What to Know About E-Scooters at Reed and in Portland
On January 23, a Reed Campus News email announced that BIKETOWN and Lime e-scooters are coming to Reed, and that rental e-scooter parking will be restricted to the GCC, Naito-Sullivan, and Vollum bike racks. You may be asking questions like, "Wait, didn't we already have e-scooters on campus?," "Why only those three locations?," "Does this apply to my personal scooter?," and "What actually is BIKETOWN?". I sat down with Steve Yeadon, Director of Facilities Operations, to ask these questions and more.
E-scooters were already present on campus before this semester. Initially, Lime dropped off scooters at Reed without warning, which, according to a Guardian article called "Welcome, watch or ban: how should cities deal with electric scooters?", is a classic e-scooter company move that often leads to concerns about unregulated e-scooters littering sidewalks, pedestrian safety, and scooter businesses operating without licenses. After Lime scooters appeared at Reed, Yeadon reached out to the company to discuss how they could work together to make e-scooters safely available on campus and ensure that they were not blocking sidewalks. The result of their communication was the new agreement announced in Campus News.
The basic rundown of the agreement is that Facilities and the scooter companies picked three bike rack locations for convenience and to preserve some space for future bike infrastructure developments such as bike boxes. Students should be aware that they will get a $25 charge for parking a Lime or Lyft scooter anywhere other than the bike racks. Signs have gone up at those locations, and the apps should give you a warning if you are at risk of a fine. Yeadon noted that the parking locations can be moved by Facilities and the scooter companies if these three locations don't work out. If students see an improperly parked rental scooter, especially one blocking a path, building entrance, or ADA ramp, they can call Facilities at 503-777-7283 to deal with it.
Some students wondered if the new parking restrictions will apply to personal e-scooters, and the short answer is no. I reached out to Community Safety Director Gary Granger to ask, and he said that personal e-scooters on campus are only subject to city rules, not the additional e-scooter rental rules. As part of the agreement that allows e-scooters to operate in Portland, the city requires you to lock up to a bike rack or unobtrusive city signpost when you leave your scooter, wear a helmet, not be a hazard to pedestrians, and not ride on sidewalks or crosswalks. Granger clarified that the two pedestrian bridges on campus count as sidewalks, so e-scooter riders should walk their scooters across the bridges or take the land bridge in the middle of the Canyon. However, multi-use paths, such as the large one between ODB and the Great Lawn, are fair game. If you see an improperly parked scooter off-campus, you can report it to the city through the portland.gov "Report an e-Scooter" page, where it will be reported to PBOT and the scooter companies.
Now, what is BIKETOWN? BIKETOWN is Portland's electric bike share system, operated by Lyft, which is sponsored by Nike and partnered with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). Around 2018, e-scooter companies put their scooters around Portland, as well as other cities across the world, without asking for permits first. This led to significant backlash from city governments and residents, including e-scooter bans in some cities. The city of Portland chose to develop a partnership allowing e-scooter companies to operate under an agreement with the city that would require them to operate safely and equitably. After a pilot program, PBOT awarded contracts to Lyft and Lime which allow them to operate in the city. The contracts require the companies to deploy scooters around the city every day, put locks on all of their scooters to enable proper parking, provide scooters with seats for accessibility, and offer discounts for low-income riders. Lime Access and Scooter Community Pass by Lyft offer discounted rides at 7¢/minute to Portland residents who are eligible for SNAP, TriMet Honored Citizen Passes, Pell Grants, and other programs.
While BIKETOWN scooters are officially on campus, BIKETOWN e-bikes are not, since Reed is just barely out of the range where the bikes operate. Yeadon mentioned that he is trying to convince BIKETOWN to expand the boundary to include Reed, and hopes that increased e-scooter usage on campus will encourage BIKETOWN to do so. Bringing more motorized scooters and bikes to campus would help with Reed's Traffic Demand Management Policy, which is a policy every Portland institution must have to reduce car travel to and from their location. These plans often involve providing incentives to employees, such as BIKETOWN or TriMet passes, as well as improving bike infrastructure and communicating about car alternatives for commuting.
One of the reasons the city is supporting e-scooters is to encourage more environmentally friendly travel, but are the environmental benefits really that large? E-scooters produce very few emissions in day-to-day use since they are extremely energy efficient per mile. However, the production of new e-scooters, disposal of old ones, and transport to and from charging stations every night come with several environmental issues that are worth considering. According to a life-cycle assessment published by Joseph Hollingsworth, Brenna Copeland, and Jeremiah X Johnson in 2019, the environmental impacts of e-scooters are lower than those of cars per mile and come mostly from materials, manufacturing, and charging station transportation. The authors, all part of the Johnson Research Group in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, recommend several actions to decrease the environmental impacts of e-scooters, including using fuel-efficient vehicles for collection, only collecting scooters that are low on battery, and reducing the driving distance per scooter. Additionally, giving scooters longer lifespans by producing sturdier scooters and discouraging vandalism reduces the environmental impacts by decreasing the number of new scooters being produced. Without those changes, e-scooters may not be an improvement over other modes of transportation such as buses. However, with the right policies and support from cities, e-scooters can be an environmentally-friendly alternative to car trips and reduce congestion in cities.
