Should the scooter pilot program be continued?

Hard to believe but the six month pilot program for scooters is almost up. As you may remember, the scooters all around the village and the rest of Miami are here on a trial basis.

Miami has one of the most successful scooter programs in the country in terms of usage rates. According to Commissioner Ken Russel, "Each scooter is used more than five times a day on average. In the last two months, over 300,000 trips have been made on our streets and sidewalks."

There are almost 1200 scooters on the streets now, you can't miss them and there are six different vendors, you've seen them -  Bird and Bolt seem to be the most prevalent, there is also Jump, Lime, Lyft and Spin. Jump is owned by Uber.

The Miami Parking Authority is in control of the scooters and at a future meeting, possibly in September, there will be discussion of extending the scooter program, but possibly with more regulations. 

Each vendor started with 50 scooters each on the streets, which was increased to 100 and then was allowed to increase even more after that.

They may pare down the amount of vendors and also allow police to stop people who are not riding in a safe manner, which I'm surprised isn't a thing now, they are particularly concerned with adults riding with young kids on the same scooter. I've seen that often.

There are those who love the scooters and those who hate them. I do think that if the program is not allowed to continue, there may be quite an uproar, like them or hate them, they are part of our daily life now. It would almost be like getting rid of Uber or Lyft or even the Freebee with all its warts and all.