Scooters Celebrated, With Sidewalk Warning

“It’s really important that people not ride on the sidewalk,” Mayor Justin Elicker said while standing in front of a cluster of city-sponsored e‑scooters at a Thursday morning press conference.

“Don’t ride on the sidewalk,” city transportation director Sandeep Aysola repeated during his time at the mic. ​“Don’t treat this as a toy.”

Jeff Hoover, the ​“director of government partnerships” for the company that owns and operates New Haven’s rentable e‑scooters, echoed that sentiment. ​“These are not be ridden on the sidewalks.”

That message came through during a presser held on the sidewalk in front of the municipal office building at 200 Orange St.

Elicker, Aysola, Hoover, and New Haven Coalition for Active Transportation (NCAT) Chair Doug Hausladen gathered to celebrate the launch of the city’s new rent-per-ride e‑scooters.

The e‑scooters are owned and operated by a company called Veo, which runs similar programs in Hartford, College Park, Maryland, and dozens of other cities across the country.

It costs $1 to unlock a scooter, plus 40 cents per minute for the duration of the ride. 

The e‑scooters first hit downtown last Friday; there are now 300 in total placed at 50 different locations in and around downtown. 

Elicker said that, since the program began just a few days ago, New Haven’s e‑scooter system has already seen 1,400 rides by 700 unique users who have traveled a total of 4,000 miles, with an average of two miles per trip. He said that each of the ​“deployed vehicles” has been ridden an average of 1.25 times per day, above the one-time-per-day average Veo shoots for in every municipal scooter-share effort it operates. Hoover added that each e‑scooter has an average battery life of around 40 miles, and that the detachable batteries are charged in a local warehouse.

Elicker and Aysola said that these e‑scooters fit into a broader context of non-car transportation alternatives backed by city government, including New Haven’s bike share program and the government-subsidized rideshare-style system called Via.

“The options have just exploded,” Elicker said about car alternatives — and that’s not even taking into account the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) overhaul to the state-run public bus system that should be coming in the next half decade.

Thursday’s speakers spoke again and again about how these e‑scooters are not supposed to be ridden on the sidewalk.

Each scooter is printed with the message, ​“NO RIDING ON SIDEWALKS.” Hoover said that each scooter also has a built-in GPS monitor that allows Veo to track if and where users are riding on the sidewalk; he said Veo then uses that information to update its ​“geofencing” technology, which is designed to slow down or outright stop scooters when they enter a certain area, like city sidewalks or Yale courtyards.

Clearly, however, people are riding on the sidewalk — as evidenced by this video and article by the Independent showing Guilford High School students scooting on the sidewalk.

“We are using our technological capabilities to prevent this,” Hoover said on Thursday about sidewalk riding. He said the company is constantly ​“monitoring, measuring” to understand where sidewalk riding is taking place. He said Veo strives ​“for always improving” on this front. (At an April 3 presentation to the Board of Alders, as local legislators were considering whether or not to adopt the program, Hoover said the company’s geofencing would automatically slow scooters to a stop if used on sidewalks.)

The e‑scooters are also only to be used by riders aged 18 and up. Hoover urged New Haveners not to let their kids sign up if they are under the age of 18. ​“It’s a matter of state law,” he said. ​“We have a zero tolerance policy of underage riding.” If the company finds out that a certain user has been riding and is under the age of 18, he said, the company will remove their account and make them unable to use the platform.

Hoover and Elicker also said that the scooters are supposed to be parked in designated parking spots — white-outlined rectangles painted on the sidewalks in and around downtown. Hoover said that the Veo app, which is required to use the scooter system at all, will not allow users to formally park their e‑scooters and end their rides if they are not close enough to a dedicated parking spot. If people abandon their scooters in non-parking spots, Aysola said, they could face fines or other consequences.

With all that said, Elicker said, this is a ​“fun, exciting, active” way to get around. ​“It’s clear” from the numbers: People are using them. 

“Leave cars at home” if you can, Aysola said. And take one of the city’s transportation alternatives — a scooter, a rideshare bike, a Via, a bus — to get around instead.