The Municipal Services Committee met 11/08/2021. About 53 minutes of the 1 hour and 18 minute meeting was taken up with a presentation from a Bird E-Scooter representative and then a discussion about the presentation and pilot program.
To keep the length of post down, I decided to split this into two parts and recap the presentation in one post and then the discussion afterwards in a second post.
Bird Representative Adam Blau appeared before the committee. He was the City and University Partnership Lead at Bird Rides, Inc. He noted that Bird founder and CEO Travis Vanderzanden was born and raised in Appleton, “so the entire Bird family is extremely excited about our relationship with you all.” He then launched into the presentation.
He said that Bird was essentially a last-mile, stand-up electric scooter sharing company. “Our mission is to take cars off the road, reduce carbon emissions, and really solve that last mile problem.” An example of the “last-mile” problem would be a person getting off a bus and still having another mile or half-mile to go before their destination. Bird Rides wanted to make sure they had a Bird there so that people didn’t have to walk if they didn’t want to. Bird was not trying to solve the 6-mile or 7-mile problem; although people do like to ride Birds that far, that is not the demographic they are targeting.
He reviewed how using the scooters works. A rider would unlike a scooter with their smartphone or, if a person does not have a smartphone, they can email hello@bird.co for help getting set up to unlock it without a smartphone. It costs $1 to unlock a scooter and then there is a per minute fee after that. People can use Birds that they see sitting outside, or they can go find where Birds are located on the appl.
Currently BirdZero model scooters were deployed in Appleton. Adam said it was the first scooter designed specifically for e-scooter shared use. It’s a really rugged and durable scooter.
Although not currently deployed in Appleton, they did also have a new BirdThree. Per Adam, that is the best scooter on the market. They called it a dumbed down spaceship rather than a souped-up scooter. It has a ton of sensors, and its GPS is second to none. They were excited to bring that to Appleton if Appleton allowed them to come back.
He reviewed the process they go through when partnering with city and that they had gone through with Appleton.
Step One was to really get to know the city and figure out if they would be helpful to the city’s residents and if they would be a good fit.
Step Two was to align their operational area to fit the city. This was done in collaboration with the city. If a person were to drive their scooter outside the operational area established in Appleton, their scooter would shut off. Bird’s local fleet manager would then have to go and retrieve it. He mentioned that there was an Appleton rider who rode a Bird every day to work and parked it right at the edge of the operational area. After work she walks right back to where she parked it at the edge of the operational area and rides is back home to work.
Step Three was the decision to move forward and find a local operator. They do have a local fleet manager in Appleton who manages all of the scooters, so there is a local touch there, and those funds produced by the program are kept in Appleton.
Step Four was Launch Day which, in Appleton was back in April of 2021.
Step Five was the step they were essentially in at the moment which was the Bird City partner will keep you in the know and be there if you need anything. He said that he, Public Works Director Paula Vandehey, and the city’s Senior Communications Specialist Sheng Riechers have been talking on a weekly basis about how to improve the Bird scooter program. He thought it was completely different now than when they started it back in April because they have been able to collect feedback from residents and city staff members which has helped them continue to try to improve.
Appleton’s operations are run by a “local entrepreneur”. Adam explained that Bird operates by partnering with local businesses in the community which gives it a local touch because residents know the city better than anyone else particularly in terms of knowing where to deploy the scooters, predicting ride patterns, and knowing where people are going to want to ride the scooters. He noted that this was an economic opportunity for a local citizen which resulted in funds staying in Appleton. The program is backed by Bird Rides, Inc which is an industry leader and the first to enter the e-scooter business. There’s pretty much nothing they haven’t seen. They have world class technology and compliance tools as well as operational knowhow and the industry’s safest vehicles.
He read out a quote from a local business owner that had been collected from the survey that had been sent out. I actually just want to read this quote from a local business owner that was collected from the survey that was sent out. “As a business owner in the City of Appleton, I believe the scooters should stay. They offer a fun way for people to cruise around and experience all the scenery that Appleton has to offer….”
He reviewed the data they had gathered over the course of the pilot program.
- The pilot program had capped the number of active vehicles at 100, and, on average, they had about 89 scooters on the road at any given time throughout the length of their operations.
- They launched on April 30th, 2021.
- They had a total of over 25,000 trips taken. He said this was an outstanding number, particularly for a city that hadn’t had a scooter program, and some of the best in the country for a city of Appleton’s size. *Over 32,000 miles were traveled by riders which was more than the circumference of the earth.
- They had over 1,000 regular commuters who used the Birds on a weekly basis to get to and from work or school.
- A lot of the trips ended in the downtown area, but there were endpoints all over the city. People were using the scooters to get to local businesses.
- The active check-in rate was above average. He said that there was a feature on the app allowing people to report problems such as birds that were damaged or incorrectly parked at which point the local operator would get a notification. Active check-ins meant that those incidents were solved proactively before anyone had to reach out. [I didn’t really understand what that meant. I couldn’t figure out if he was saying that people reported problems and then those problems were resolved before the local operator had to go out and fix them, or if the local operator was fixing issues before they were reported.]
- Adam stated that close to 2,000 individuals relied on Bird to get to and from work. He said that the term scooter had a frivolous connotation and people thing it’s strictly for recreation. Although it is very fun, people are relying on it to get to work and school. [I’m not sure where that number came from because on the one hand the PowerPoint slide showed 1,896 individuals relying on Bird to get to and from work, but the previous slide said there were only 1,072 regular commuters.]
- In addition to the city survey that was put out, Bird put a survey of their own out to their Appleton users. Almost 60% of respondents said they visited a local business on their scooter trip. He drew attention to the footnote at the bottom of the slide which said that almost 45% of respondents said they were more likely to visit that local business because of having access to Bird.
He then reviewed the purpose and goals of the pilot program.
- Increase transportation options and reduce reliance on motor vehicles. He said that they estimated via a calculation Bird does on their end which he said he could share with anyone after the meeting, that almost 7 metric tons of CO2 was avoided by Birds being taken by Appleton residents during the pilot program.
- Expand access to transit and provide links public transit. Over 15% of riders who responded to Bird’s survey said they used the scooters to connect to another form of transit be that bus or personal vehicle.
- Evaluate impacts on access to the public right of way. He said that Bird needed to show a commitment to keeping pedestrian streets and other right of ways unobstructed. Out of the over 1,500 Appleton residents who responded to Appleton’s survey regarding Bird, the average answer to the question of “Parked scooters on sidewalks block the path of travel for pedestrians” was 2.77 (1=Not a problem and 5=A large problem). He acknowledged there was room for improvement in that aspect and there were certain features they could work to implement to help with that problem.
He highlighted the ways Bird and the city had worked together to figure out local issues. For example, they had originally planned to not allow riding or parking in Jones Park during the summer concert series, but they ended up deciding to make it a no ride/no park zone altogether.
On College Avenue they implemented a slow zone pretty early in the pilot in response to the sidewalk ride. They also sent out a lot of communications to riders regarding sidewalk riding on College Avenue.
After communicating with the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, they implemented a not park/no ride zone around that facility, but they also created a preferred parking area right out front. There are a lot of people who end their rides in front of the PAC, so Bird wanted to make sure they were educating riders on where by the PAC they should park.
He said that Bird Rides Inc takes pride in educating their riders. The e-scooter industry is only 4 years old, and they had come a long way, but they were still in the early stages of what that business looked like. Making sure riders were aware of local rules and how they should be riding was important. They were doing this via emails to riders, through push notifications, and through in app messaging. The PowerPoint slide showed three examples of communications that went out during the pilot program. The first was an email explaining that riding on the sidewalk was not allowed in Appleton. The second was a push notification regarding that same issue. The third was an in-app splash screen that would appear when people opened the app and which they would have to read and press “okay” before proceeding.
He finished up his presentation by saying that he wanted everyone to know how much of a success Bird saw this pilot program as having been. The ridership numbers were amazing, and they were extremely excited. He thanked the city for letting them conduct the pilot.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=897659&GUID=879EBE8D-D582-4943-A153-1A5AD0ABE0FB
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