and place financial information on file. When a person wants to ride a scooter, they simply take one that they find nearby, ride it to their destination, and then simply leave it there. The cost is generally a dollar to 'unlock' the scooter, and 15 cents a minute to ride it.
The City is in the process of coming up with regulations for the scooters, including whether they should be driven on the sidewalk or on the street, how fast they can be driven, and where liability lies in case of injury accidents.