10,000 e-scooters? Not so fast – SF slopes fleet sizes before launch – San Francisco Examiner

A plan for 4,000 e-scooters to hit the streets of San Francisco on Tuesday has been heavily staffed.

City officials in San Francisco expressed dissatisfaction with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's Powered Scooter Program, which would eventually see 10,000 e-scooters roll down the city streets.

Now SFMTA has told e-scooter companies that they must withdraw their fleet sizes and potentially threaten local employment agreements to help the San Franciscans get sought after tech jobs.

Four companies, Spin, Scoot, Lime and Jump, will debut a combined fleet of 2,500 e-scooters on October 15th.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, perhaps the main critic of the original larger fleet size ̵[ads1]1; but not the only critic – praised the SFMTA for having listened to elected officials who worried many e-scooters on the street would cause pedestrian injuries, or fatalities, on city ​​sidewalks.

"I think they have been told that they need to go slow and say hello, and keep it safe," Peskin said. "They have been grouped. They have teamed up with the companies and understand that safety comes first. ”

SFMTA announced the four awards of the coveted Powered Scooter Program permit on September 25. Of these leave scooters succeed beyond their competitors – the company will be able to run 1000 e-scooters on launch day on October 15, while competitors Spin, Lime and Uber-owned Jump will only have 500 e-scooters per piece.

Originally, each company was told that it would be allowed to operate 1000 e-scooters per piece.

The reduction can make it difficult for these e-scooter companies to offer services throughout San Francisco, as they are required to do. Transit advocates have previously expressed dismay that smaller e-scooter fleets can make access to transit unpredictable – easier for the wealthy, more difficult for those in poverty.

In a blog post last Friday, SFMTA wrote, perhaps with Peskin in mind, "We are grateful for all the constructive feedback received through this process."

While the initial rollout will be smaller, the plan is to jump to 750 on December 15 and again to 1000 per company on February 15, each company should meet the SFMTA's permit conditions.

This means that these companies must be responsive to complaints about e-scooter riders riding bicycles or parking them in a way that blocks public rights and provides adequate service across San Francisco.

However, SFMTA said that e-scooter companies could one day be able to expand their fleet size to 2,500 pieces.

Asked if that fleet size is still a possibility SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato said: "Any number above the cap we set for February would be subject to strict requirements. For the foreseeable future, we do not expect to see anything close to this figure. "

In the Friday blog post, SFMTA also explained Scoot's fleet size to other e-scooter companies by saying that the company" has been in good shape and has conducted extensive community outreach "and exceeded its low-income membership plan goals.

Scoot has worked with the SFMTA on permits for moped scooters for many years, and served it as a reputation within the SFMTA to spur the disruptive mentality of the technology industry's peers.

Still, other e-scooter companies hope they can earn a higher fleet size because of their existing hiring obligations, which they said could be compromised by having fewer e-scooters for their mechanics to fix, or for teams to distribute about all over town.

Other companies may soon need to freeze hiring plans.

In particular, Spin has commitments with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and has worked with 11 local charities, such as Goodwill and the Mission Economic Development Agency, to hire San Franciscans.

"Halving Spins' allocation to just 500 scooters puts our obligations to our local hiring partners at risk of providing good jobs to our city's most vulnerable workers, and may be forced to put job offers on hold in light of last-minute changes "Nima Rahimi, senior political adviser to Spin.

It may also reward other companies such as Jump and Lime, which are planning to hire some workers as temporary workers from staffing agencies such as Bluewcrew or Populus, instead of hiring directly. practice and said temporary agencies are barriers to association and getting health care.

While Bluewcrew told the San Francisco Examiner that they could not say which part of their employees are receiving health care, Uber said Populus is hiring its employees full time and therefore providing medical benefits to W-2 staff, as well as overtime, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.

Asked about Peskin would consider encouraging the SFMTA to increase the number of permitted e-scooters for companies that hire locally – especially considering that he authored a resolution criticizing the use of temporary agency agencies in the e-scooter industry – he simply said, "Everything is on the table. "

But, Peskin added," none of these companies should think they have carte blanche to make scooter goats. These are all extremely well-funded companies. Let's see if they behave. ”

joe@sfexaminer.com