Scooter share, coming soon to the Elm City?
Thomas Breen photo
Acting TT&P deputy Karla Lindquist and director Doug Hausladen at Tuesday’s budget workshop.
Scooter share is coming. And with it, according to the city’s transit chief, will come upwards of $300,000 a year in new permit revenue for the city.
City Transportation, Traffic and Parking (TT&P) Executive Director Doug Hausladen pitched that alt-transit future in the Aldermanic Chambers of City Hall during a five-hour Finance Committee budget workshop regarding Mayor Toni Harp’s proposed $556.6 million operating budget for Fiscal Year 2019-2020 (FY20).
Hausladen’s departmental budget anticipates bringing in $300,000 in new permit revenue next fiscal year thanks to the imminent arrival of scooter share programs. Like the city’s current bike share program, Hausladen said, these new alt transit options will allow users to cruise around town through short term rentals of transportation options that don’t require fossil fuel combustion.
The city’s doesn’t currently have any scooter share programs in town, he said. But, he has received enough interest from companies that want to bring rentable scooters to New Haven that the city could see upwards of 1,500 such devices rolling around town next fiscal year.
Tuesday night’s Finance Committee workshop.
“We’ve seen a lot of other cities not doing anything proactive and then forced into defense and reaction,” Hausladen said about other cities that have struggled to keep up with a deluge of new rentable scooters, often left lying in the middle of city sidewalks. “We’d like to take a different approach.”
The state legislature is currently on its way to passing an House Bill (H.B.) 7141: An Act Regulating Electric Foot Scooters, which defines electric foot scooters as “a device (A) that weighs not more than seventy-five pounds, (B) that has two or three wheels, handlebars and a floorboard that can be stood upon while riding, (C) that is powered by an electric motor and human power, and (D) whose maximum speed, with or without human propulsion on a paved level surface, is not more than twenty miles per hour.”
The bill, which originated in the state legislature’s Transportation Committee, was adopted by the House on April 23, and is now on the Senate calendar for a vote.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa questioned Hausladen’s $300,000 revenue estimate, considering that the city doesn’t currently have any scooter share programs in town. “Is that being optimistic?” she asked.
Not based on the interest he’s been hearing from scooter share companies so far, Hausladen said. The department plans to charge these companies $1 per scooter per day for every scooter they want to drop in the city, he said. By that estimate, $300,000 in anticipated new permit revenue for the year is realizable.
Residential Parking Revenue
Hausladen also told alders that his department plans to bring in another $100,000 in new revenue next fiscal year through the renting out of designated parking spaces in residential parking zones.
The city will continue to offer cost-free residential parking permits to city residents for the blocks they live on, he said. This new plan would allow the department to sell commuter parking spaces on top of those existing residential parking permits.
He said he anticipates selling 275 such residential parking permits in the fiscal year to come, and that they will cost roughly $30 per month.
They will be non-guaranteed spaces, he said, and will serve to help fill up residential blocks with paying parkers who, in neighborhoods like East Rock, already cruise around residential streets looking for places to park near Yale Shuttle stops.
If commuters are already parking in residential areas to be near a private public transportation option like the Yale Shuttle, he said, the city should come up with a way to squeeze a little money out of those drivers who aren’t currently contributing to parking meters or bus fare. “We should make a little vig off of that,” he said, “so residents don’t have 100 people trying to park on the street, only five people who are allowed to.”
Is the City going to keep these 15-20mph scooters off of Downtown sidewalks? (Already against the law, according to City Ordinance). If not, there will be injuries to pedestrians, particularly to our senior citizens.
What is the Town Green's position on having an armada of powered scooters downtown? Will there be a helmet law? Will they be kept off the sidewalk in our busy retail strips?
Personally I'm not against a scooter share program coming to New Haven. But there are many known issues involved with such, and responsibly they should be addressed in advance, not after innocent people are injured.