The City of Portland has doubled down on their shared electric scooter program. At a press conference last Thursday, just steps from the Better Naito protected bike and scooter lanes, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) officials and their partners announced multiyear contracts with Lyft and Lime to expand the scooter fleet and upgrade the program to permanent status.
“Today we celebrate a new, permanent era of micromobility,” said Hayden Harvey, government relations director for Lime, who spoke at the event.
PBOT Director Millicent Williams also spoke at the press conference. She touted the public-private partnership and said it will, “make e-scooters more accessible to Portlanders, while also showing cities across the nation that sustainable transportation can be good business.”
Lime and Lyft are well-known quantities to PBOT. Lime has had electric bikes and scooters on Portland streets since 2018 and was named one of the five e-scooter providers when the pilot first began early that same year. And Lyft is the company behind Portland’s Biketown bike share system, which launched eight years ago. Lime’s deep experience in the micromobility space and the tight integration of the Lyft scooters with the existing Biketown software (you can now get bikes and scooters on the same app) and infrastructure (scooters use same stations as bikes) give PBOT a very strong foundation for success.
Another change with this batch of e-scooters is that each one of them comes with a cable lock. This feature is more about the right-of-way than security, since one of the biggest PR problems for e-scooters is how they often clutter the right-of-way and cause accessibility issues. By requiring scooters to be locked after each trip, PBOT increases the likelihood that riders will attach them to racks or sign poles at the periphery of sidewalks — leaving more room for pedestrians.
PBOT hopes its new “Ride it. Park it. Lock it!” marketing campaign drives the message home. At one point at Thursday’s press conference, The Street Trust Executive Director Sarah Iannarone led the crowd in a chant of the new slogan.
If education doesn’t work, PBOT also has a new, centralized dispatch number via the 311 system to report scooters that are blocking sidewalks or curb ramps.
But PBOT might be trading one PR problem for another. With a scooter fleet expected to reach 3,500 between the two companies, many of them will be locked to bike parking spaces. One BikePortland reader emailed us to say, “I like that scooters will be less likely to block the sidewalk, but I don’t like the idea of sharing limited bike parking spots with them.”
PBOT will have to keep up parking and other infrastructure demands to handle these scooters, and given the popularity of the vehicles, they should have the confidence and political capital to do so. At the press conference, Director Williams was happy to share ridership data that shows scooters have cemented their place in Portland’s mobility mix. After rides dwindled during the pandemic, people took 1.1 million trips in 2023, slightly more than 2019.
Some of those riders might opt for Lime’s new seated scooters, which Director Williams test rode at the press conference. Based on the same chassis as a regular scooter, the sit-down version has a sturdy seat and rear bucket to increase its comfort and utility. A spokesperson for Lime told BikePortland they plan to start with 25-50 seated scooters “and scale up from there.” Seated scooters have been a priority for PBOT since at least 2019.
Whether sitting or standing, these scooters give Portlanders another viable way to get around without having to drive a car. And for folks who can’t afford the unlock and per-minute fees, both Lime and Lyft offer low-income access options. And Suma, a Portland nonprofit that works to bridge the digital divide, has an app where folks who qualify can receive free 30 minute rides.
“Transportation is a vital service that people depend on,” said Suma Vendor Manager Momoko Saunders. “Micromobility has the opportunity to fill a large gap left by our car-centric transportation system.”
Learn more about the e-scooter program on PBOT’s website.
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I’m surprised the article didn’t address this question: Does PBOT also plan to correspondingly increase the size of the *e-bike* fleet? Or is this a zero-sum game, with scooters apparently winning? If e-bikes and scooters will be sharing space on parking racks and stations, will the city also make a “permanent” commitment to an expanded e-bike program?
I imagine the scooters are politically safer and easier as they don’t “require” removing a car parking space to make a e-bike kiosk
I support anything small, slow, and quiet. However, the person who emailed had a good point. Scooter companies get to store their vehicles in the best parking spots with no time limit, at no cost. Short term bike racks are often taken by scooters or rental bikes. Sometimes the scooters are even staged there by rental company employees.
Biketown’s orange racks are frequently underused but any private bike found there can be tagged. I’ve never heard of a person’s bike being removed but that’s because nobody uses them.
We’ve given up public space for restricted rental bike and scooter parking and then adopted a system of allowing those vehicles to park just anywhere.
Yeah. This is what a public/private partnership is, it’s a handout/subsidy to private companies giving up public assets for private profit. It’s also supposedly done for the public good, and this may be. If it’s something that really benefits all of us in aggregate, it may be worth it. But it is as you say, we lose some public space to a private company.
This is why I would prefer stuff like this be actually publicly owned. Then we can decide what the fares are (democratically), if any, and who has to pay / get exemptions. Then at least it’s a public decision. The result may be the same though – the scooters take up some bike parking space.
The Biketown racks et. al. should be usable by anyone though, for sure.
My experience with the Biketown scooters so far has been less than stellar. They are nicer than Lime, but cost double the equivalent ebike rental and aren’t included in the low income discount programs. They’re also slower, which is extra frustrating since they’re so expensive and you pay per minute. I would be fine with this but in my area there are no longer any bikes and instead there are a ton of scooters (probably because biketown regulars don’t want to ride them). It seems to be harder to find a bike which is really disappointing and if the scooters crowd out the bikes it makes paying for a membership way less convenient.
I’ve been struggling to justify taking Biketowne since the rates doubled; it’s often cheaper, faster and safer for two people to take a Lyft. And now I find myself stressing out more about finding a docking station while the clock ticks…
Lately it’s been hard to find a bike that isn’t thrashed. Last one I got had a stuck rear brake that hampered its top speed (and made me pedal moderately hard if I wanted to keep moving). I kept it because there was nothing else available in my area, and besides, changing bikes would waste more time and incur another unlocking fee. Not great.
I have zero interest in the scooters; I’ve rented other brands and found them to be unstable and uncomfortable to ride.
Of course I’d prefer to be riding one of my own bikes, but after having parts stolen off my “bar beater” bike and a couple other attempted thefts I’m kinda done leaving anything locked out-of-sight in Portland.
Curious if the biketown app has some feature where you can make a tag or report of ‘no bikes available” at the time/place you wanted one. It seems like it would be a really useful data point for them to know where wanted trips are being left on the table, and where expansion makes sense. Maybe this exists? I dunno, I’ve admittedly never used one because I have my own ’round-town beater bike’.
Every photo shows people/scooters with helmets. Do the scooters come with them?
no.
Thanks. Helmets are required on scooters, according to the city, which I didn’t realize since, outside of the photos above, I’ve never seen anyone riding one with a helmet.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/regulatory/escooterpdx/rules
I’m glad someone at City Hall is making sure people are wearing helmets…. in the press photos.
I find it disappointing to see PBOT (and the city at large) continuing to use Lyft in any capacity. A year ago, they were talking about getting out of the bikeshare business altogether. And I feel like the general consensus for BikeTown right now is that it’s too expensive – I have a hard time imagining that a company looking to “trim fat” to compete with Uber on price in the taxi business is really going to care about anything other than absolutely maximizing profits on whatever micromobility stuff they are up to.
This need for Lyft to operate a bike share at a profit (having a full e-bike fleet, raising overall operational costs doesn’t help) is why BikeTown is so expensive. And it’s not just here – Divvy in Chicago has had similar issues. Without some kind of public ownership (or stronger subsidies), these programs will never live up to their potential. Based on how the BikeTown for all program has been massively cut back, it’s just really hard to feel optimistic about any of this, much less that we’ve entered some “permanent era of micromobility”
Not just a regular profit either, they need the kind of profit you can get to pay back all the VC money they’ve taken over the years.
This is a big concern for me as well. Conceptually I like having a share program available, but the pricing is prohibitive and reflective of a for-profit venture when what this really should’ve been is a public good.
The unlock/re-lock fee in particular is very problematic, because it makes it super inefficient to use these things for exactly what they’re best suited to: Short trips.
The other day I had a friend leave their purse at a restaurant 1mi away and I thought “oh, I’ll just grab a BikeTown and be back with it in less than 10 minutes”. The total cost of doing that was over $6, of which a whopping $4 was lock and unlock fees (I accidentally stowed the lock in the wrong hole after removing it from the rack and had to unlock a second time so I got hit with the fee twice in <30 seconds – an easy mistake to make and one that Lyft clearly doesn’t care about protecting against).
Luckily I left the bike unlocked when I stopped to pick up the purse, or I would’ve been charged *yet another $2 flat fee* for having the audacity to lock the bike while I ran inside the store.
Yeah, the (unannounced) elimination of the ‘hold lock’ option (whatever it was called — lock it up but keep your rental running, so you can dash into a store, etc.) just seemed like another way to gouge riders.
Stronger subsidies suggest ebikes and scooters are a public good. That’s a pretty hard sell, the average trip length suggests regular pedal bikes would be adequate replacements at far lower cost. At this point, that might be palatable for people, but even then, asking people to fork over additional funds to the government to manage something is untenable right now I would guess.
Doubling down on the parking problem, I just recently rode to Pioneer Square to catch a show on Monday and all the racks were filled with scooters! I had to physically move a couple locked scooters so I could lock up to a rack. Really disappointing that they are pushing to have to lock scooters to already limited bike infrastructure considering its a private company using public resources to do so
This is one of the reasons I have opposed allowing any rental mobility device to lock at a public rack. They should be in docking stations of their own, paid for by the commercial vendors providing the scooters / bikes.
It’s almost as if the city doesn’t want us using our own bikes. Between this and rampant bike theft– and “just take a Biketowne!” offered as a solution– I’m feeling like the simple act of using human powered transportation is becoming increasingly disincentivized by our leaders and the lobbyists they brunch with.
Writing from Seattle, where there are no locks for Lime bikes and scooters, blocking sidewalks and bike paths isn’t a “PR problem”, it’s a real problem. I stop to move them out of the way pretty often — not everyone can!
By all means, let’s give the publicly owned bike staples over to the scooters that bring profit to a private corporation. Isn’t that what America’s all about? And yes, I have already had the experience of trying to park outside a locally owned business only to discover the bike staple taken by a Lyft scooter.
Do you honestly believe that the City of Portland could competently manage such a program? Zero Vision anyone? The Big Pipe? Mt Tabor reservoirs?
They can’t even keep the streets swept and some want them to run a bike share program. Much luck.
Maybe have Multnomah County run it….they’ve done such a better job running the Preschool and Homeless Taxes and providing ambulance services…. 🙁
/s
Buy your own 50 cc Honda Metropolitan.
I’ve never ridden one myself, but people report top comfortable speeds of those as just over 30 MPH. That’s really not so different from a class 3 electric bike, except that it uses gasoline rather than a battery.
That means you can’t greenwash it and pretend it has zero impact on the environment, like you can with an electric moto…
I do 12-15 mph on side streets and 20 mph on collectors. 25 gets a little scary.
Costs about the same as my neighbor’s nice e bike, but must be registered and insured. Insurance costs way more than gas.
Very comfortable and reliable, with room for a bag of groceries under the seat.
I’ve got a lot of feelings about this, but I’ll stick to three.
1) PBOT doesn’t deserve much credit for anything micro-mobility until they get real about fixing the funding and administration issues with BIKETOWN.
2) The parking situation for BIKETOWN and these scooters is infuriatingly stupid. When someone pays $1 to park a city “operated” bike on a street 9/10 times they are the ONLY person paying to park a vehicle on that block. That’s ass backward.
3) Lock-to requirements are accessibility theater. Most the time I see a bike or a scooter locked up outside a bike rack (which the city doesn’t install enough of) the vehicle is blocking the right-of-way AND it’s no longer possible for someone to move it — without paying.
If the city had guts or brains in this matter it would instruct people to park these vehicles in the curb lane and PBOT would get to work installing corrals and bike racks all over the city – where people store their private cars currently. Hell, you don’t even have to take up “parking spaces.” Install bike racks at the corners of blocks (which PBOT has claimed they intend to daylight) and you get a twofer.
The only hope I have is that in a few years a transportation caucus on the new council will clean house and get things moving.
Jonathan: Would love to see you weigh in on the e-bikes question… Will PBOT/Biketown also be increasing the size of the e-bike fleets? This seems like an important issue for a bike blog. Thanks.
Hi. There’s no news to report about an increase in the size of an e-bike fleet. I could ask but I have a feeling they’d be eager to share that news if it was coming down the pike. PBOT has heard loud and clear from bikeportland and many others that we want more bikes. I think our biggest chance is from PCEF and I hope someone (maybe even PBOT!) wins a big grant from PCEF that allows them to pay for new bikes.
Also, it’s not as if I’ve never covered that topic before! Recall that back in April 2023 PBOT added 500 new bikes to the system. You can find all of our Biketown coverage here.
PBOT made a really poor decision when they eliminated the pedal Biketowns and went all e-bike. Montreal has both in their fleet, with a two-tier pricing model (with the discount for non-e being half or similar, much like the discounted rate here for members).
Apparently one of the functions of nonprofits funded by local governments is to cheer-lead and provide cover for the City’s greed-driven privatization of the transportation commons.
The other day, I was driving on NE Weidler at ~30mph and noticed a e-bike looking thing in front of me gaining distance away from me. uhhh I mean registration fee evading, unlicensed, illegal Electric Motorcycle.
I think there needs to be something in place that when these things are observed going over the allowed speed for “e bikes” and it doesn’t have valid plates, it should be automatically legal to pull over and operator charged with operating without license, operating without insurance and operating unregistered vehicle.
Other issues that need to be addressed is the trespass by e-Scooters into automobile sanctuary. See below
Fine by me if we apply the same rules to cars
We already do.
My chief concern is that the scooters are replacing the ebikes. I know many people like the scooters but I still think that bikes are safer, more comfortable, and more practical for many trips. Jonathan, do you know if they have any plans to expand the bike fleet as well?
I share the parking woes that others have commented on. It’s becoming harder to find bike parking due to the scooters it seems. The whole point of encouraging bike use is that they’re incredibly space efficient! If I have to park 1/3rd of a mile away from my destination anyway, I might as well just drive. Though, it is a bit reminiscent of the arguments between bikes/runners/walkers on multi-use paths. The real problem is the infrastructure – or lack thereof. The cars get the vast majority of (parking) space while we fight over the scraps.
I’d love to see PBOT take a more active approach to fill in gaps in bike parking. More staple racks and bike corrals! Though many businesses seem to be going the opposite direction and getting their bike corrals torn out to add exactly one (1) car parking space. I think more dedicated Biketown stations would help alleviate the pain as well. Sometimes it takes me 4-5 minutes to find a station to lock a bike to – enough time that it costs me more than the $1 out-of-station fee.
The pricing scheme for Biketown is less than ideal too. I propose a distance-based, rather than time-based pricing model. It costs a lot to ride a shared bike/scooter, but at least you could predict the cost if it was distance-based. Time-based pricing also encourages risky and reckless behavior.
It would be great to see a comeback of some regular, cheaper, pedal-powered bikes as well. Maybe something lighter weight, stylish, with a good gear range for our hilly terrain.
Finally I think that some of the biggest “general public” opposition to scooters comes from how many – especially downtown – engage in some pretty trashy riding behavior. Better infrastructure would mitigate that. If I were king of Portland for a day, every single downtown street would have a dank, protected, 2-way cycle track on it. In my eyes, if we want people to ride bikes, especially downtown, it should be exactly as simple as walking is. It feels like comfortable bike routes are insider knowledge, ESPECIALLY downtown.
The price of the rentals is absurd. $0.37/min + $1 at 15 mph is $2.48 per mile. My five mile commute would have been $8.40 each way assuming I could go 15 mph up Marquam Hill which is not likely.
You’re not going to get me riding them unless I’m effing desperate.
They can tell me they need the program to support itself, they can tell me it’s already subsidized. They could also stop pretending this solves anything.
Yeah, I did the math for a trip recently. Taking a scooter from my house in St Johns to the Hollywood Theater and then back home after a movie would’ve been $35-$40 or so. A scooter from one of the reputable electric scooter brands that has the range needed for that trip and with the same top speed as the Lime/Biketown scooters would cost $500-$700 and end up costing about $0.05-$0.07 or so for such a trip. If you’re a regular scooter rider, it’s likely a good idea to buy one.
I’m a regular bike rider and if thieves weren’t allowed to constantly try and steal my bike I’d be riding my own wheels, electricity be damned.
Just like the Biketown bikes the scooters are too expensive although actually a bit easier to find than the often nonexistent bikes. I now just walk or use Lyft/Uber. Sorry but it’s cheaper and faster.
Drop anywhere scooters are one of the least green forms of electric transport. People have to drive all around collect them for charging and then redistribute them when charged. This has been mostly fossil fueled and nothing in the article says anything has changed.
On top of that the previous generations were reported to have an average life of only 3-4 months. Hopefully the new generation will be better but the average lifespan is something that needs to be monitored.
Lastly the early generations had a much much higher serious injury rate than bicycles including electric bikes. Hospitals and ambulances are big energy users. Again hopefully the current outcome will be much better but again this needs to be monitored.
Scooters or bikes with fixed charging locations that users return vehicles to dramatically improve the environmental friendliness of both rental scooters and bikes.
They won’t have any utility / nobody will use them if they require you to return them to a fixed charging location. Well, nobody is an exaggeration. But it’s going to require building a LOT of fixed charging stations. And each one will have to handle a lot of scooters to be of much use.
I don’t really know what a reasonable solution to that problem is. The other issue is the amount of labor it requires, which drives up the cost. This is why, for example, Biketown gives you a big discount for (or, a big fee for not) locking up to a Biketown rack – they can swap the batteries in bulk.
The ideal solution of course would be bikes – a cargo bike could carry a hundred batteries and ride around swapping them, or at least tens of whole scooters. That doesn’t solve the labor cost. Or maybe it does, as the bike is cheaper than whatever gas powered vehicle was driving around. But as has been pointed out, why would Lyft care? They have no interest in making this environmentally friendly.
Cargo bikes are great but not to carry a hundred batteries. Even if your bike was up to that, the average human couldn’t get it off the center stand.
Have you picked up a rental scooter? They’re goddamn heavy and awkward. Maybe a stretch cargo bike could carry three.
And most of the rides these devices generate either replace walking / public transportation or are used for recreational joyriding. That’s per PBOT’s own report:
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/escooterpdx/documents/2019-e-scooter-findings-report/download
The greenwashing continues…
randomly jumping on a PEV that can go 20mph+ shouldn’t be a thing – it’s not safe for the rider or those in their proximity.
Any rental service must have the ability collect all their vehicles and get them off sidewalks, street and other strewn locations – daily. If they can’t, it shouldn’t be a viable business!
I love PEVs. Riding them has taken over my life, but I think the whole random scooters everywhere business model is a disgrace. Its dangerous and adds to a cities clutter and lack of aesthetics. The only way an PEV will be respected is if it is privately owned. The only way a rider will take responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others is if they take the experience seriously – that comes with ownership and understanding of the activity.
Meanwhile, Melbourne has joined Paris, Copenhagen and other major cities in banning e-scooters. Apparently their leadership is not as wise or effective as Portland’s/s
The scooters in Portland may be a good mobility solution, but they have been dropped all over the sidewalk, in doorways of businesses and ditched in the bushes along the Springwater and Marine Drive. The lack of accountability by the companies that own these things is completely unacceptable. During the initial trial period years ago I flooded the City scooter complaint line with photos of scooters blocking on the sidewalk, riders speeding on sidewalks and going the wrong way down one way streets – all to no avail.
In typical City of Portland fashion, they are rolling out this next phase without committing the enforcement resources or infrastructure investments to make it successful. Prepare to see even more scooters in doorways, in the bushes and blocking the sidewalks.
I encourage Bike Portland to follow this roll out and report on not just program utilization, but also level of compliance by these companies with the “cable lock strategy” to get them legally parked.
Call me skeptical, and I am open to being proved wrong, but without some form of accountability the City politicians are likely to do nothing.
They’ve been a net negative from day one. Still propped up by venture capital and its lobbyists. There’s been a retraction, though, since the 2019-ish heyday and I’m not the only one hoping that it will deepen.
The partnerships with cities tells me that private industry has figured out that the game isn’t as profitable as it once was and is now looking for subsidies / handouts from gullible voters. And if I were a lobbyist for ’em I’d say Portland is a whale.
Now we just need to figure out a way to get people to stop riding escooters as fast as possible down the sidewalk. And the wrong way down the street.