Good morning everyone. We're calling the May 8th Housing, Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting to order. Will the clerk please? Floyd, here. Harding. Here. Dress school. Here. Gabbert. Here. Fix Anderson. Committee members, we have an agenda before us. Do we have a motion for approval? No, approval. All those in favor? Aye. All right, motion passes. We have the approval of the April 10th, 2025 minutes. Do we have a motion for approval? No approval. All in favor? Aye. All right, motion passes. Now we're on to our new business for today, which is the Public Scooter Share Program, and we have the Transportation and Parking Management Director Evan Mori with us and Cheryl Stax as well so take it away y'all. Oh and hold on unless council member Gabbard you want to say anything. I mean I think this item pretty much speaks for itself we had a fairly good conversation upstairs as to why we were gonna bring this forward down here today so I'll go ahead and turn it over to staff. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll go over about the first half of the presentation and then our transportation manager will cover the second half. And we've got some more staff here in the audience that might be able to answer questions if appropriate. And yes, we are here today to address the new business item. Council about Council Member Gabbert and approved by Council? With an update on shared scooters, including ridership, trans and statistics, successes and challenges, an update on the scooter share industry kind of as a whole, including a closer look at the Florida market. Also similarly to when we came to Council in 2022 at the end of the initial pilot, we hope to receive direction from the committee this morning regarding your level of support for continuing offering shared scooters as a transportation option for our residents and visitors. So just to touch on the history of scooter share in St. Petersburg with some background, shared scooters were launched almost five years ago as a pilot program to see if we wanted that transportation mode to be an option for our residents and visitors to get around. Enhancing transportation options is in keeping with the transportation element of the city's comprehensive plan and a lot of public engagement and research went into designing St. Petersburg's program Which was unique at the time in a lot of ways for example? We were the first large medium or large city to require 100% Corral-based Parking whereas the industry norm was basically park half-azardly you could park wherever you could find a space for them and We also implemented a sidewalk riding prohibition when most other cities either allowed sidewalk or street riding or some cities actually required sidewalk riding and set up street riding. And here we can see that ridership has generally held study over time and that a whole lot of people have chosen to utilize this form of micrommability for their trips. In fact over 1.2 million total since inception and now we average about 750 a little bit more than 750 trips per day and then at a peak we hit over 4,000 and that was back in the summer of 2023. In the transportation realm, we often hear about the need to solve the first mile, last mile problem, which is helping people complete their trips because the bus stop or parking space isn't close enough to their final destination. And a mile can be pretty far to walk. Well, we know now that those 1.2 plus million rides, they've happened of average 1.1 mile and people can cover that distance in a little bit over 11 minutes. And here you can see on the map, we certainly have trips venturing or we have most of the trips in the downtown core with some trips venturing outside of that a little to the northwest and south Trans also indicate average trips are getting a little bit longer distance wise So some nationwide trends We're finding that it's interesting to see that very large cities and very small cities, or the largest in the smallest cities, they have declined in scooter share while the medium-sized cities have increased. And based on the way that this report broke down cities, we definitely fall in the medium-sized cities. Also, we've seen market consolidation and an increase in trips over time. We looked at some mid-sites cities across the country. This slide goes over 14 of them. And it shows various medium-sized cities across the country, whether they have scooters here, whether they have bike share or one or the other. There's a few examples of cities with bike share only, but most cities with any shared programs do include scooters. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. There's a few examples of cities with bike share only, but most cities with any shared programs do include scooters. And then we dove in a little bit more on the state of Florida, and this will show you a lot of the major cities, the population, their current vendor or vendors when they started, whether they have corral-based or the open parking, which doesn't require corrals, the fleet size, and if they also have a bike share program. So some of the key takeaways here are that most Florida cities do have scooter share programs, but not all, and fleets range from 400 to 1600. And just like across the country, there has been a consolidation of operators. We did find two Florida markets that discontinued scooters after having them, either for a pilot or another period of time. And that was Miami due to safety concerns and fort Lauderdale that ended a pilot due to COVID and they just never picked back up that program. One thing specifically about Miami that I'll say about the safety concerns is that they required all riders to wear helmets and that they weren't getting compliance with that. Most cities don't require that and it's a really hard thing to Actually have happened so it wasn't happening to their satisfaction. That was one of the reasons that they discontinued it Speaking to other cities challenges have been related to ordinance compliance sidewalk parking and sidewalk riding Tampa injection bills started with open parking and then switched to what we do which is the crowd-based. So some program successes we did get a nice editorial a few years ago when our program was praised for its organization and we've been happy to have high ridership despite initially having a lot more restrictions restrictions than were present in other markets as it relates to force parking and sidewalk riding. And based on the program's success, our staff has been invited to speak at various state and national conferences to educate other cities about some of the best practices that we did develop here. Another great aspect of our program is that we reinvest the revenues from scooter share's share into making our infrastructure safer and more inviting not only for people to write scooters but also for people to walk in bike. Of course, not only have there been successes but there have been challenges indeed. So we did lose Razer as a provider in 2023. They left the market and that's why you saw in that earlier chart, the rides in red just fell off. They essentially got out of the business and left us before the end of their contract. And just like we see some people making some poor choices when they drive their car or ride their bike, have a head instances of poor scooter riding behavior The most common and proper riding behavior we see or hear about a sidewalk riding So we've implemented very strategies to deter that riding including the in-app messages signs and stickers that you can see on the right side of this the screen and Another challenge we've experienced that we've not always had timely compliance with the requirements to indemnify the city when claims have occurred. We have been tracking incidents in cooperation with the St. Petersburg Department. And to date, there have been 19 incidents reported and about half of those have resulted in injury. One particular operator made a series of bad decisions which unfortunately did lead to a fatal pedestrian crash in 2023. However, trends are improving and that there's been no reported incidents involving scooter shares to date this year or any last year. Here's a chart of the years with those incidents and we wanted to put on here also that with incorporation with City Council we did extend the hours. We used to cut them off earlier at night. So we extended the hours and that did not cause an increase in crashes. In fact, you can see here that the peak number of crashes happened in our first full year of service. So that might mean that when they were new, they were more likely to have incidents and now that they've been around for longer that people more used to them, people have ridden them, people are no to watch out for them, and now the statistics are better. We don't think that would necessarily indicate that they will never have an incident again, but they are heading in the right direction. Regarding that curfew, we do have three hours every night that they're not allowed to operate. That's one of the safety features of our program. And we have been told that we're unique. Most cities just have 24-7 operation. But we wanted to have the scooters turn off at about the same time as everybody has to leave the bars at three o'clock in the morning. And from here, I'll turn it over to Sheryl. Thank you. So the latest RFP will be on the alert, but not quite the same as the one that we conducted in 2020, including the same speed limitation of 15 miles an hour for the devices, geofencing capabilities, the requirement for ID scans in in-app quizzes to ensure all writers know what's expected of them before they ride. In order to help address the indemnification challenges, we have had the draft terms and conditions included. They've been enhanced in the agreements from what we expect to bring to council. The results of the latest RFP result in the committee recommending two operators for award, Lyme and Spin, which have equal shares of the allowable fleet size, which is initially 900, which is close to what we have right now. And that allows some flexibility to increase the fleet size as more corals are added. And the proposed right-of-wife fees are consistent with what we have experienced in the past, generally about 250 per scooter per year. Like we had initially two vendors are being recommended, which likely helps keep prices to the consumers down and helps provide people with more options. However, since Lyme has already, the bike share operator, this doesn't necessarily coordinate between three different companies trying to use many of the same spaces, which could be a challenge kind of administratively. A little bit about Lyme, there are the NSTP, as you know, with bike share. The same program manager is expected to oversee both programs, scooters and bikes, and we expect to see a lot more robust community engagement from them with our hire of a junior operations coordinator. Here's a picture of the standing and seated devices with the standing device making up most of the fleet at first. One thing that we really, really like about the new, this device is here is the camera-based sidewalk writing technology, which helps us detect and enforce the no sidewalk writing rules. And they'll couple that with an education program to remind users about sidewalk writing. Lime space rate to the consumer is the same as their bike share rate for consistency, but they'll offer several packages and discounts that reduce the overall cost to the consumer. Lime plans to offer a monthly, what they're calling a first-ride academy, and their access program for low income individuals is really generous at 70% off. This is going to be integrated with the transportation disadvantage program with PSTA where users are automatically enrolled to the line program so that would reduce a barrier to entry for access to the discounted program with line. Spin has been around about as long as shared scooters but the current company structure is younger. They have a presence in several Florida cities, including Tampa. Spin uses an all-in-house staff and is committed to work closely with St. Pete Works for hiring residents of the South St. Petersburg Sierra. Here you can see the seated and the standing scooters, and they'll start with a 70, 30 mix of the devices. So while Lyme uses a camera-based sidewalk writing technology detection, Spin uses telemetric sensors that will detect the difference in how a paved roadway works with a concrete roadway. So the expansion joints. So they have a different technology for the sidewalk writing, but still looks pretty promising. Double writing and wrong way writing are also, the sensors also detect that and encourage just generally safer behavior of the users. The cost per minute is slightly higher than line on spin, but they're offering a local resident discount We have some familiarity with that with our park mobile park mobile program So they they also have multiple options from discounts and even one that has people paying by the distance instead of time Which could help reduce incidents of people riding in a hurry or making haste decisions because they're concerned about payment a minute. So they'll work with local businesses to provide free helmets and their access program is also really generous offering three free 30 minute trips per day. So next steps if this council committee is supportive of continuing to offer shared Scooter staff aims to bring recommendations of a war to full council on May 15. Under the committee reports the current agreement expires on June 14th, 2025. So this concludes our presentation and we can answer any questions that you might have. Committee members, council members, council member Harding. Sure. Thanks for all the work. The cameras are intriguing. First of all, the idea of two different companies. But the cameras are intriguing from the standpoint of accountability and what happens after. But that's not spins away. Is that something that we get stuck on or how do we view cameras versus no cameras or how do that plan to pick who we might go with? And I guess more of the point is that data is safe. Or is it just used for that particular ride? It's used to, it can slow down the device and give their user an alarm that they're doing something wrong, and it also will send that information back to the company so that that person can be addressed. And just like proper parking, all the companies will have a progressive discipline, if you will, where they get a warning, they can get a fine, they can get kicked out so they can never use the system again. So it should impact behavior immediately, and then also a follow-up with those users. And we were told that the telemetric base, or the center base, is 95 It's gonna be a learning experience. I think for us to see which one works better the cameras or the other sensors But in the past the only thing that we've had experience with For that is GPS based When you have as many buildings as we do downtown, you know GPS isn't always accurate. So we're looking forward to trying new technologies to reduce and eliminate the sidewalk riding. Thanks, Evan. Safety and the future of safety. Either company address where the industry is going in terms of it's a scooter, that's what it is. But any innovations in safety, it won't work unless you have both hands on the handlebars kind of thing. Is there anything new coming down to the piper or is anything one company is doing better than the other or in the industry? Good question. There's a few things. I know Cheryl picked up on the swept handlebars as an improvement in how writers will feel and be more stable on the device and be able to maneuver, reduce crashes that way. One of the things that we didn't talk about but that spin is offering that I've wondered about for years is detecting when there's more than one person standing on the device. And that's maybe the third problem. You've got the improper parking sidewalk riding, third problem we see not too often, but sometimes is a second person on the device. And especially when that second person is a child that the adult is driving, I've seen that a few times and really, really just like that. So I'm looking forward to seeing that. The industry definitely is improving in its technology, the batteries are getting better, but as far as safety goes, those are a couple things that I've noticed you have more to go. Lime has a phone holder on their devices too, so that helps keep your hands where they need to be. Spin on their seated model has turn indicators so that you don't even have to move your hand to signal your turn. So there's a couple of different technologies that are incorporated in these devices. I think that will. There are new ones, but they are definitely safety benefits. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Charlotte. Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Great. Councilwoman Bridgeschool. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you're doing on this. I know from being with you, I'm working on scooter regulations from the beginning. It's great to see that we're at this place right now. So especially great to see how the safety has improved, you know, regarding, you know, how we're trending. I mean, going a year over a year now, without that is really impressive. I think the accidents and the incidents that we saw at the beginning, I mean there's a learning curve and a lot of the sidewalk writing that we see is also a learning curve because as you pointed out there are other cities that actually encourage or require sidewalk writing. So if you have someone who has recently moved here or is visiting, they may not know that our rules are different. So you have to take that into consideration as well. I like to see, I like seeing that we will finally have a seated scooter option again. That tends to be much more desirable for, you know, a good number of our residents who otherwise might be a little bit nervous about trying it. And I've done boats and I see the benefits of boats, especially if you're using it to go to publics and you can put this stuff in the basket. But then like being seated you have a little bit more control with your center of gravity being more focused. So anyway, I love that idea. It's really interesting to see how the technology is moving forward to increase safety and to help enforce those regulations that lead to safer practices. The line access I wanted to ask you about that is does that program apply to the e-bikes as well? It's modeled after the same one. So they are for 70% discount. Right now on the bike share, they'll offer that 70% discount for scooters. And then they'll automatically enroll everybody. Yeah. So it'll go across the different programs. Okay, great. And then it looks like spin is saying that they'll have an all local in-house team. One of the issues that we looked at at the beginning was the fact that some companies had independent contractors and sort of a very loosely defined operational system with their labor and the companies that we contracted with back then both had in-house teams. So they were all employees of the company. Is that the case with this? It looks like spin is, it looks like Lyme is going to try to get there. Tell me what that looks like. So yeah good good point. Spin has made that commitment and Lyme uses a combination of in-house staff and another company that they subcontract with. So they're not necessarily like gig workers that we saw in the industry six years ago or so but they do use a subcontractor. They have been also for bike share though and we haven't seen any problems with it so I think when it came to evaluating the proposals that's been likely got some extra points for that versus others but so far it hasn't been an issue for the bike share. Okay. Good. I'm glad. Oh, I also found it interesting that the incidents have gone down since extending to 2 a.m. where we wanted to watch it closely to make sure that it didn't go in the wrong direction. I have no idea if there's a relationship there, but adding two hours, but then a number of incidents going down and being eliminated was very interesting to me. I also appreciate the data sharing that Sven is offering for PSTA. I think that's really important. Is lime looking at doing that as well. Yes. Okay, great. That kind of goes back to what I talked about with the universal basic mobility idea. Part of that is being able to gather that data so that we can see what a person's transportation diet looks like and be able to adjust and improve what we offer to better meet people's needs in terms of getting around. So this actually solves that for us and I can't wait to see what that looks like as we get going with it. I think that's all I have for now. Thank you so much for the work on this. I just always appreciate the amount of attention you give to making sure that we get it right. that you are speaking nationally on this and inspiring other cities to do it our way, it really says a lot. It says a lot about your work and your leadership. So thank you, thank you, Chair. Great, Council Member Goubert. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation this morning. As Council Member Druskel said, she and I were the only two on council at the time when we went through this and you know there was a lot of public input and kind of a little bit of controversy around it if you will. And I think you know just like with any new program especially when you have vendors involved in public usage involved I think when you first start something you're always going to see a bit of an adjustment period. And I think that's what we see here in the slide from 2021. But I think technology advances just people feeling more comfortable with utilizing them, us feeling more comfortable with enforcement. I think all of that really has shown its success. And certainly, we don't want to minimize the incidents that have happened, but I think that we are certainly on the right trajectory to doing this the right way. So I just want to applaud all of you, legal team, and your staff for what you have done to implement. What I think is a very responsible scooter share program. And obviously with your national recognition, it has been proven. So I did want to quickly just ask if I could share for Chief Gilliam to come up and maybe talk a little bit about the enforcement piece of it. I'd love to hear a little bit about that. I think that that's probably important just for the public to kind of hear a little bit about PDs Or whoever would like to speak on it a little bit about PDs You know experience and and what you all feel like you know from your point of view sure the ones out there Thank you good morning to everyone. Thank you So Evan and his group first of all they did a great job of of implementation, they usually partner with us when they know something like this will impact law enforcement. So really applaud them in their efforts. I think you all spoke to some of the facts, which are when it first rolled out, we were skeptical. But like anything else, I think what's our citizens became acclimated to it. We see those incidents decrease almost to a nonexistence level and a lot of that is enforcement warnings. I think our community has gotten used to scooters been around I think it's kind of led to our citizens driving more cautiously right because everyone's looking around for them.ade, he's really the expert in terms of our enforcement. We saw a lot of him to speak to it. And talk about the differences between privately owned scooters and the ones that we contract with. Very important, yes. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Mike Shade. I'm the Sergeant for the traffic section for the police department. Initially when the program came out, like you all said, we had to learn and curve. We did some education operations. We had a couple incidents, unfortunately. We had the fatality crash that happened. After that, we did a significant enforcement operations after that to try to get people on board. And we really have seen the results of that. We don't have the rental scooter problem that we had when the program first started. We definitely see a lot more privately owned scooters where people are committing violations and they can go a lot faster than the city owned ones which makes it even more dangerous. So we really have seen an improvement in the users of the city rented scooters doing the right thing. It's pretty much non-existent now. It happens, but it's not where it was at the beginning of the program. So what I'm hearing is maybe an opportunity as we refresh our agreements and we bring on a new operator that maybe we could do a PSA, just kind of out to the public about scooter responsibility. You know, certainly I think that usage meet tick up a little bit in the summer when kids are out of school and they're looking for more things to do. So I would love to see us do some sort of marketing campaign around that. just so not only to your point, we are collecting those who are renting the city-owned facilities, but we're also with their private usage. I think that could be a good opportunity to hopefully keep people safe through the summer months but thank both of you for everything in your team. I know it must be an interesting challenge you know trying to keep up with all the different modes of transit that we have going. But as a multimodal city, I think it's important that we continue to move down this path. And so I just want to thank both of you for everything you do. Thank you. Yeah. I have a question for legal about the timely compliance with requirements to identify the city when claims arise. So this is something that has is pointed out as a challenge. We're now negotiating new contracts. What is that going to look like in the new contracts? How are we going to be able to do better about making sure the city is in depinified? So I can talk to you about the contracts and then can can talk to you about what good is the contract? Yeah, right. Which I think we've learned in real time, right? Yeah. So the contracts that we have were very strong. What we are doing with the new contracts is adding a provision for liquidated damages for failure to comply with the requirements to indemnify. So it would be if there's a failure to timely defend or a failure to indemnify or if the operator tries to get attorney's fees from the city there would be a $10,000 liquidated damages per claim. So each time that happens there would be liquidated damages of $10,000. So I can talk about the fact that we already have really good terms of conditions. And I'm excited for this. Right. So good morning, everybody. Obviously, I'm in the litigation department, along with two other lawyers in our office. And we've had that four significant cases involving scooters. Where what we do, we get a case and we have a contract previously. We send a request that the scooter company defended and demnify the city as a contractor requires. Normally in those situations when there's a contract people just pick it up, do a pass-off on the case and that's the end of it. Virtually all of our scooter cases we've gotten pushed back and we we've had to file third party complaints across claims against scooter companies that litigate, we've had to take depositions of scooter company representatives. And we've actually spent more time litigating the issue of the adeptification than we have the actual injuries that a plaintiff sustained. Now I will add that we haven't had any new ones in the last That's probably been a year and a half or so since we've seen a new scooter case of that nature But that has been problematic. We thought we had a good contract and if somebody's not gonna comply It's just legal fights or legal fights and they're going on so that's that's the short version. Okay, very good Well, it's good to hear that there is gonna be a little bit more tighter language around the liquidated damages because I very much remember the conversations early on about this piece of the contract. And I think we felt that, okay, like this is as protected as we can be, but then to see it actually play out over five years, you know, just to kind of understand what more from a legal standpoint we can do. So thank you for trying to be prudent, recognizing that lawsuits will happen regardless of what we try to do, right? So, all right. Well, thank you for that. I just have a couple more questions specific to kind of the operations side. So in the RFP, Evan, it was asked about age ID scans. Is that going to be something that both providers will utilize? Yes, that's been a part of the program and it will continue. Okay, and 16 is the age, right? 18. 18, 18. You couldn't remember that part. Okay. All right. So we hope by 18 that they have a idea of some sort that they can scan. So, and it has to be a state of Florida ID, just like a regular. It doesn't have to be a driver's license, but. It could be an outside. A little Florida. Okay. So some sort of state ID. Age verification. Got it. Okay. It's not just a RU18 to drive click, right? Right. Okay. Now, one of the things when I read through the presentation that, you know, if I'm putting my, you know, I'm a writer and I'm looking at this, it's kind of confusing as to the different operators and their different rates and all of that. I'm sure you guys have worked really hard to try to kind of bring them more aligned. Is there any more room for alignment in their fees and discounts and things like that? Because if I'm gonna be a writer, it's a little confusing to see who has the better discounts and all of that. So what does that look like? We could have those discussions. What our approach has been that, especially if you have more than one operator, you can have competition and hopefully keep down the prices. And we kind of envision that individual users will have their favorite company. They probably won't switch between the two. Based on app preference and user preference and things like that more so than the rate necessarily. Right, I mean they're similar. It's probably if they already have the app on their phone, you know, line might have a little bit of an advantage here because of that with the bike share But we don't see nearly as many rides on bike shares. We do scooters Now spends in Tampa, so I think probably a lot of people on St. Pete probably have that app on their phone and just Give people like options and I don't know if it's necessary to make them exactly the same. We haven't been like overly controlling of the rate, but as we look at the different companies that was part of the evaluation process. So it's a good question. I don't know if we want to force them to be the same. Yeah, and I don't expect them to be, you know, like, completely identical, because I do support the competition piece of that. I'm just thinking simplify a bit. Now on your slide, the line for the rates, it says additional discounts could be offered based on certain conditions. What are certain conditions? So they had a couple in there where like if they could offer air quality days or if the air quality was not so great they could offer a discount that day. They offered different discounts to different events. Last year they did line to the polls so they offered free rides if you're going to a polling facility and we ended up putting more bike racks and kind of introducing hubs at those polling locations So it's those kinds of different Opportunities that they that they have available to us and if you're a subscriber to lime and you have you know Your notifications turned on from your app and it is a day where they're doing you know special rates or something Would the app notify the user that today you could get free rides to, I don't know, a festival at the Vanuay or something like that. I think that's generally how it's handled. Okay, all right, very good. And then my last question, I have to ask it. I think I always ask it when we talk about scooters or bike share, is there any plans to expand at this point in time and to other parts of the city? Good question. I think we can answer that with twofold. One is that we are most of the way through designing an additional, how many crowds? 18 or the additional crowds? The additional crowds, there's probably about 18, but it's going to increase capacity by about 200. but those are going to go a little farther west, probably not out into the west crowds. The additional crowds, there's probably about 18os, but it's gonna increase capacity by about 200, but those are gonna go a little farther west, probably not out into the west end and up to the north. So we do have some expansion planned right now. We have recently expanded on the Pinellas Trail. We expanded bike share westward along the trail. I think we could look at that with scooters. But we also have a study that's going to be paid for primarily by four panelists to look at our micro-mobility ordinance as a whole and options to expand and see if there's even a possibility to do remote operations like as far as the government and the district or Carylon. And in the past, it's been a little bit tough for the operators to spread out that for, but it is something we're looking to try to do. Okay, well I think you know I'm very much in support of us expanding, especially up to the north side. So please continue to keep us updated on that. And as you know those new corrals and new opportunities, I think we add that on to our summer PSA, right? That not only do we have new providers, but we also are expanding. I think that's a good message for people So we don't want to stay status quo. All right legal. Do we need a motion to move this upstairs? It's not really an action item. Are you just looking more for feedback and support? Well, we had a couple of paths forward. One would be, you know, we really wanted to get direction. Which I think we've heard from Council that we do want to continue offering this. But we do have the deadline of the current agreement coming up pretty soon. So one option would be this committee to request approval by the full council at the committee report next week. That can come out of these committees. The other would be if we go through the normal process and turn it in two weeks early, then that would be June 5th. Oh yeah, that's close. That's close. So I'll move approval that this be added to the committee report for next week's council meeting. Okay, great. Thank you, Chair. We have council busher handouts. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for the update. It's a great update. Very thorough. I'm gonna focus just on two things. Number one, the timely compliance with the indemnity agreements that these companies have and enforcement. So for legal and can, I ask for the complaints, the lawsuits that have been filed. And part of the reason is because when companies do submit for request for proposals to be picked, they make agreements. And they make agreements under our contract. And we have had companies that we have picked and they are not time we can find with these agreements that they have made. So can you tell us which are the biggest violators here that we have had problems with? The biggest problem we've had is with VO ride. The razor has been an issue also. The VO ride has been the biggest problem. Okay. And at the end of the day, what happens when they don't abide by the agreements to timely defend or indemnify? Well, we're at a situation where we have to bring them into the lawsuit because they're not a party. And so that can usually happen, form a third party complaint, they get brought in. We start with a demand. Right. And we give them a time period and they tell us they need to evaluate some more information. We do that whole dance in a variable, you know. And we're running out of time because under our civil procedure rules things are on a more rapid pace these days. So we really have to get into the, get the end of the litigation quicker. And then, and then at that point, they're a part of the case and they're going going to be at the trial. They'll be one of the named parties. None of the cases have gone to trial yet. I had one particular case that went to an arbitration. Interestingly enough, we zeroed the plaintiff at the arbitration, which was a pretty nice win. However, the arbitrator zeroed us in terms of being able to collect from VRI due to some contractual issues on that one. Whole case went away. Nobody got anything. I think Mr. Patner had a case involving a corral. There was a death due to an obstruction issue. And so there are a number of scooter companies in that. I believe he actually got paid some money from VRI because we took all the way to the mat in terms of them violating the contract and demanded attorney's fees. We were able to get money back on that one. So that's an example of the things that can happen on this. Well, I just wanted to be clear and on the record in a public meeting that we will be enforcing our agreements with these companies if there are no identification provisions and they're not doing what they're supposed to do, that's not going to happen anymore. And I'm glad to hear that we're going to have the liquid data damages provision in the contracts because at the end of the day they want to do business and this is part of the bargain and they should be upholding their part of the bargain. Right, and the wheel of the bargain takes that issue seriously. And that's why we don't ignore this. That's why we bring them into the complaint. Trying to force it. OK. Well, I appreciate that. And in terms of enforcement, Sergeant Shay, and if you can just talk a little bit about, I know there was a conversation, and you mentioned that there were warnings But what I want to find out first of all we have ordinances that people have to abide by whether they're privately owned scooters, right correct or part of our scooter share Perfect correct and they are not supposed to be going over the maximum speed of 50 miles per hour and every other ordinance provision that applies to scooters. How many people have we cited for violations? So for the rental? For any violations of, they're going over 50 miles per hour, let's say. So for the rental side, they can't go over the 15, but the other types of ordinances since the program started We're probably in the about a hundred citations or notices to appear area For the privately owned we're probably a couple hundred in just the past year and where are those problems? The privately owned it's pretty much citywide We're're seeing them on 34th Street. We see my Gandhi Boulevard out towards the bridge. So it the privately owned is an issue city wide. Okay. And what is the citation? Is it the speeding that you give the mo I mean what is range from a series of things. We have scooters that are going so fast that we can actually cite them as being an unregistered motor vehicle. Wow. As they're going, they're doing 40, 5 miles. Absolutely. How fast? They can get up to over 40 miles an hour on these scooters. We've had close to 50 mile an hour. And where is this? Those were pretty much on 34th Street that we saw those, but they definitely happened. OK. So it can range from speeding to an unregistered motor vehicle and anything in between. They technically would need to have a driver's license because they're driving a motor vehicle. Even though it's electric, it's still considered a motor vehicle because of the speed it's going. They need to have a driver's license. They need to have a registered everything. Well, good. So for the public to understand this, so that way we're putting out our own PSA message here, they need to make sure that they are complying with our ordinances because we are enforcing. It's not just warnings that we're giving. Correct, not at this point. No. At the beginning of the program, we were doing educational efforts, but we're way beyond that at this point. It's 99% enforcement. And mostly it's for the safety of the writer. Absolutely. And in the general public. The general public? Obviously. Of course. The person that was killed in 23 was not on a scooter or an app. That's right. Was walking along on the sidewalk. And I'm glad you mentioned that. I want to talk a little bit about that. So when that incident happened, that was forwarded to the State Attorney's Office, correct? OK. So could you just explain a little bit just so people that are watching it or interested in it what What the process is, so they understand what happened with that? So when the incident occurred, we investigated it just like we would a normal fatality crash or a serious bodily injury crash. And when we determined that we had enough probable cause to present it to the State Attorney's Office, we did. They made their decision and that's where that stood. But in that particular case, the writer did everything wrong that they could possibly do on the sidewalk. They were writing tandem. They were using a cell phone. There were three hands on the steering arm of the scooter so that they didn't have the ability to take a piece of action because they were kind of counteracting each other. So everything went wrong in that case. And we investigated it just like a regular fatality crash. Just to do forward. So I believe Evan or Cheryl spoke to it earlier about the the future technologies terms of tandem riding. So you heard Sergeant Shage's speak to that fatality. There were two on top of the vehicle, on top of the scooter when that occurred, which we believe had some sort of an impact as it relates to that tragedy. So these technologies are definitely something that we're interested in in terms of making this form of transportation safer. Also when Sergeant State spoke about the 100 citations or so that we've issued as an agency on a weekly basis, we issue anywhere between 300 to about 500 citations each week. So just to put that into contact in terms of the citations related to this specific violation and all the citations that we issue on a weekly basis. Good, good. Well, I'm glad to hear that. You know, I understand that when it comes to driving at a reckless standard and for those out there, to meet the legal criteria to make the action criminal. There is civil liability, which there's a pending lawsuit and that's going to work out in the civil courts. And then there's criminal liability, which has to be willful and want in this regard for someone's personal safety. I think that that's where the challenge comes we've seen it happen with bicyclists that have been killed while driving on crosswalks in broad daylight. And it causes challenges that are outside of our scope of controlling because of how the law is. So I want people to understand that doesn't mean that there won't be consequences to those drivers. You're just not criminal consequences, but they are going through the civil system. Thank you so much for providing the update. Thank you, Chair. Great. Council Member Driscoll. Thank you. My questions are more for Evidence Cheryl, but thank you so much for that input. The, um, just real quick on the on the rate structure, the first two operators that we contracted with in the beginning, they had different rates too and it was a slight difference, similar to what we see here. Did you, I don't recall hearing about or having any issues with that. One was a little more expensive than the other. But the more expensive one was the one that had the seat option. They were closed before and I think that going forward they're pretty close. I don't know if it'll make a big difference to folks. But if they really price conscious like I don't know seeing the two gas stations on the corner and one's three cents less I might go for the one that's three cents. Yeah. Okay and then the the streets that you put the corrals on is it streets that either It's remind me, so it's a street that has a bike lane. Or it's Remind me so it's a street that has a bike lane or is 30 or 35 miles per hour or less under 30 under 35 miles an hour So our regulations are that they can only be used on roads streets that are under 35 miles an hour If they're going to be in the street or they have to be in the bike lane. So some of our bike lanes are in roadways that are 40 miles an hour, those kinds of things. So we really are very intentional about where we place the corrals to make sure that people can legally ride to them and ride from them. And generally locating most of our corrals on the street level versus the sidewalk level because once they start on the sidewalk they'll never get off the sidewalk. So we try really hard not to put them there unless it's just kind of a gaping hole in the network where we know that there are definitely destinations that we need to serve. So and we've been working to kind of move a lot of our corals off the sidewalk onto the street level to, again, kind of encourage, set the platform that people can do things right. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And when you have those criteria, then you go out and try to find the spots. It can be a little bit tricky, but it sounds like you're still finding ways to expand. So thank you so much for that. Regarding the, you mentioned earlier that spin is still working on how that local discount is going to happen. Or we have to work with them. Actually, I read it. I don't think you mentioned it. I'm sorry. I think it was in here that they are looking for a way that they can provide a discount for all same-keep residents. And I'm wondering if they can't do something on their own. We have that way that you can sign up to have your fees waived for a parking mobile. And I wonder if we can, is that done through us or is that done through park mobile? That's done through park mobile and I imagine this would be done through spin exactly how that's done. I don't know yet. Okay. It would work with them to figure it out. Yeah. If they do have that, I mean, I think part of the education is on scooter safety. The other is all the different ways that you can pay less and the different passes that are available and everything. So there's some good education that should come out of that too. And I will say quickly we meet with marketing once per year and do like an annual forecast of what, or they meet with all departments and ask what do you think you have coming up in the next year they might need help with? And this was one of the topics that we said. So what you all talked about earlier for help from marketing on this as we transition in the summer, we do plan on working with them on that. Okay, great. And then finally, I've been reading for a while about how there are some other cities, mostly larger ones, more dense cities than us, that are addressing the issue of fires that are caused by, and we're getting, I'm going to end up more personally owned, power, micro mobility devices like scooters and more. And they are making free charging stations available out there. And you're usually ahead of me on this stuff. So you you probably heard about this. But I wonder if not today, but as we look at this and as this type of mobility becomes more and more prevalent, more and more popular and we are becoming more dense, we have more people who may not have a car, but they have a scooter that they bring into their apartment and they are charging it. There could be an opportunity to look at this at some point, where those spots might be compatible with the routes and it could help us to communicate better and communicate better safety messaging with those private owners of scooters. Any thoughts on that? So thank you for the question. Yeah, I definitely think there's work to be done in that space in that realm. We've got a couple of avenues that we can run it through our Complete Streets Committee because Fire Rescue is a part of that and they would definitely be a key stakeholder for us as we engage on that topic. The other idea that I would mention is that the conference at Elizabeth and I are speaking at on the program, we're co-presenting and the other presenter is a researcher and she has done research currently on what she's presenting on is the research on the relative risk between an electric bicycle, a pedal bicycle, a scooter, like what's the different and risk type. So I thought that was pretty fascinating.. So looking forward to her presentation, but when we last talked to her, she started talking about the fire issues and challenges and those kinds of things. So her next foray, I believe will be in that area there. So we'll be definitely staying in touch with that co-presenter to kind of find out what her research is showing so that we can use some make some real data-informed decisions. Yeah, that's awesome. It's not a problem here yet. No. But... presenter to kind of find out what her research is showing so that we can use some, make some real data and form decisions. Yeah, that's awesome. It's not a problem here yet. No. But I think the proactive approach is, is something that we can easily model after another city. It's just about finding the money or a great vendor who can provide them. So I look forward to learning more as you learn more. Right, thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Mourdin. Thank you, Chair. I mean, you touched on it earlier, but just for information, will you hit the revenue side? How we get it or how it comes to us, are we in line with other cities and other, or head or behind of how these contracts work? And then where's the, where do the funds go? What do we do with it? Yes, so we've been told by several operators that were on the high end. And I think our research has proven that we charge more than most cities. So for the privileged operator where we are getting a ton of rides, they're willing to pay that. And so we're on the high end, on rent, if you will. And what we do with that is it turns out to be approximately a quarter million dollars a year. And we first we pay in expenses we have like when we build new crowds will pay for that out of the revenue. And then the excess revenue which is approximately $200,000 per year, we pull that into our complete streets program and we build new bike lanes or we build a new crosswalk and we really like that virtuous cycle of creating an environment that makes scooter riding more attractive and safer but also the other modes at the same time so that could help us generate more scooter revenue and then we get to invest more back into the the same thing. So we thought that that was creative and appreciated that I'm sure some other cities just pull that money into the overall budget and it gets spent through the regular priority process, which is where most of our budget comes from. But having that just dedicated back to our department is something we really appreciate here. That's what I was hoping for. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Council member of Rific Sanders. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Hi, Ed. Nice to see you. How are you? So I have a couple of quick questions and a statement. I see that we're doing 450 per company with these scooters. When are you going to do first assessment in regards to popularity? As to, for example, if we see that most of our riders prefer spin over line, would we consider adjusting those numbers to accommodate that request? I think we could, if there's a large difference If there's a large difference, then perhaps the company that's getting a whole lot more rides deserves more crowd space. But I would anticipate that there'll be similar. Off the bat we've made a commitment 50-50, but we could adjust that in the future if the numbers weren't. And the reason why I asked that is because the spin scooters, they have the bikes, I mean the phone holder, they have the baskets, they're a little bit more accommodating than the line scooters. And I do like and I will stay for the spin scooters, they have more lighting. I don'll see lighting on the, if I'm driving, and that's one of my personal issues, and I see them and now that we extend it the hours later at night, visibility is important to me. Just like a bicycle rider. We have reflectors on wheels, and I didn't see that on that, but the spin scooters actually have the headlights in the brake lights. Is that the same for the lime scooters? They might be a little bit different, but they're all required to meet the minimum state standards. So they will have a front light and they will have a rear light. In lime as well. Okay, because I was looking at it and I didn't see that one. The 330-minute rise, is that per rider on the spin bikes? Yes, it's been scooters. I'm sorry, I'm thinking per individual per day. So with that being said, I know that Lyme has already spoken in support of working with PSTA, but with spin it says that the residents enrolled in any local state and federal benefits program would also have that. So that would also include TOD, right? Yes. So they pretty much have that. And another quick one, and I don't know if our police officers want to answer from their seats. But we have helmets. School of helmets are, do we only need to distribute bike helmets? We have, oh, the companies will give away for some scooters, but I'll let them talk about a city program. Because I see that that is a great partnership in giving the helmets. But I thought as a police department, we also have it's primarily the bicycle helmets. Just primarily bikes. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we were covering all of these. Certainly wouldn't wouldn't not hand out a helmet for a person on a scooter Okay, but it's primarily for the Thank you Anyone else Okay, I'll go So the first thing that came to my mind and thank you for all the information this far is I could be mistaken. It's been a few years since I wrote a scooter. But I'm pretty sure like in your in the terms and agreements in there it says like you should wear a helmet or you're required to wear a helmet or something. And so you mentioned Miami Dade that but us not is that the difference between them having it in their terms and versus the city requiring it is that we encourage helmet writing whether you're riding a scooter or riding a bike but it's it's not required by St. Petersburg it's not required by state law and it's not required by very many cities, but Miami did have that requirement. I just, yeah, I couldn't remember if it said like required or just like recommended, but we require them to have a helmet promotion plan. So we have to require them to have a plan in place to promote helmet use, but not necessarily require. So that's might have been the requirement that you might have seen. Okay, yeah. I don't think I've ever seen anyone wear a helmet on it. But, you know, I just made note of it because you said Miami-Dade was. And then, you know, I think we touched on this a little bit. But I'd like to make a little more explicit. just to compare us into the bike share program. And it sounded like usage came up and that these are much more popular than the bikes. Is that a one-to-one comparison? Are the bikes just as available? People just tend to prefer the scooters more. We do have more scooters on the road, so there's more exposure there, but we've always found, and we've heard that in other markets, it's the same, where there's a lot less, but many fewer people that are riding the bikes, even though we were really happy to bring forward electric assist bikes, we thought that that would help them compete with the scooters. And it helps compete, but it's still very different usage with a lot higher on the scooters than the bikes. Okay. What about a safety comparison with the two between bikes and the scooters? Good question Here I'm not aware of any incidents with shared bikes and As we went over we have had incidents with shared scooters. So some of that could be The shared numbers of trips, but it also could be brighter behavior. I don't think I've ever seen a bike share bike being written on the sidewalk, but I have seen some scooter share on the sidewalk. And generally speaking, on a bike you're up a little bit higher. So if you do get hit say, hit by a car, you have a better outcome on a bike than on a scooter or on foot usually. So those are a few observations. Okay. And then the last thing I have here is just the difference between the seated and the standing. Like do we see, what's the difference in usage? Was there any safety differences? Just if y'all could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. From what we've seen in the market, our ridership on the split on rides tends to be that it mirrors the availability of the devices. So I don't know that the seated ones are more popular than the standing ones. I think people choose them for different reasons. People prefer seated ones if people would prefer to stand. So it just depends. But the split on the ride tends to be, it matches the availability of the devices. We'd, I think, just from our perspective, wanted to make sure we were providing options to people. So regardless of your, you know, what your choice is or something available for you and it's predictable. You know where to find it. If you just go to the car out, you'll probably find several different options. You can find find what you need, what you like. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Okay. Last thing I'll say is, is yet literally yesterday I was eating dinner at a restaurant on fourth street and I looked outside and a scooter a man on a scooter went past going north on fourth street at least 40 miles per hour. I was like stunned when I saw it. Also, like I just can't believe people feel comfortable doing that. I don't personally, but it was very interesting to see, I'm very interested to hear about how, like the multitude of rules that you're breaking, whenever you do something like that. So I hope people are aware of that and act accordingly. But that's all I had, everyone else asks, thorough questions. We have a motion on the floor. So I'll ask all committee members. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. So I'll let you all do with that what you will. And I'll say you know we managed to finish a couple minutes early today. So I'm very grateful for everyone for their participation. Our next meeting is June 12th, 2025. You'll see soon what the topic will be. We're trying to get a couple of things ready for us. If we think we have time, there's nothing else for the good of the group. Oh yeah, go ahead. I'm so sorry. I almost forgot. I wanted to go back to the referral list real quick. I mentioned earlier in the meeting, the Universal Basic Mobility idea and how the data collection that we're going to be getting is, kind of helps meet one of the goals of Universal Basic Mobility. Also, as I've been working with Evan and Cheryl and PSJA and looking at the benefits of a program versus what we already offer, what we realize is that we already have real connectivity and real accessibility in terms of financial like ability and or like what was I going to say? Like the discounts and the free rides, all of that with PSTA. We have discounts for scooters and e-bikes. There's a lot that we have. And so creating a program, there aren't that many benefits left that this that would be met by this. What we really need is better marketing of what we already have. That's kind of the conclusion that we came to. And so I wanted to just explain that that after looking at it further, we determined that we already have some great things going on. We just need to make sure that more people know about it. And so we've talked a little bit with marketing to see if they can come up with something. PSCA is willing to help. And I think we could kind of let that go. And, you know, I'll just continue to have conversations about how to get better communication out there on what we offer. So, in light of that, I'd like to make a motion to remove the universal basic mobility item from the referral list. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that update. I was like that was one thing that I was like that was getting filtered up the list. And one thing I'll add because we don't get to talk about this outside of here is I I can't remember if it was you, Evan, that I talked to about it, or someone else, but this got brought up in the, or maybe it was in a meeting so we've already had this conversation, but I can't remember. In the context of like the UBI stuff, someone brought up like a program that other cities have, I think it was Chicago, that like if you get a library card, if you get a transit pass, like they're all connected, it's all one card. I didn't know if that was going to be a part of the conversation. And I can't remember if it was you, I have that conversation with. I cannot remember who I did. It might have been Whit as well. It might have come up at the original referral. OK. Yeah, maybe they'll call it, but that is something. You've not met up yet. No, but I love the idea and that's something that would be great to bring up with PSTA, for instance, because they have their, you know, their pass. And that could, I don't know what that kind of network would look like, but an exploration of that would be good, but not limited to universal basic mobility. I just feel like at this point, you know, UBM is a solution in search of a problem and it's duplicating the solutions that we already have in place and that's why I'm'm very happy to report that this is one that we don't have to find money to create. Okay, sounds good. Yeah, I just thought I'd mention it since we don't get another opportunity. I think it was even broader than that. It was like a city card and like everything that happened in the city was through one card. So just figured I'd mention it to everybody and I'll let people look into that as they have as they please but okay having said that there is a motion committee members all those approval all those in favor all right great motion passes that will be removed from the referral list and anything else okay all right thank right. Thank you all so much. Our next meeting is June 12, 2025. We'll call the May 8th Housing Langed Transportation Committee adjourned. I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I'm just going to say, I you you you