There was a brief report on the BIRD E-scooter pilot program during the Municipal Services Committee meeting on 07/12/2021.
In addition to the community feedback report that had been attached to the agenda, Director Paula Vandehey had a report she handed out to the committee regarding scooter usage. She had just learned how to login to the system and retrieve this information and said that, in the future, she would attach it to the agenda.
The blue bars on the graph showed the number of scooters that were out and available for the public to. The black line showed the number of rides. She said that the really low days were days with bad weather.
The report also included a heat map showing where rides started and ended. It also showed that since the beginning of the pilot program, there had been 6,333 total rides taken by 2,155 unique rider which meant that the average ride per rider was about 3. [I think it will be interesting to keep an eye on how many unique people end up using it during the trial period.]
She also touched on the report regarding complaints. The report attached to the agenda showed the complaints that the city received. In addition to that, since the start of the pilot program, 32 complaints had been submitted directly to BIRD. 13 of those complaints regarded damage to the scooters such as the throttle not working or the kick-stand being broken. The remaining 19 complaints were regarding bad parking such as a scooter being tipped over or standing in the middle of the sidewalk.
Director Vandehey said that, even including the 32 complaints that went directly to BIRD, the number of complaints was not what they had expected; however, the themes of the complaints were the same, namely incorrect parking and people riding them on the College Avenue sidewalk.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) attended the meeting although she does not serve on the committee and asked what the details of the one reported accident were.
Director Vandehey diplomatically said that it involved a person who might have gotten a little out of control and that they refused any medical attention. There were some chuckles in the chambers as well as a mild joke or two regarding drunk people.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859286&GUID=8DA03D7A-E563-45AC-8D66-AB7914870D2E&Options=info|&Search=
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