The Municipal Services Committee met 03/20/2023. One of the items they took up was the requestion to approve a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Bird Rides, Inc for a dockless electric scooter program for 2023.
This initially came before the committee on 02/20/2023 during which some of the committee members raised concerns about the fact that the MOU at that time was for a 2-year term instead of a 1 year term. They also discussed raising the per-ride fee Bird paid to the city and receiving updated monthly reports on crashes and parking issues.
The city reopened negotiations with Bird Inc and came back with an updated MOU that was for only a 1-year term and increased the per-ride fee the city received from $0.10 to $0.20. The city also talked to Bird about temporarily turning on the ID check feature in the app to curb underage riding and also asked them to generate a more detailed monthly report for the committee to review.
Several members of the public spoke at the committee meeting against continuing the program, citing safety concerns. Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2), who was not a member of the committee, also spoke against continuing the scooter program, saying, “I consider the Bird scooters to have a significant safety risk and impact on our community. I would encourage us not to renew this program at this time.”
The committee voted 4-0 to recommend the 1-year agreement with Bird for approval.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the discussion for download.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) asked how the fee increase from $0.10 per ride to $0.20 per ride was established.
Director of Public Works Danielle Block explained that she had talked with Bird about what a reasonable fee would be that would cover Appleton’s administrative costs for the program and that other communities were receiving between $0.10 and $0.20, so she asked for $0.20.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) noted that he had requested an increase in the fee because he believed the city needed to cover the costs of administering the program and also they ought to be generating at least some nominal revenue from the scooter program given “given the number of people in the city that will never use the scooters, don’t like seeing the scooters, don’t like hassling with what the scooters bring.” In light of the changes in the updated MOU, he was supportive of voting in favor of continuing the program for 1 year.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) asked about the issue of underaged riders using the scooters. While she did not have a problem with people under 18 riding scooters they themselves and their parents owned, she wondered if there were any liability concerns with underaged riders using the scooters that were part of a program facilitated by the city.
City Attorney Christopher Behrens responded that there was indemnification language in the contract with Bird that addressed those sorts of concerns.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) was also concerned about underaged riders and asked how the ID check feature would be implemented. Bird Inc representative Caitlin Goodspeed said that they can easily turn that feature on and off. They usually start out by turning it on for a couple weeks and then monitor to see if it has had an impact. They find that if people try to use the scooters a couple times and can’t due to not having an ID that they generally give up and stop trying. Bird did not, however, like to turn that feature on permanently because it was a barrier for people who did not have an ID. [Honestly, I still don’t understand how many people can afford to ride a Bird scooter but don’t have and ID. It seems like it would be a rare situation.]
Alderperson Fenton also asked about what the notification process was when people saw scooters parked incorrectly.
Ms. Goodspeed said that Bird has a 24/7 hotline, an email address (hello@bird.co), and “community mode” on their app which allowed people to submit complaints and questions. They were also in talks with Appleton about setting up a special email address that would go directly to Bird’s internal communications and would be the quickest way to reach them.
She said that they have a local team in Appleton to address issues and whenever they get a message, they send it to that team which can usually respond to complaints within a hour and a half.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) asked if there was a way to track safety concerns that were not reported by someone. Ms. Goodspeed responded that was hard to capture, and they didn’t really have a way of knowing something happened if it was not reported. She wondered if they could perhaps get creative on finding a solution to that, “Because we would ideally love to fully capture, like safety. And if people are having accidents, we want to know. We want to reach out and see how they’re doing and you know, but they’re not always reported to us.”
Three members of the public spoke on the program also. Each of them raised concerns about the safety of the scooters, and two of them specifically mentioned concerns about the number of children in the 10–12-year range who they saw riding the scooters.
One speaker said that he knew someone who had ridden a scooter while inebriated and suffered pretty bad brain damage in an accident last year. He wondered if the scooters could be shut down before bar close.
In response to that concern, Ms. Goodman said that there were a couple things Bird did to discourage riding a scooter while drunk. The first was that if there was an area with a strip of bars, they would not deploy scooters to that area. The second was that they could turn on the Safe Start feature which essentially tested the potential rider with a quick series of questions to determine if they were cognitively functional enough to ride a scooter, so that was something they could turn on in Appleton also.
The committee had no further questions and vote 4-0 to recommend the MOU be approved and the Bird scooter program be allowed to operate for another year.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1078647&GUID=D6E9EC6C-7197-4F96-8633-DB09CF61FA11
One thought on “Municipal Services Committee Approves Agreement To Continue Bird Scooter Program For Another Year”