The San Diego City Council will go back to the drawing board before bringing electric scooters back to San Diego streets.
Two months after the last remaining electric scooter company pulled out of San Diego, city leaders want them back. Not everyone was sorry to see them go
“I’ve had heart-thumping experiences with them coming within inches and scaring the daylights out of me,” said Janet Rogers, co-chair of Safe Walkways. "But I have friends who have moved out of downtown because they got hit and injured, and they were too terrorized to continue to walk around downtown from it."
City leaders said their goal now is to convince electric scooter companies to come back to San Diego, so they are discussing a revised proposal with less restrictions. One of the biggest e-scooter companies in the country, Lime, is on board.
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The regional general manager of Lime sent NBC 7 this statement: “Lime absolutely wants to be back on the ground in San Diego and hopefully as soon as possible. The city has made real progress on updating regulations to set up a safe, tidy, and successful program.”
The city's proposal would let scooters travel at 15 mph; if a rider is caught traveling on a sidewalk, the scooter would sound off a loud audio alert and flash, aimed at being so annoying that riders will just stop traveling on the sidewalk completely. Other proposed changes include introducing scooters in more locations, lowering city fees that scooter companies have to pay and more relaxed ID requirements for riders.
“So the option is if they cannot protect [people on and off the sidewalk], why are they operating," Rogers said. "Let them come back when their technology can actually protect both sets of people."
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Rogers said the proposal is a lose-lose situation for riders and pedestrians.
“It's a no-win situation for the council," Rogers said. "If they do one, they hurt the other."
City councilors voted to go back to review options and come up with a better plan that keeps everyone safe, whether they're on a scooter or casually strolling. Council members voted 5-3 to approve changes and plan on revisiting this topic again at another time.
