AUSTIN, Texas — Love them or hate them, electronic scooters, or e-scooters, are everywhere. But starting Monday, April 1, there will be new rules for e-scooters in Austin.
At its meeting on Thursday, Austin's Mobility Committee discussed scooter regulations. Talking points included reducing the number of licensed e-scooter vendors down to just Bird and Lime and putting a moratorium on e-scooter vendor licenses for at least a calendar year.
The Transportation and Public Works Department said the purpose of the new regulations is to reduce the number of serious head injuries while also clearing the clutter of scooters downtown.
Starting on Monday, April 1, only Bird and Lime will continue operating in Austin and the 2,000 e-scooters from the company Link will be removed. This will reduce the total number of permitted e-scooters in Austin down to 6,700 – 3,700 from Lime and 3,000 from Bird.
Additionally, the maximum speed for e-scooters will be reduced from 15 mph to 10 mph between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. each day in the city's main entertainment districts. The goal of the speed reduction is to decrease the risk for injuries.
From July 2023 through September 2023, Austin-Travis County EMS estimated there were 48 accidents involving e-scooters, out of the 29,423 patients medics saw during that timeframe.
Selena Xie, the president of the Austin EMS Association, said in the ICU, the most common outcome health care workers see from scooter accidents is head injuries.
"We see a lot of, honestly, irreversible brain damage because of these scooter incidents and some deaths because of them," Xie said. "Also on accidents that don't seem that bad initially, but you hit your head in just the right place, and they can be fatal."
During the late night hours, there could be several factors contributing to accidents, like poor visibility and impaired judgement due to alcohol.
"These things really need your full attention when you're out there mixing it up with traffic," Richard Mendoza, director of Transportation and Public Works, said.
Even some visitors from out of town have noticed that scooters have gotten out of hand in Austin.
"They're just lying all over the place and causing issues as you're walking down the sidewalk," Sevan Kesenci, a visitor from Los Angeles, said.
Kesenci said scooters like Lime started popping up in LA in 2017.
"It became a nuisance very quickly and started branching off into the valley areas," Kesenci said.
Kesneci said LA also had issues with people riding them recklessly, scooters blocking businesses and taking parking spots.
To combat the cluster of scooters downtown, the Mobility Committee will also be adding "staging areas" where uses can park e-scooters when they're done using them. They will essentially be lines on the ground, marking a set place for the scooters.
Mendoza said the city is going to start implementing the new regulations on April 1. His department also be working with Bird and Lime from now until summer to identify and create the marked spaces for the scooters.