Charlotte’s dangerous paralysis on scooters
Last month, the Charlotte City Council passed a set of traffic-calming measures designed to make streets safer in Charlotte neighborhoods. Communities wanted those changes. Pedestrians and bicyclists needed them. It was smart, sensible municipal governing.
Why can’t Charlotte do the same with electric scooters? They’re a threat to safety on our city’s streets, just as they are in cities across North Carolina and the country. Yet unlike Charlotte, council members in other cities have gone beyond recognizing that problem to doing something about it with common sense rules and regulations. Council members here, meanwhile, have done little but shrug and welcome even more scooters to city streets, as they will again Tuesday with 100 new e-scooters from Spin.
The problem, say council members and city officials, is that any rules they adopt might ultimately be changed or nixed by the General Assembly. But that hasn’t stopped other N.C. cities from deciding it’s too dangerous to wait. Last month, Greensboro passed a series of new safety and nuisance ordinances — the latter dealing with where the scooters can and can’t be parked. Durham passed rules that include charging companies $100 per scooter to use the city’s right of way, with a $1,000 initial permit. Raleigh is charging $300 per scooter, as well as smartly requiring the companies to share data about accidents and maintenance.
Asheville and Winston-Salem, along with Nags Head on the Outer Banks, have banned scooters outright.
It’s a good bet state lawmakers will move to overrule those bans, if early draft legislation on scooters is any indication, but one draft submitted to a House transportation committee would allow cities to license scooters and place safety limits on their use. That kind of guidance from the state is likely months away, however, if not longer. There’s little reason for Charlotte not to put some sensible rules in place in the interim limiting use on sidewalks and higher-speed roads.
Why haven’t we done so? It’s a replay of the paralysis that seems to grip council members when tech disrupters cause real disruption in our city. The same thing happened when Charlotte hemmed and hawed a few years back on rules for ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. By the time the council got around to doing something, lobbyists had persuaded the state to make its own looser rules.
We’re not sure if the council is afraid of making Charlotte look uncool by placing limits on new technologies and economies. It’s not encouraging that council members, even when expressing concerns about scooter safety, make sure to also gush about how fun they are. It’s also not encouraging that city staffers last week quietly extended into next summer a scooter pilot program that was set to expire. Council members weren’t aware of the pilot extension, and a couple expressed some dismay at being in the dark about it, but as with safety issues, no one seemed inclined to put their foot down.
Electric scooters, like ride-sharing bicycles, can be a viable piece of Charlotte’s transportation and housing puzzle. They’re convenient, and they’re an inexpensive alternative for those who can’t afford the steep costs of uptown parking. But unregulated, they’re also dangerous. The council should do its job and change that.
Correction: An earlier version of this editorial said that Durham is charging companies $1,000 per scooter to use the city’s right of way. The fee is $100 per scooter, with an initial permit fee of $1,000.
This story was originally published December 10, 2018 at 11:01 AM.