Scooter-free SF summer to stretch into August

San Francisco’s top transit official said the transit agency needs more time to review the dozen applications vying for a spot in The City’s Power Shared Scooter Permit and Pilot Program.

Ed Reiskin, director of transportation of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said on Tuesday in an update to the transit agency’s Board of Directors regular meeting, that they received more applications than expected and will need more time to review them:

“The variability in the applications, it’s taking us time to do the analysis so that we can look at them apples to apples.”

Reiskin said the transit agency did say the permits would be executed by the end of June in May but now those permits will most likely not be finalized until the end of the July.

The transit agency would still need to work with the companies who become a permittee in August so scooters may not return to the streets until then, said Reiskin.

City officials told the scooter companies they had to remove their scooters off the streets by June 4 after the Board of Supervisors approved legislation that allows the Department of Public Works to remove any unauthorized scooters not part of the SFMTA permit program.

The SFMTA Board of Directors approved a 12-month pilot program in May that grants up to five permits to companies who applied with the transit agency and meets the requirements set by the SFMTA.

During the first six months of the pilot program, the transit agency will allow a total of 1,250 scooters on the streets. The number of scooters could then increase to 2,500, depending on the results of a six-month report on the pilot program.

SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose said 12 companies applied for a permit for the scooter permit program:

• Bird
• Spin
• Lime
• ofo
• Scoot
• Skip (Waybots)
• Lyft
• Razor
• Hopr (Cyclehop)
• USSCooter
• Jump
• Ridecell

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.