San Francisco's pilot electric scooter program left one neighborhood out in the cold until residents took their complaints public.
The pilot program included a key provision: The scooters must be spread across all of the city's neighborhoods. But they didn't show up in the Bayview district until a few days ago after numerous complaints on-air and online.
On Monday, red scooters from the company Scoot could be seen all along Third Street. Resident Ursula Choice said it's a welcome change.
"I'm seeing a lot more scooters," she said. "I walked up here a few blocks, and every other block I've seen scooters. I've not seen them prior to today."
A screen shot of the company's app Thursday showed the inequity, with scores of black dots, representing scooter locations, in the downtown area and only two in Bayview.
"This is an underserved neighborhood in every aspect of the word and even coming down to the scooters," Choice said.
Paul Rose, with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, says both companies that are part of the city's scooter pilot program are allowed 625 scooters each and are required to spread them across the city.
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"At the end of the day, we are holding the companies accountable for how they distribute these scooters, and if they are not meeting those demands we will follow up," Rose said.
A statement from Scoot on Monday said in part, "We regularly meet or exceed the mandated 20 percent deployment requirements defined by the SFMTA permit for underserved communities. As we are only three weeks into the pilot, we are monitoring daily rider patterns and will look at additional redistribution as needed."
Rose said SFMTA is collecting data about the issue, and if it's found a scooter company isn't meeting the city's demands, it could have its license revoked or be forced to take corrective action.
