On Campuses, Electric Scooters Meet Speed Bumps

Colleges are under siege. And no, it’s not the skeptical politicians looking to slash budgets or the conservative talk-show hosts issuing broadsides.

This menace is two-wheeled. The electric scooters made by tech companies like Lime and Bird have swept into the nation’s urban areas, college campuses included.

Using one is easy. Download an app to your smartphone, use it to unlock a scooter near you, and hop on. That technology-enabled ease has appealed to younger people, who’ve long been used to nontraditional modes of transportation.

That’s the case for Jonah Gallegos, a senior studying journalism at New Mexico State University. Scooters made by the company Spin have, thanks in part to efforts by the student government, recently taken the campus by storm, proving so popular that Gallegos said fully charged machines can be hard to find.

New Mexico, a mostly rural state, often feels behind the curve, he said, but the adoption of scooters feels pleasantly modern. “We don’t see that much nice stuff here,” he said. “I have texted all my friends to get the app.” He added that the scooters also help save him the cost of a parking permit, costing just a few dollars a ride.

WATCH OUT NOW pic.twitter.com/vmgJbgi57e

— Jonah Gallegos (@jonah_gall) February 12, 2019

But this trend hasn’t always been a smooth ride. Not every campus demands that scooters be returned to particular spots, so they tend to end up in the most conspicuous places. That prompted Michigan State University police to impound about 100 of them in the fall of 2018, according to the Lansing State Journal. Capt. Doug Monette said the scooters were obstructing traffic in some areas on campus.

The University of Texas at Austin has impounded about 700, said Blanca Gamez, assistant director of Parking and Transportation Services. When the scooters first arrived a little more than a year ago to the city of Austin, there were no rules for them, which was a problem.

“On a university campus, there’s guidelines for everything,” Gamez said.

People would leave them in parking lots or in the middle of streets. That wasn’t tenable, so the university set about creating a set of guidelines to manage the scooters, which included designated areas where people should park the machines.

Though managing them requires a fair amount of time and effort, Gamez said the scooters can do a lot of good for the university. They help students with the first and last mile of their commute while potentially reducing the numbers of vehicles on campus. And she gets the appeal of riding one, too.

“They’re really easy,” Gamez said. “They don’t require any type of practice. They’re relatively cheap. There’s a novelty to them because they’re so new. “

Arizona State University, citing a policy against motorized vehicles in most cases, impounded more than 880 scooters, according to the Arizona Republic. At least one scooter company, Lime, has pulled its machines from the city of Tempe altogether.

What’s so wrong with a fleet of zippy scooters? The backlash is partially tied to an ever-growing concerns over safety.

Tamir Kalifa for The Chronicle

A new study found that 249 people were admitted to two urban emergency rooms over the course of the year in connection to scooter collisions. About 92 percent were riders, but the rest weren’t. About 30 percent had fractures. And 40 percent suffered head injuries. Tarak K. Trivedi, the study’s lead author and a research fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles, also wrote that few people were taking any safety precautions when riding the machines.

“Riders share roads with fast-moving vehicular traffic but appear to underestimate hazards,” the report reads. “We found that 94.3 percent of observed riders in our community were not wearing a helmet.”

Some colleges are trying to respond to the carefree attitude of riders.

UT-Austin, for example, has issued a demand that scooters “should be operated at a low speed on campus at all times.” The policy continues: “Campus has very heavy pedestrian traffic, so it is imperative to operate slowly and always yield the right of way to pedestrians.”

Better Than Bikes?

As for the backlash on campuses, Ted Sweeney, manager of public policy at Spin, said that many scooter operators introduce their machines to a campus without first consulting with a college’s main authority figures. That can breed animosity.

Colleges “have been designed for decades or centuries to work in a certain way,” Sweeney said. Their leaders naturally react, he said, by saying, No, we need control over our campuses.

Sweeney, who used to work at the University of Washington as a transportation specialist, added that scooters aren’t so different from other popular two-wheeled forms of transportation. After all, a collision with an errant cyclist isn’t going to feel much better for a pedestrian than one with someone on a electric scooter.

Another part of the scooters’ appeal, Sweeney said, is that they are easy to ride for the average commuter. They also have a cheaper upfront cost than, say, a bike. And they don’t carry the risk of being stolen, like a personal bike does. But again, you can’t deny one of the most important human elements.

“What it comes down to most of all, it’s fun,” Sweeney said.

Chris Quintana is a staff reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.