November 20, 2022
Amidst a parking crisis on Eastern Michigan University’s campus, a partnership was formed to provide quick transportation across campus without the hindrance of congested traffic and parking lots.
50 new orange and black electric scooters were peppered around EMU’s campus, particularly around dorm hall hubs during the night on September 19th for use by any person with a credit card. The pay-per-minute platform Spin began their first rollout of dockless electric scooters in 2018 in Seattle, Washington joining other growing companies and communities to change transportation in many major US cities and around the world.
Although e-scooters are a new addition to Eastern Michigan University’s campus, they are not a new phenomenon. After leaving executive positions at transportation services Uber and Lyft, Travis VanderZanden founded the first company dedicated to electric scooters Bird on September 1, 2017. The California based company launched the first fleet of 750 dockless scooters onto the sidewalks of Santa Monica and was met with confusion from the unsuspecting community. Meelad Mashaw, a blogger based in the beachfront city wrote in a post a few weeks after the scooters were released about his wariness he felt when he first saw a user drop off their scooter on the sidewalk while waiting for a ride. Naturally, Meelad thought the scooter belonged to them, and kept a sideways eye on the lockless vehicle until he was picked up and the lone scooter left his mind.
Concerns of theft dissolved as communities became familiar with the dockless scooters and both excitement and scorn took its place. 153 cities now host dockless electric scooters according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and for many students, cutting travel time can be a major contributing factor in class attendance. EMU sophomore and resident Jordan Boyd accepted the scooters into his habits having been used to their presence in Detroit where he is from.
“When I’m running late to my morning lectures, I’ll hop on a scooter and get there in less than half the time,” Boyd said.
EMU Engage, an app forum exclusive to EMU students and faculty, became the host for questions about the new scooters and warnings from the first tryers and experienced users. A thread with over 20 likes, which exceed the typical 3-12 typical on the app shared tips about avoiding cracks in the sidewalk but not jumping off if a collision happens because of the high speed most users will be traveling, which is up to 15 mph. A few students retold their stories of falling off Spin scooters on the universities forum, one thanking the anonymous passersby for calling authorities and helping her up when she fell off the fast moving scooter and received a concussion.
Safety is the most commonly cited concern from e-scooter pessimists both in communities that already have agreements and for voters who want to repel them from their streets and sidewalks. According to a 2021 report by the US Consumer Product Safety Commision, an estimated 7,700 emergency department visits in 2017 skyrocketed to 42,200 in 2021 using e-scooters. They guess that around 28% of those visits were a result from dockless scooters, but admit that self reporting that information to hospital staff may be unreliable. Plus, smaller bumps and bruises not treated by medical staff go under the radar of reporting.
Cost is also a repellent for students. Spin charges $1 plus 39 cents per minute, while their competitor Bird in neighboring cities like Detroit who hosts both companies boasts 15 cent per minute rides plus the dollar starting cost. Students like Marq Stafford, a junior living on Eastern’s campus, appreciate the convenience these scooters offer, but ultimately it is not worth the hassle. “I’ve thought about using them but the cost for it has never outweighed just walking to class” Marq said.
Detroit saw the first fleet of dockless scooters in Michigan after Bird struck a deal in the city in July of 2018. The deal limited the number of units to 300 from each company to both avoid oversaturating the market and to measure the effects and concerns brought on by the scooters. By October of the same year, the contract was revised to allow 400 scooters to be deployed and compliance of more companies to join the market.
Today, Detroit is home to hundreds of scooters from 5 competing companies, but some cities never received the luxury of foresight to the scooter wave. Some electric scooter companies, notoriously Bird, have expanded their product’s audience through asking for forgiveness instead of permission from the cities they infiltrate, which makes it difficult to track how many scooters are deployed across US cities.
Ann Arbor experienced a Bird dump around September 7, 2018 when MLive first reported sightings of the scooters on the University of Michigan campus, and Twitter represented a mixed bag of positive and negative reactions. The campus was part of a greater call to action from Bird who announced on the company’s platform Bird Cities Blog that 150 large public universities and smaller private colleges will unknowingly take part in the Bird University Pop-Up Tour to provide cheaper and more eco-friendly transportation service for students. While some students were becoming used to their convenience, City and university officials alike were grappling with the sudden micro mobility addition.
“The Bird scooter company did not seek permission from U of M regarding the company’s deployment of scooters in Ann Arbor. That appears to be the company’s approach: not seeking permission in advance.” stated U-M Spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald.
While drafting plans to safely integrate the scooters and 2 weeks after the scooters appeared, the city confirmed that over 2 dozen scooters were impounded after being parked in places that impeded traffic, usually on sidewalks. Bird was one option in the growing dockless scooter market, so by 2019 Ann Arbor was shopping around for a new partnership and the Ford acquired business Spin seemed to fit their bill perfectly. Bird was officially ditched in favor of Spin in May of 2019, City Administrator Howard Lazarus said a few weeks before the new company’s rollout “Spin chooses to work with us. Bird came and worked in spite of us.”
KaseyDeschler.com 