Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the consent. So now let's go back to our hearing schedule and we have hearing item number three. And we just staff just needs about one minute to get that all ready and set up. So we'll just we'll get the started in just. Okay. Yes, you can. Let me let me. Well, let me start. Just needs a minute to just give you just just give us one minute. Thank you.
Speaker 2: If we could get that PowerPoint put on the screen, please.
Speaker 0: Okay. We couldn't take the item, Madam Clerk.
Speaker 1: Item three A report from Public Works Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing and Adobe resolution amending the master fee and charges schedule by adopting new fees relating to the MICROMOBILITY program. Request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the use of shared micromobility and extend the current electric scooter pilot program until the new ordinance is adopted citywide.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Let me. Councilmember Pearce let me actually go to staff report and then we'll go to the motion itself. So let me go to.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is a hearing about our electric scooter program, a proposed program. And with that, I will turn it over to Craig Beck, our director of Public Works, to walk you through the what we've had in place and what we're proposing for the future.
Speaker 10: Craig Thank you, Tom. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the city council. Tonight, staff is providing an update on the E-Scooter pilot program that was implemented this past summer and recommendations for a future program. The information provided tonight is based on research best practices from other jurisdictions, experience gained during the pilot program, and data collected from our participating vendors. So you may recall that in July of this year we did launch our pilot and we ultimately permitted six different vendors to operate in our city bird, lime, razor, skip, spin and use scooter. Our program detailed the opportunity for each of the vendors to deploy an approved 300 each, so a total of 1800 scooters citywide. I don't believe we ever hit that total number. I think we count somewhere close to 1000 scooters deployed in the city. We require that the deployment be put in what we're referring to as drop zones. You can see in this slide here that there's a picture of a sidewalk emblem of where the drop zones are located. We ultimately ended up with about 230 drop zones in the city. Each one of them were reviewed. They were proposed by the vendors and reviewed by city staff. We had compliance with path of travel on our sidewalks. The scooters also were required to be deployed excuse me, throughout the city. And we designated the city within three areas and wanted the fleet to have a minimum of 20% of the deployed fleet in each area. And we thought it was important to give the community an opportunity to weigh in on the E-Scooter program. So the city paid for a call center where people could call and ask questions, convey concerns, ideas, thoughts, and there was also an email. And so all this data was collected and went into the report that you have before you this evening. So there are also some e-scooter rules and we wanted to make sure that we were operating a safe program. There's kind of a blend of rules that are required under the California vehicle code and then also the Long Beach Municipal Code and then things that we thought were important for safe scooter use. First and foremost, we wanted to make sure that somebody was at minimum 18 years of age. That law or that has since changed. And there is a new California law that requires riders to be 21 years of age, that they have valid driver's license. Certainly, we wanted to encourage safe use of the scooters, you know, driving or riding, rather, on sidewalks. Under law, each municipal code, while we know a lot of this did occur. There is no currently no scooters are allowed to ride on the beach bike path. We wanted all the riders to wear a helmet. This was also changed recently in the updated law. So that is no longer a requirement, though we believe that it's still important for people to practice safe use and we wanted to make sure that scooters were not parked in a way that that inhibited path of travel on the sidewalk, as I mentioned. So we did our best to collect data. Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of compliance from the various vendors who participated, but we did get some reports from the vendors, and so we used those reports and did a little estimating. So while I don't have firm data to back up what we're presenting, we do believe it's relatively accurate and an important information to share. So from what we can gather, we believe there's roughly. And again, this is for a three month period, August through the end of October. And we do believe there was roughly 180 or 186,000 rides. So a lot higher than we initially anticipated. And that the average distance was 1.2 miles, which we were pleased to see, because honestly, e-scooters as part of a Micro-Mobility platform should really fill that last mile. So for example, if you were going to take the blue line into downtown L.A. and you lived within a mile of a station, you could use an e-scooter to take you to that station. And that's called the Last Mile Solution. We did find that there were citations issued by Long Beach PD roughly 85. From the data we collected, that number may be a little higher. Again, this was for a three month period, mostly for not for riding without a helmet, which is at the time was a requirement. We also had some data from Long Beach fire regarding EMT responses specific to scooter injuries. Most of them were people who simply fell off the scooters. Either they hit a crack or for some reason stopped too quickly. And they had bumps, scrapes and bruises, a couple of head injuries. There were some scooters versus vehicles. The data we were able to collect showed that there were about a dozen of those. So the call center. Very interesting information that we got through our call center. Very good. We believe that this was made available. We did have some community members that that use this very readily. And we tried to to delineate that information as best we could. So when we say 858 unique calls, those were different people calling. And if you look at the type of issues, there was over 744 issues, ideas, complaints that were registered at the call center. And so we really tried to group those into categories. By far, the biggest one was writing without a helmet. Again, that law has has now been adopted and no longer a requirement, even though staff is recommending that that be part of our program guidelines. And then writing on the sidewalk and abandoning scooters were elements that that seemed to resonate with concerns expressed through our call center. Staff really wanted to go out and get additional data other than what we were getting at the call center. So we posted an online survey and were really pleased at the results we had over or close to 2000 responses for a 30 day online survey. Again, this was a public opinion survey. It was not exactly scientific, but we did glean some data from our survey respondents. 56% of those that responded had not ridden a scooter. So again, the majority of respondents had not ridden a scooter. But we did find that it's when you look at what some of those reasons are, the majority supported scooters as a viable mobility option. So whether they wrote it or not, they did believe that scooters could fill a mobility gap. And many said that they would ride scooters or consider riding scooters if they felt that it was a safer option for them to do so. And they also felt that it was a challenge to find scooters in available drop zones so that regular knowing that there will be a scooter at location X was important to those that responded to our online survey. So again, this kind of goes a little bit further into this slide, goes on a little bit further into the data. And so this is for from generally people who have ridden a scooter. And we wanted to know, okay, you rode a scooter. Why did you write a scooter? And you can see from the pie chart in the middle of this slide that I think going in staff believed that many people would utilize scooters for recreation. And we did get 32%, but we thought that it would be the majority of rides. And we're really finding from the data that it wasn't that while there are recreational rides, people enjoy going out on a nice day in the summertime and experiencing our fine city and the weather that we have here. But really, people were using it to replace other modes of transportation walking, driving, bike riding, etc., use of transit. And then that made up the majority of of our riding. So kind of going to the responses from the group that had ever ridden a scooter and that subset. So 50% said they did not write a scooter. So a subset of them, 43% said that, that that nothing would change their mind, that they are not scooter riders. They don't believe that that's a viable option for them. And when you do the math and think I did this correctly, so that's roughly 24% of the survey respondents said that they would never ride as a scooter, which again means that almost 75% or so would. And we felt that that number was a much higher than what we anticipated receiving through our survey results. And then lastly, we wanted to just kind of share with you some of the comments that we received through our online survey, the need for more infrastructure. I think this points to the idea of safety and in our responses people talk about things that are barriers to them and feeling safe on the scooter was one of them separated bike lanes where they could ride scooters operating in a safe environment, helmets, etc. was important. Comments such as people need to be smarter when using them. And I think this again, it points to consistency with what we saw in the call center, people not wearing a helmet, riding on a sidewalk and not really being fully aware of their surroundings when they're writing the scooters. So where do we go from here? And I think that this is really we're in this transition time. We've done a pilot program. We initially envisioned the pilot as a 3 to 4 month program. We're now six months in. We have been able to collect a lot of information. Most of that we've shared with you tonight. And we do believe that that it is a viable mobility option that Lombard should embrace and that we should transition from a pilot to a permanent program. This slide details a number of the items that we believe are important to be included in a ordinance that this council would adopt and really kind of building on the pilot program. So hopefully we've had an opportunity to look through the guideline book that was created as part of the pilot program. I think it's attached is as it's included with your staff report this evening, but there's many elements that we want to make sure that we continue to build on and and really making sure that our operators follow the the requirements that are set forth. We we know that we need to do more or the vendors need to be do more to educate our users. And I think certainly the subcommittee that was raised when we brought the council committee ensure or enforce or disincentivize improper use. So if you have people riding on the sidewalks, we want to make sure that's being enforced. If you have people riding unsafely or in areas or exceeding speed limits, etc., that they're really focusing on a program that that dissuades that or charges people or fines people for that kind of behavior. We think it's important to now establish a rate structure. So far, we've been operating without a fee structure for e-scooter programs. It's really just a sidewalk occupancy permit or a public right of way occupancy permit that we've utilized. But we think it's important if we're going to transition from a pilot to a permanent program that a fee structure be adopted. We also believe that it's important to provide equal access to E-Scooters across our city. And we know we have some neighborhoods in Long Beach where we have low income individuals and we want to create a rate structure to incentivize their access. So discounts for low income residents, discounted fee structure for those operators that deploy in those neighborhoods, etc.. So that's detailed on these points. And we we believe that we need to incentivize the use of drop zones. So consistent with the feedback that we've got through both our call center and our online survey, we believe that the drop zones are working and that providing regular opportunities for people to go and pick up a scooter and utilize the scooter, both picking up from, but also hopefully encourage dropping off in drop zones similar to our bike share program. We think that that's important element of a of a permanent program. So feeds. This has been somewhat of a challenge as we look through different cities and what they've used for fees. We believe that we wanted to be consistent with what other jurisdictions are doing and that there would be an annual permit fee for operators . Not only would we require operators to meet all of our our requirements of the program, have appropriate technology, scan for driver's license, have ability to geofence areas, etc. But there would be an annual permit fee and staff is also proposing a per unit fee. So beyond having the ability to operate in Long Beach, that depending on how many units are out in the city's right of way, that there is a fee associated with that. And as you can see in this, we are proposing $120 per unit fee. And but we would discount that for units that are operating in low income communities and propose a $40 fee for that. We do believe it's important that the staff have the ability to find operators for misuse. And for example, if scooters were left in the middle of of a beach bike path and we called the operator to pick them up at that operator and pick them up, that maybe city staff picked those units up, and that if those are impounded, that there's a fee to help incentivize the operators to operate appropriately in Long Beach. Also, what we found through the pilot program is many times the operators will deploy above their their approved limits. And if we see where operators are dropping numbers well beyond their approval limits, we want the ability to impound those as well. And then lastly, again, to ensure safe compliance and operation of a program that if operators are in noncompliance, that there's an ability to suspend their operating permit until they become compliant. So what are the next steps? We believe it's important to have this council take action, extending the current pilot program kind of guidelines and rules that we have in place until a permanent ordinance can be adopted. We believe it's important to adopt a rate structure and then request the city attorney to draft an ordinance consistent with what's been presented here and consistent with the the pilot program and any other modifications that the council may make this evening and returned to you for full adoption. And lastly, I certainly want to recognize the work of our city's mobility team, who has spent a significant and I want to repeat that a significant amount of time preparing program guidelines, addressing community concerns, working with our vendors and even testing the equipment for consistency with safety and speed limits. So I want to thank that team for all their hard work kind of getting us to where we are this evening. That concludes my presentation and we certainly stand ready to answer any questions. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Craig. I do want to point out one thing, an inconsistency in the staff report. Your written materials say that we're proposing three vendors were actually, as Craig's mentioned, were proposing a cap of up to four vendors for the city council to consider. So that will be a recommendation.
Speaker 0: The staff of anything else. Okay. I'm going to make a couple comments and then let me get to gonna get to Councilmember Pearce and then we'll open up to some discussion with the council as well as public comment. Councilmember Pearce, would you prefer to do public comment first or do you want the council to. Okay. Why don't we just do that first and then I'll make my comment. So any public comment on this item, please come forward.
Speaker 6: Good evening. My name is Lynne Smothers Reece. I live on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach. I'm probably in the minority, but I consider the.
Speaker 2: Scooters a nuisance.
Speaker 6: I like to walk. I walk my dog several times a day. I can't count the number of times I've had to jump out of the way of scooters riding on the sidewalk. Normally it's one or two at a time. Last night at 915. It was a group of five. It's pretty unsafe for elderly people. Or like my friend Adrian, who has a is partially blind. The scooters on the sidewalk is a big issue in my area. There's also some safety concerns. My a few months ago.
Speaker 9: My husband and I were.
Speaker 6: Driving on seaside and Pine going towards the pike. Two teenagers, they were young. Okay? They probably shouldn't have been on the scooters. I don't know how they did this, but they were going down the hill on pine towards the pike. We almost hit them. We have the light. We have the right of way. And they almost did not stop. So I have safety concerns and I'd like to be able to walk. I live in an area where the is there are signs posted that bicycles are not.
Speaker 2: Allowed on the sidewalk.
Speaker 6: Bicycles are always on the sidewalk. So in addition to the bicyclist, I now have to dodge the the scooter riders. And I'm you know, I kind of chuckled a little bit when I saw that 17 citations were given for riding on the sidewalk when it's a daily occurrence for us. So I'd like the council to keep that in mind. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please. I'm going to close out the speakers list as well. So we have one, two, three, four, five. We have six speakers and then I'm closing. I'm sorry. Okay. We have eight speakers and I'm closing the speaker's list. Go ahead. Very good to.
Speaker 2: Address on file number one. I think you should. Get the views of. Each and every Long Beach transit bus driver or bus driver, I think you will find those are 100% opposed to these. Scooters. My sense is that if people don't like riding bikes. What they should just get used to is the Buster Brown Express. It's always been very reliable. He'll get you there. Keep your eyes open. Get you there safely. This just.
Speaker 10: Invites further.
Speaker 2: Litigation against the city. Again talk to. The risk principle, Long Beach transit drivers annuals. They will share with you their view, their professional views on this. You're heading down a path that is going to be very, very expensive to this city in terms of liability. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm sorry. Next speaker.
Speaker 11: Thank you. My name is Linda Sperry, and my husband and I have been in Long Beach as property owners in the third district and First District for the past 26 years. As a breast cancer survivor, I walked five, 4 to 5 miles almost every day. And my comments tonight are based on on what I see. I respectfully disagree with some of the findings that Mr. Beck has articulated. But I'd like to share share with you what my experience has been. I'm proud that Long Beach has been recognized numerous times as one of America's most walkable cities. I'm very, very grateful to live here. My concern tonight is that our city's walkability is being severely threatened because of the reckless e-scooter riders on our sidewalks and the total lack of enforcement. Until there is a realistic, responsible sidewalk enforcement program in place to protect protesters and such as myself from the 15 mile per hour e-scooters. I don't feel you should adopt the plan before you. On the videotape of the December Transportation Infrastructure Committee meeting, a public works engineer stated that the scooter companies cannot prevent scooters from being ridden on the sidewalks. He admitted that the Geofencing capability to accomplish this is not possible at this time. This fact was confirmed on that same videotape by the government relations representative for Bird, who acknowledged that there absolutely is a problem with sidewalk riders and that bird is thinking of a technology to deal with the problem. Yesterday I spoke with a mobility micro-mobility venture capitalist on the phone, and I confirm that he confirmed that the technology is not available. He stated to me that the scooter scooter jeeps cannot be used to control scooter use on sidewalks because it doesn't have the necessary level of accuracy. He said there is technology in the works by G and Bluetooth beacon tech, but that that in theory would provide enough resolution as to be able to enforce this . But this is still some time away from widespread deployment. Please reject the proposal before you tonight to add more scooters. How will the scooter companies accountable for enforcement? Something that, in my opinion, should have happened a long time ago. I ask you to put the best interests of your constituents first. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 6: Karen Reside, resident of District one, and that the older adults that I've surveyed actually have a lot of them have ridden the scooters and they would love to have the triangular based ones for older people. So and for people that are less stabled and also if there can be a means for those that are somewhat disabled, they'd like to use them to. I agree there are all these issues. But as our city moves to smart technology in our streets, I think a lot of these can be overcome. Working together with the scooter manufacturers and the venture capitalists, I think can bring me more resources so we can maybe move forward a little faster. My concern about the scooters is they travel in the main thoroughfares and I see them quite frequently in groups. None of them wear helmets. And UCLA is just in a study on scooter accidents. And the accidents that occurred with scooters tended to be serious head injuries and primarily because they were not wearing scooters. So yeah, and I've seen one person. Get access to scooters for a whole group of younger people to put them on there. So there is a way to restrict the number of scooters that one person can have access to. And, you know, if we could do it safely and have them ride on the sidewalks, I know in some areas that's primarily where they're traveling as the heavy corridors where there are little wider sidewalks. If we could somehow mark lanes are some way to keep them separated from the pedestrian traffic. And I'd also like to add some kind of because they are so quiet, a number of people have been hit, especially people that are hard of hearing, hard of vision. They've almost been hit because they can't see or hear them coming. I've gotten so. I just stopped and let them go around me. But there's got to be a better way to do that on the streets. But older people like them, too. They would like to have more access. And the sidewalks think about where the safer sidewalks are because a lot of our sidewalks are problematic and make it so there would be more hazards for scooter riders. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next, bigger, please.
Speaker 12: Hi. Ed Cockrell, seventh District. You know, I actually didn't come here to speak to you guys about this, but it's on the agenda. And I really wanted to comment about this. So I am actually for this. For this. Many times we don't have the access to greener and environmentally friendly mobile transportation. And I think this is a really good opportunity for us to expand that green energy piece. I would like to see that the city actually looks at the beach. I think, you know, we don't we don't regulate bikers who go above 15 miles per hour. So why do we have to regulate the scooters? I get it. You don't want to have the beach full of scooters. But I think if you have more public safety awareness on this, because the bike riding the bike on the sidewalk , that's a public safety issue. Riding the scooter, that's another public safety issue. Actually, I don't like riding the bike. Ah, the scooter on the sidewalk, because the sidewalks aren't always paved smoothly. I'm actually going to have to dove over the crack in the scooter or the crack in the sidewalk. So I just encourage people to be open about this, to look at this as a green initiative to help our city stay on the map for green initiatives. Take.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker.
Speaker 2: How's it going, Mayor and City Council. My name is and I can say I'm a fan of the e-scooters I recently. It's funny because I see the age limit thing and that's definitely not being enforced because my little cousin, he just put me onto the scooters and I've been whipping around. I've been enjoying, you know, the city in a whole new light, going 15.2 miles an hour. And I enjoy it, to be honest. You know, it saves me a lot of money. Usually I have to take about two busses to go to work. I work in and sorry those area ups and now because the scooter instead of having to wake up another 3045 minutes earlier so I can either walk to catch one of the busses that I take to go to work. Now I just hop on one of the scooters and just ride that distance. And then, you know, I saved myself about two, $2.50 a day. You know, some went for 50 bucks a month. So it's actually helping me in terms of budgeting in my life, in terms of some of the options that city staff mentioned recommended to mitigate and figure out how are going to make this go from being a pilot program to one that is part of city structure. I think there's a lot of options there that I agree with. I think about like when my cousin lives off the corner of a six in Coronado, there's more access to scooters there, primarily lime , I would say. Whereas in Wrigley area, you know, it's it's more of the more the bird ones and there's not as much easily access to them. So if there is maybe to be a a price or tax reduced incentive for the lower income areas, I think that would be a more feasible way to spread out access to these scooters. I think I'm not an advocate for either company or working for either company, but I noticed that certain companies use the Uber network to access the scooters. I believe lime and bird specifically, or maybe it's just one or the other. I think those should be the ones that we should focus on. You know, not I don't want to say monopolize the scooter program, but maybe prioritize them because it seems like I see a lot more companies that are competitors that no one really uses, to be honest. And also, I think too, that the we are hopefully misunderstanding the impact of this on the youth. This is an opportunity to have a generation of of younger people be occupied with the idea of not using a car. So I think this focus on adults only riding scooters is a misstep. And we should figure out a way to enforce helmets as well as focus on these maybe being around school district schools dropoff zones and specifically so that we have less kids driving around or less Ubers being used.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. And we have four speakers left and then the speaker's list is closed.
Speaker 2: Good evening, Mayor. Council members, name and address on file. I'm here to speak on this issue as an architect, an urban planner with an interest in mass transit, in walkable cities and environmentalism. I've traveled to different countries in the world South America, mainly throughout North America and to Europe, and looked at issues such as bicycling and other micromobility issues. So in that regard, mainly I am in support of the SCOOTER program. I want to talk a little bit about cost. I'm the according to Tripoli, the average cost to own and operate a vehicle is about $50 per day. This is their statistics, Tripoli and it includes the purchase financing, gas, registration, insurance, etc.. But in addition to that, there's there's there there is infrastructure costs there. And, you know, we're we're building a bunch of big buildings, big apartment buildings here in downtown Long Beach. And it costs an average of $30,000 per parking space for a vehicle. So having a wider infrastructure for scooters would greatly reduce those costs. It would also reduce road construction and maintenance. There's a cost of accidents that we don't typically take into account when looking at these types of transportation, both personal and property costs. Obviously, getting hit by a 30 £500 vehicle is a little bit more painful. And then getting hit by a £30 scooter. There's there's also an issue of long term cost to society. The vehicles with their emissions, you know, cause cancers and neurological diseases. And and even further away, the issues such as sea level rise and extinction, the extinction of species. You know, we drive far these 30 £500 vehicles that are capable of taking a family of four from L.A. to New York and yet are typically it's just one person per vehicle. So it just doesn't make sense. More scooters is is is the way to go. I last I want to add that the issue of safety if people if classes can be held in public libraries and schools for how to use scooters or senior centers, because, you know, I've seen new people stumbling, trying to use a scooter for the first time. And it's it's not quite as easy as it would seem.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you very much. Mike Speaker, please.
Speaker 2: But evening council and the mayor. My name is Richard Fernandez. My address is two, four, three, five East 14th Street in Long Beach. I don't know. For I'm going to be speaking on behalf of me as a charger for the company of Bert. And what has Bert has brought upon me and many of my coworkers? It's an opportunity and new ways to bring extra income towards our lifestyle and we are very fortunate about that. But I would also like to address the fact that there is some inconsistencies in terms of the infrastructure and everything with the burden, because I've witnessed it and I would like to deeply apologize to everyone who actually have had to go through all that. You know, with the scooters being on the sidewalks, the inconsistency of the helmets, I understand all that. But from where I live, there seems to be a kind of a lifestyle where parking's an issue. Driving a vehicle is not really, you know, the norm in terms of commuting. But a lot of my neighbors and a lot of people that I've seen and I've just when I go to playing, just been talking to me like all these ever since these scooters have been here, I've been able to commute as little as a mile and not really worrying about moving my car, parking my car, using diesel fuel or gas fuel for in order to get to some places, we're actually going more greener in terms of means of travel. But I but the majority of the people I've been saying is that they would I would like to see more scooters, but also the enforcement side of it does need more work. And in terms of the enforcement, that is still, I believe in more of a development stage as of right now. But for me personally, as a as I just got off of my job just earlier and just went straight here, this helped me tremendously since I have been I've actually gone a while without work. But the bird company has actually helped me being able to help pay for my rent in order to pursue my career and as a musician. So I have some money in order to pay the rent. So I'm very benefit grateful for that. And I'm and I'm for this program for, for any reasons that is being in terms of the police enforcement or whatever kind of enforcement needed in order to keep it as a safe program. I believe that in some ways it's the same thing as the bicycle. I believe that is a very beneficial program in terms of commuting and for a greener environment in our city. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Speaker, please.
Speaker 1: Good evening, everybody. My name is Carla Monaghan. I am lives community affairs manager for the Greater Los Angeles region. First and foremost, I just want to thank counsel for.
Speaker 4: Allowing me to speak today.
Speaker 1: Lime has.
Speaker 4: Loved being a part of the Long Beach community by providing thousands of Long Beach residents with affordable and sustainable shared transportation.
Speaker 1: Options. So far, the scooters have proven to be a great new addition to the city's transportation network, as evidenced by the 100,000 plus.
Speaker 4: Rides that have been taken on limes alone. Lime is constantly evaluating the effect of higher fees as they limit the ability to provide our riders with affordable and convenient rides that they desire.
Speaker 1: It's for this reason that.
Speaker 4: We are concerned to see a recommended per scooter fee of $120 per year.
Speaker 1: Which would act significant cost to operators so large, in fact, that.
Speaker 4: We may be forced to raise our prices and it would limit our ability.
Speaker 1: To more.
Speaker 4: Equitably distribute our vehicles throughout the city. And it could make scooters a lot less attractive as a mobility option, thus not really reducing as many car trips. We encourage the city.
Speaker 1: To move.
Speaker 4: Forward with a per trip fee that has been.
Speaker 1: Adopted in other cities, including Santa Ana, which is not too far from here. This allows the.
Speaker 4: City to capture revenue from our rides and it encourages equitable distribution throughout the city.
Speaker 1: We also encourage Council to.
Speaker 4: Reconsider the 6000 vehicle.
Speaker 1: Cap and instead implement a dynamic cap.
Speaker 4: Where the increase in fleet size would need to be supported by utilization data that shows an average of two trucks per vehicle per day. We are happy to provide staff with additional information. We remain proud of our impact in communities around the globe and we really look forward to maintaining a meaningful partnership with the city of Long Beach. Please consider these comments as limes. Respectfully request that you vote in favor of a per trip fee with a dynamic cap.
Speaker 1: Again, I would like to thank Council for your time and for allowing lime.
Speaker 13: To be a part of this public decision making process.
Speaker 0: Thank you so much. And our final speaker. Good evening, Mayor Garcia.
Speaker 2: City Council members. My name is Tim Harder. I handle government partnerships at Bird. We appreciate the thoughtful work that city staff members have put into the pilot program and the proposed regulations before you tonight.
Speaker 5: We appreciate the needs of the city and its.
Speaker 2: Citizens through reasonable regulations that adhere to safety and best practices while acknowledging the use and value of scooters as a viable last, first and last mile option. I really need to pause here and thank your city staff for all the work that's gone into the program. I mean, it's absolute a lot. We actually recommend your city staff to other cities across the country because of what time they put into this. So just want to.
Speaker 5: Point that out to.
Speaker 2: Your colleagues. Chappelle's accountable while also soliciting our collective feedback on potential regulations.
Speaker 5: We greatly appreciate that.
Speaker 2: From in the framework, Bird is ready to deliver on many of these requirements, especially around technology issues that've been brought up around throttling down speed.
Speaker 5: And prescribed areas through geofencing, which we already do on the Long Beach bike path.
Speaker 2: Constantly monitoring data for Long Beach, ensuring that data with city staff is really important for us, making sure that we hit all those points. We have no parking zones. Not that the city center's asking all operators to comply within 24 hours. We're the only operator to make that option to have no parking zones created for the city. So these are all kinds of technology things that we are working on and continue to improve on. We've been operating for over almost two.
Speaker 5: Years now, which is crazy.
Speaker 2: But it's a growing fast and we're learning a lot. We do have a couple of items that we've learned from during the pilot from our pilot program to share with you. The drop zone locations are very difficult to work around. As you saw, there are 230 drop zone locations in a 50 square mile city. What that means is that I have to start my birds in those nest locations every morning and I'm only allowed to put six in each of those decals. With the proposed operation of 6000 scooters. You would need at least 1000 of these locations across the city to be effective. We also had to pay for all these decals at $3 each. These these costs add up. And to keep our sustainable, affordable transportation option on the road, these costs can't keep on happening. So we believe the fees are proposed are too high. We would ask for there to be a lower per vehicle fee across the market for Olive Long Beach or consider it or consideration of a per ride fee for all rides. If we want to get more people out of cars, we ask that you allow us to keep our business sustainable at the pro staff fee or take offers much longer to bring access to our Long Beach. Let me point out, one city, Raleigh, recently passed a $200 fee per vehicle. We had to increase our lock fee from $1 to $3 per e-scooter at $0.15 a minute. These costs make us close to the cost of an Uber or Lyft that you can have at your front door in 2 minutes. Bird supports the direction the city is going in craftiness regulation such as incentivizing parking locations, technological solutions. And we look forward to continuing this dialog with your officers. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Bird. We look forward to continue to serve the community and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Well, thank you very much. And I want to thank all of our public speakers. We're going to go to the council here in just a minute. And I know that there's going to be some questions and discuss and discussion about many of the items that were raised tonight and around fees and just the process and the staffing . And so I think we all look forward to those those discussions and and that conversation. I do want to make some more general comments because this is an issue that I've been closely monitoring and watching. The first thing I'll say is that I think that this this technology is is new. And like all new technologies, there are growing pains of learning what's the best way of adopting the technology and what's the best way of ensuring that people are safe and that enforcement is also happening? This was similar to when the city really began an expansion of its bicycle network. We experience similar growing pains and learning how to best put in bike boulevards and in bikeways. And I remember a lot of these similar conversations happening then as well. I'll also say that I think this is an incredibly exciting moment for multimodal transportation. And if we are going to meet our future objectives as they relate to climate change and as they relate to sustainable green communities and really planning cities for everyone, I believe that this technology and others that are being developed, whether they're around electric bicycles or around other scooter models for, for example, seniors were mentioned. There are, I know models that are being developed that some have seats and they're a little wider and there's all sorts of things happening to ensure that people can get around. That's not to say that there haven't been challenges around scooters being left in places that shouldn't be left in in the middle of the sidewalk or on the street. That is all true. And so I just want to I want folks to know that we have heard all of that as well. And I think that the companies at the table and the city are interested in really finding the best way to implement this. I will also say, having talked to many mayors that are implementing these scooter programs across the country and talking to the companies at the table. We have actually, I think, done in Long Beach a much better job of our rollout than many other cities across the state of California. And so I really want to commend the staff. Mr. Beck, you and your whole team, I think you've really worked with the council members individually with a lot of their concerns, as well as the community to try to address some of these. Does it mean we've we've addressed all the issues and it doesn't mean that we still don't have challenges that are out there. But I just do want to commend the staff for that work. A couple of things that were interesting to me on the data, which I think is really important to look at. I was also very surprised that only one third of those writing were actually using them for recreation purposes. Over half of folks that are writing the scooters are using them to essentially get to work, complete an errand, or to get around and to actually do a function that they find necessary for their for their life to and to see those numbers reflected in the data, I think is really, really important. I think that having also the fact that I think it's 15% are using them to get to and from another form of transportation I think is also a very successful metric. We talk all the time in the transit world of how do you get folks from that bus that they're getting off to their home in a safe way? Or how do we get someone from the blue line to their next area of transportation and those first, last, first mile, last mile connections that is clearly happening on these scooters, I think is really critical as well. There is no question when you have almost 200,000 rides in a short, multi-month pilot program, there is a demand and we're not. What I see and I think I've talked to some some of the councilmembers I mentioned this to me, I see a lot of young people and youth using these to get around. Incredibly diverse reflects reflection of the community. And what's impressed me is this isn't just folks, you know, picking a a lime or a bird up to, you know, enjoy a nice Saturday afternoon. You're seeing young people and and workers pick these up. I see it in central Long Beach and end of the downtown. People getting to work or people trying to get somewhere where they need to go. And I think that's been impressive to see that as well. And so I just want to commend the companies and for for providing a service in the city that people actively want to use. And the final thing I'll say is this technology is quickly changing as well. And so I want to make sure that the staff is, as we have this conversation tonight, that we are, we're always open. You know, we're open to all those changes in the technology and where and where kind of this multimodal piece is going. And so things change very fast, for example, in our bike share program. And you know what? We what what we did a couple of years ago, we may not want to replicate today. And I want to be sure the same thing is, is that we're being as thoughtful in the scooter program that we are willing and open to to changes in the marketplace. And with that, let me turn this over. And again, I'm very supportive of the of the conversation the council's going to have about how we can make this even a stronger program. But thank you to the public and to what I think is a very successful opportunity for us. Councilmember Pearce.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Mayor, and really thank you, staff. I think it's great to have companies come up and talk about how wonderful you guys have been, how they have had other people come to our staff to find out how to do it. It really shows that you are taking a measured and thoughtful approach to bringing on a new technology. And so I think myself in the second District and my council colleague in the third district, when you look at the maps, you really see that our districts are the ones that have been most impacted. And so I'm really happy to say that I've met with the companies, I've met with residents this week. I met with a group of residents that actually own their own scooters. And we're really concerned that regulating the e-scooters would change their their pathway. So I have a couple of questions about, you know, echoing everything that the mayor said around a sustainable city. I think getting people out of cars, getting myself out of a car is a very big challenge and having something that's dependable. And so we know when you look across the city and look at the maps that these scooters have been in one area. And I think that that's one of the challenges that one of my constituents spoke about earlier is having so many of them in the area that it tends to be kind of overwhelming at first. And I think that that was what hit us in the beginning is that all of a sudden there are a bunch of scooters on the ground. And so we didn't really phase in. And now they've been here a little while and making sure that we're changing the culture with adding additional scooters but adding additional education platforms. So I was hoping that you could talk a little bit of staff, could talk a little bit about some of the technology, specifically that these companies have that we feel confident. Because I remember our conversation with the pilot program was really about companies not having certain capabilities. And I know that once we're off the pilot program that those capabilities are in place. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 10: Certainly, Councilmember, thank you for the question. I wanted to highlight a couple of things. At first, I think the mayor alluded to it in his comments, which is tonight we're really promoting a micromobility ordinance and not just e-scooters. We think it's important that we are understanding that this is a changing environment. And for example, if a company wanted to come in and provide e-bikes or I think one of the audience members spoke about tricycles, maybe tricycles that were hopeful that that can all be governed under the ordinance that council considers this evening. So I wanted to point that out. I didn't mention that in my previous presentation, but we do believe that technology is going to be very important, that what we are finding is that there are areas in the city that may not be appropriate for e-scooters or e-bikes, etc. And so having that ability to geofence certain zones, we want to make sure we're working with vendors that have the ability to geofence zones. So I'll give you a very specific example. Long Beach Unified School District has reached out to the city and said that they do not want to see E-Scooters riding on their playgrounds, that they believe schools should be a free micromobility zone. And so while Long Beach City College or a high school or anybody authorized to to ride a scooter should come up to the front. They shouldn't be able to go beyond that front door. So having that technology and working with vendors that are able to do that are going to be important for our success moving forward.
Speaker 7: Can you talk beyond? Yes. You're looking at me knowing I was going to.
Speaker 10: Yeah. So I think the other point that I know you and I have talked about and I've actually talked about with some other of the members is where do we make that connection? So safety has been both brought up in this chamber and brought up by the community and and evidence through the information that we've received through our surveys, etc.. So having links to instructional videos, making sure that we are scanning driver's license, you know, that technology exists and providing maybe a certificate that yes, I have watched a YouTube video and how to safely operate an e-scooter and knowing that I can't ride on the sidewalk and I need to ride in the street, in bike parts, etc., that that all becomes part of, of a full program moving forward.
Speaker 7: Thank you. And that that wasn't a part of the pilot program. So I just want to make that clear for constituents. That pilot program was like Scooter Lite and that going on board with a full program means we're going to have some more technology at our fingertips. I know whenever I was looking at the maps that there were some questions about and I know that Councilmember Richardson is not here tonight, but North Long Beach, and I know that that Al is here and we'll talk about it. Deployment. I've heard that they get deployed and then they kind of trickle back down to downtown. And so how are we making sure that while we say this is a citywide plan, that in fact, this is citywide.
Speaker 10: So certainly I think there's a couple of ways. If you look at the pilot program guidelines, we we essentially divided the city into three zones and we required the companies to have a minimum of that of 20% of their fleet in that zone. So if you had authorization to deploy a thousand scooters as an example in the city, you would need a minimum of 200 of those scooters in each of the three zones. If you decided one zone was more advantageous for your operation than another, you could certainly do more than the 200, but you would need a 200 as a minimum. So certainly it's a very real probability that somebody could pick up a scooter, stay in zone two in Central on beach and ride down to the beach and leave the scooter down here and maybe Uber home or get picked up or whatever the case may be. That's why we do believe it is important to rebalance the system. And for for the most part, it's been really good working relationship with the vendors and they are complying. I do think that they see an advantage of picking the scooters up, making sure that they're safe and charged and ready to be deployed the next morning, and ensuring that they get redeployed back out into the various zones. So that's an element of this program that that staff strongly believes in, and that's why it's part of our recommendations this evening.
Speaker 7: Great. Thank you. I've got two more question. One is on the existing oh. The name escapes me. But where they park them, the stickers that are on the sidewalk.
Speaker 10: Are drop.
Speaker 7: Zone. Yeah. Those stickers in my district are ripped to shreds, and they look like a hot mess. Talk to me. What are we doing? Sorry to put you on the spot on that one.
Speaker 10: Well, hopefully we can address the hot mess issue, but I think beyond that, I think when we start looking at the drop zones and you know, I want to thank Bird for that comment tonight. Maybe six scooters per drop zone is is not the right number. So we're certainly open to adjusting that. We we think there's going to be locations where more than six are appropriate and we're looking to have more universal drop zones. So I don't know that you need a drop zone for bird and one for lime and designate them that way. But let's find city designated drop zones that any of the approved vendors could utilize. We think that there's also a way to to streamline the decanting process to to make it less costly. I still think it's important to have a recognizable location because that helps address some of the order that we're looking for among our public right of way. And, and, and part of our fee structure could help support that. We can either take that on ourselves as a city to ensure that they're meeting our standards or rely on the vendors to continue to do that. So those are things that I think we need to refine as this program moves forward.
Speaker 7: I just have this image of like a pole with a little flag that says E-Scooters. Okay, my next question. My last question really is around what you just talked about is the fees and looking at page 11 and considering that right now, do vendors pay a per vehicle fee in the pilot program?
Speaker 10: No, councilmember. Right now we do not have an adopted fee structure in place.
Speaker 7: And so if the goal of this program is to get people out of their cars and onto scooters, I mean, that's my personal goal and my district, knowing that we're parking impacted, can you just talk to me a little bit about where this this fee came from and why it is 120 and 40? And where the money goes.
Speaker 10: Yes, certainly. Thank you. So I think really, as you start thinking from a pilot mentality, and I think you mentioned and I like that verbiage, scooter lite and certainly that was the pilot we wanted to try to wrap our arms around. What does it mean to have micromobility in Long Beach and where do we see challenges and how do we best address those challenges? And so we started to really look at, okay, if we were to transition from a pilot only to a permanent program, what are those continued impacts going to be for our community? I think you had some residents here this evening expressing concerns about occupying the sidewalk, riding on sidewalk. It's very important that we address that through enforcement. So when we looked at our fee structure, we didn't want to be the lowest. We didn't want to be the highest. We tried to look at large cities similar in size to two Long Beach and adopt structures similar to that. We do believe a per unit cost is appropriate only because the more units a vendor has, ultimately the more potential impacts we're creating within the right of way. We do also look at where is the future for parking these devices. And right now we're relying on our sidewalks, but sidewalks are going to continue to to be in demand as we look at our sidewalk dining ordinances, as we look at our PARKLET program. So we think, if you recall, when this council adopted the Parklet, one of the items that we included as an eligible use was parking bikes or potentially e-scooters. So we do think that the city still needs to potentially make some investments and where there could be an opportunity to have scooters park in the street in a parklet designated a zone, I'll give you an example. So a fourth street in that kind of cherry juniper corridor, very popular destination you noticed in the heat maps. If you saw that that we see a lot of riders either starting from or ending in that area very narrow sidewalks and fourth street. We we barely have ADA accessibility now. It's not there's not a lot of opportunity to add scooters there and a parklet may be an option in that instance. And so we know that there are sidewalks replicated throughout our city similar to that, and that we want to be very open to solutions. So again, fee structures not only help address that, that right of way challenge, but we also believe it's important that we have full time staff dedicated to Micromobility, which we currently do not have. And this program, while I absolutely commend all the staff work that's been done, it has detracted our ability to deliver other items that I know are important to this council. And so while we've shifted focus to make sure that we're aligned on on Micromobility, other things have slipped. And I think it's important that we have fee structures in place that allow us to support those staff, support enforcement, support infrastructure development. And we don't believe that we're out of line. Certainly if the fees need to be adjusted, that's something that that we believe is important to come back and address. But we would caution I would caution you tonight to not go too low. But knowing that I'm recommending as a staff this evening that we have a check in point and that we really look at what's working and what's not. Again, we're moving from E-Scooter Lite into a permanent program. We know that permanent program is probably going to need a little tweaking in the future as well. So we would encourage that. We have a check in point and address some things at that check in point.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for that, Mr. Beck. I, I definitely you know, I support making sure that we have fees to run the program. I support that it's it's going to take an impact on on our infrastructure, on our staffing. And so I don't want to, you know, say let's gut it, but I don't want us to get into a situation where people then decide to use an Uber or Lyft because now they're not getting on a scooter, because we do see so many people using these for actually getting around and not just joyriding. It's not their entertainment dollars, it's their transportation dollars.
Speaker 6: So I have.
Speaker 7: One other question before I move on on this, as it says, for low income areas. And so getting back to that idea of drift, how do we is that based on where they're deployed? How do we differentiate what's low income and not?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think Stephan thinking through that and we would rely on census information and look at census tracks. And so let's just say Zone one has 30% census tracts meet the low income criteria we would allow if a vendor was approved and deployed X-number in that zone, 30% of those would be charged at that lower rate. So that would be our approach. We're certainly open to ideas and if council has other thoughts about how that could happen. But that is where we believe the data we would use to develop that criteria and how we would set up that fee.
Speaker 7: I'm just so I mean, I've been working with this through the last couple of days and I guess I while I love the idea of having low income areas, having a reduced fee, recognizing that might add another layer. And so I want to hear what my colleagues think on on the per vehicle fee, but everything from cutting it in half for the next year or you said you're coming back in January, you know, doing that until January and then saying, okay, do we want to change the fees at that time or is it, you know , $80 across the board just trying to get to a place where we make sure we don't cross that threshold. So I want to hear from my colleagues. I'm just curious, want to make sure we support staff, the program, the residents that need to make sure that they have safety measures in place. So, again, thank you guys so very much. I know this has been an intense process for everybody.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember Councilman Price.
Speaker 8: Thank you. And I, too, want to thank staff, especially Michelle Marie and Tony Cruz, because they've been our go to staff members from public works on this issue. And I think the third district has referred hundreds of residents to them directly and they have responded with very detailed and thorough responses to each and every inquiry we have sent them. So I'm grateful for that, and I want to thank Director Beck and his leadership of that team. So I you know, I agree with a lot of the comments that were made by the mayor. I do agree that a lot of the the concerns that have been raised and most of the concerns for anyone who reviewed the survey data came from my district to my residents. And over the last few months, we've received hundreds of emails, especially the last 24 hours, regarding the scooters. I think most residents find them to be objectionable for a variety of reasons. Most of the residents who have reached out to us, the sidewalk riding is a huge issue and of course, the abandoned scooters. And and while I agree with the mayor, any time there's a major change, whether it's in terms of mobility or infrastructure or traffic flow, there is a lot of opposition, generally speaking, and I agree with that. The problem with scooters that I see is that they leave a long standing reminder of what it is that people don't like about them. So when they're abandoned on a sidewalk, on a beach path, wherever the case may be in a roundabout, as happens in my neighborhood all the time, literally in the middle of the roundabout , I think it is almost starts to take the shape of debris and people start to view it as debris that the city there's this there's this thought that the city is not taking care of infrastructure. The city is not picking up after these companies, not that it's the city's responsibility to do, but that is one of the major concerns that I have. So I will say tonight that I cannot vote. And I know where most of my council colleagues stand on this issue. Everyone has been very supportive of it in the past. Having said that, there's really only a few districts that are actively engaged in the pilot program and seeing hundreds of scooters permitted to be used in those districts. So for us, we may have heard from residents more so than other districts, and I guarantee that once they're deployed everywhere, there will be numerous. I mean, if you've even if you've had a few dumped in the in the area in your district, there's nothing like hundreds of scooters being abandoned throughout the community that that can cause concern. So I would not be able to support anything tonight, even though I know most of my colleagues are very supportive of this program without a compliance piece. So I fully support Director Beck's recommendation that we have staff dedicated specifically to helping with compliance. And I will say it was it directly pointed out in the presentation, but I'll be the first to say it. The operators with whom the city has entered a partnership could do a much better job of partnering with the city. In terms of compliance, I believe that in some circumstances the regular reporting wasn't done and in many circumstances the city had to reach out not for every provider, but had to reach out and remind the providers of the rules. And just a few months ago, I brought an item forward to actually try to do more to ensure compliance with an already existing limitation by the companies that they were violating. So it's to me, you know, if you're going to go for a job interview, you're going to put your best foot forward and you're going to try to be as compliant as you can be. And not all of the operators have done that. And I and I really question. Our decision to continue moving with those folks if in fact, they weren't compliant during the pilot. But I defer to the sound judgment of our public works department because ultimately it's going to be our public works department who has to deal with the citizen complaints and managing as the liaison with these companies. I think that, you know, if we. One of the things I would like to request that this motion include is that the fees that are collected would first go to paying for compliance of this scooter program before they're spent on anything else outside of the scooter policy. And I don't know if the maker of the motion is agreeable to that. Okay. She seems to be. The other issue that I have is with the number of them that are released, I think the 6000 number that. The staff report recommends is a little aggressive right off the chute. What I would recommend and again, I'd ask the maker of the motion if she is amenable to this, is that we come back in six months for the in that the director mentioned and that we have a cap on the number of scooters that we increase or we put into cities production between now and the next six months. And maybe and I'll throw that number I'll throw a number out there, but I'm totally open to hearing from my colleagues. But maybe we cap it at 4000 instead of 6000. We come back and six months we evaluate the program, we evaluate compliance, we evaluate what technology is in place by these operators to address some of the concerns that we have that I'm going to talk about in a moment, and then we can adjust from there. And I don't know what the maker of the motion thinks about that. A six month compliance. And of course we can. Yeah, we'll hear from everyone. But is that Director Beck? Is that feasible? A six month check and date?
Speaker 10: Council member. Yes, I think six months is fine. But I would I would want to stress that it would be six months after adoption of the permanent program, because we still have to work with the attorney's office to to outline and have that written and come back to council for adoption.
Speaker 8: Okay. I understand. I know that some of the providers have excellent, excellent technology in place and others don't. Can you educate me a little bit about whether or not we have the ability through geofencing, technology to, you know, limit speeds in certain areas? I know that the sidewalk technology has still yet to be developed. As one of the residents pointed out. I think they're, you know, months away from developing that to the point where we can use it. But what about other types of technology? I know Bird, their representative, talked about in the no parking zones. I actually had a chance to go on their app and see how the no parking zones work and learned tonight that if somebody dumps a scooter in a no parking zone, that their meter continues to run. And I didn't know that. So they continue to get charged. I think that's excellent. But do all of them have this technology and are we going to partner with companies that don't have this technology? And if so, how are we going to ensure that they're compliant?
Speaker 10: So thank you for the opportunity to stress that. I think it's very important that as we move forward, we are working with vendors that that are deploying the the latest technology, not only no parking zones, geofencing, but the opportunity to cut speed. So if, for example, we designate a certain area that we would allow scooters, but only at a reduced speed. And you may know this, but for the audience, under California law, they are now capped at 15 miles an hour. So if we had a congested zone, we were okay with scooters as a micro-mobility option. And but we only wanted them to go half that. So seven or eight miles an hour, we would be looking for vendors that had that level of technology. So we would only issue permits under this adopted program to companies that could could comply with all aspects of the program, A and then B would also, which would include certain levels of technology for for this deployment.
Speaker 8: That's that's really great to hear. I also know that scooters are not supposed to be ridden on roads where the miles per hour speed limit is 25 or higher, but that the city has the option to raise that to 35 miles per hour to allow scooters to go on those roads. I just want to go on record as saying that I would absolutely object to allowing them on streets where it's 35 miles per hour or higher, because as our traffic engineer sitting next to Director Beck will attest, once we get to speeds of 35 miles per hour or higher, a collision between a car and someone on a scooter can result in great bodily injury or death at a much higher rate at 35 miles per hour or higher than at 25 miles per hour. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or if there's any. Any way that we can, you know, require the geofencing technology to limit the scooters from even being used on roads that are higher than 25 miles per hour.
Speaker 2: Councilmember Price Thank you for that question. Eric Wood Strand City Traffic Engineer Just to address the concerns about higher scooter usage on higher speed streets, that's one of the reasons why we want to install more bike infrastructure. And I think some of these fees are applied. We want to use them for infrastructure so that we can get scooter riders off of the sidewalk riding on facilities that are safe and not in of not interfering or coming in conflict with conflict with cars.
Speaker 8: And what about this? Can we limit? Can we use the technology to limit them from getting on roads that are 35 miles per hour?
Speaker 10: So I want to add and make sure that we're speaking the same. So some roads in the city, we have what we call SROs, which is an opportunity for a vehicle and a bicycle to share the same lane. We have other roads in the city where you have a designated bike lane and a designated vehicle lane. What we were trying to stress is we didn't want scooters on roads that had SROs in them that were above 25 miles an hour. But thinking about E-Scooters as a mobility option, as we know that the opportunity for student housing in and around Cal State Long Beach as an example is minimal. And we have student housing across the city, which is why we're trying to make linkages for our bicycle infrastructure directly to the university. And that includes Bellflower Street, where we recently completed a separated bike lane. We do believe it would be appropriate for a micromobility unit that could be an e-scooter and or an e-bike to be in that separated bike lane on Bellflower, even though we know those speeds exceed 25 miles an hour. So I think the real focus is safe riding and we certainly wouldn't want an e-scooter in a vehicle lane on any street where the where the vehicle speeds are that high.
Speaker 8: Okay. Will the technology be able to cater the device to meet those parameters, those safety parameters?
Speaker 10: I don't know specifically if that's available or not. That would be something. We'll have to check with the scooter companies.
Speaker 8: Okay. I'd appreciate if we could talk about that when it comes back in that six month mark as well, just to get a check in. And that raises another issue that maybe is better for the city attorney. But what what is the issue of liability for the city? I know the staff report addresses that in terms of waivers. Do those waivers absolve the city of liability entirely should a collision occur?
Speaker 2: I wish that were true. I think that the we have had our experiences. We have several claims currently in being investigated in our claim section that have not currently resulted in litigation. If the if the claims process doesn't resolve it and a lawsuit was filed, we would be tendering that to the scooter company to defend or or protect the city's interests. And we are counting on those companies to honor their agreements with the city. We haven't had that yet. We've also been served. We have not been served. But I've seen that a lawsuit has been filed. A class action lawsuit has been filed against the city of Long Beach and several other cities. And I believe it's Bird alleging ADA violations with the devices blocking path of travel and access issues. We have not, as I said, we have not been served with that litigation. So I'm not sure on where that is. Bird may have more information, but if once we are served with that, we'll be tendering that to Bird to defend the city's interests in that. Also.
Speaker 8: Under if we were to adopt a new ordinance that establishes a permanent program, will that be a part of the ordinance, as you understand it, such that the the providers will be responsible for any claims filed against?
Speaker 2: That's correct. Obviously, you know, if it was if whatever happened was caused by the negligence of the city, then the city that we wouldn't ask them to defend that. But if it's a what we're considering a traditional use and someone falls and it wasn't caused by any negligence of the city, we. Yes, they would usually the city and the scooter company are sued and we would look to the scooter company to defend the city.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 8: That's great information. Thank you. I know a lot of my residents were interested in that.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 8: Other than that, I don't really have any questions. I want to. Any other questions I want to hear from my colleagues. But specifically, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the number that are released. And of course, I'm very supportive of a citywide release as my council colleague, Councilmember Pearce, mentioned. You know, we want to make sure that at least they're being retrieved throughout the city, even though there might be dropped off in other out of that zone. We want that availability so that they're not all that the heaviest burden isn't on the coastal regions. So thank you very much for your information and for this report. It was fantastic.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Good questions, Vice Mayor Andrews.
Speaker 5: Yes, very good questions. And thank you, Ms.. Fish, for bringing this to the agenda to the guys tonight, because I think we've all heard some very good comments tonight. And to me personally, you know, I'd like to see a number of the vendors reduce from programs to, you know, from 2 to 3, because I know the staff is always working at a capacity and and it takes that sort of, you know, time to sort out vendors and scooters, you know, capabilities. You know, I would say that I've only met with two or three of these vendors and they met with me. And the care and the concern they have for my residents have reached out to my office, you know, with a very, you know, positive concern. And I'm very appreciative of that. But in my district, you know, the priorities I have heard are not leaving these scooters outside of the nest and making them affordable. So I appreciate the efforts and working with low income families. You know, I think that we need to work on education for these those that do not use the scooters so they'll know who to call when they run into these issues on the scooters. And I want them to work and cooperate with this moving forward as possible. And lastly, I thought that, you know, those that are with the decals in which people are supposed to leave the scooters, you know, standing, do not work. So we need to come up with that parking incentive, you know, for the locations concerned. But most of that, I really do. I support it. I support the item. And I hope everything will go well with this. And thank you again very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilwoman Mongo.
Speaker 13: Thank you. I really appreciate all the comments and dialog we've had on this. I have had the most interesting conversations, whether I'm on a business tour at the grocery store or anywhere, and we've also had a lot of comments on Facebook. So with that, I want to kind of bring together I think the comments from my residents have varied, but I believe that many of their concerns would be remediated if we could, one, keep the scooters off the sidewalks. Are we stating that you would need to deploy technology to either keep them off the sidewalk or allow people to report the sidewalk violations the way that some of the scooter companies have in their app to be eligible in Long Beach.
Speaker 10: So to clarify, right now, the gas technology does not exist. Excuse me. Or gas for that matter. That would allow us to restrict driving on a sidewalk through technology. However, it is in the vehicle code, it's not allowed. And we could be looking at enhanced enforcement and education to ensure people understand that is not legal.
Speaker 13: So currently there are some providers who allow you to or are about to deploy technology that allow you to take a picture of a violator. And they would supposedly know which scooter that was at that time. Are we going to require that in the deployment of this?
Speaker 10: I think we would encourage that through the rate structure and additionally beyond the take a picture of a bad rider. Also, if a scooter was inappropriately parked. So if, for example, I have.
Speaker 13: Those coming next is.
Speaker 6: Parked ahead of us.
Speaker 13: So just on the on the scooting part. So if people are scooting on the sidewalks riding and they're turned in, we could require the companies fine the participant before allowing them to rent another scooter.
Speaker 10: That's correct. We could put that into our permanent program.
Speaker 13: I would be encouraging that. Is that something that friendly that would be accepted for staff to explore and include in the final document? Thank you. Required no parking zones. So we were talking about the technology to deploy and we're requiring that of any participant on a go forward basis. What's the full anyone that's applying for the permit, they would have to have the ability to do no parking zones in the zones we determine.
Speaker 10: Correct.
Speaker 13: Perfect. Ensuring their return to their proper places. So I know that some cities have a return to base incentive where their the return to certain places. The writers are incentivized with like a dollar to put them back. But I'm also really interested in a fine for noncompliance, because I'm understanding that not everyone are encouraged by incentives. And so right now you have a fine structure for impounding. But I'm interested in something in kind of in the line of Councilwoman Price's idea. When we impound it, we take a scooter off the street, then we have to haul it back to City Hall, and then we have to allow the companies to come get their impounded scooter back from us. I'd like the impound to be a little bit more. Varied in terms of if it's been there for 2 hours and a city staff member or our compliance officer has to go out and get that scooter instead of bringing it back to City Hall and then incurring the costs to the scooter companies of $25 a day. I would say we should be able to give the $100 impound fee and then we could just return it to the location. And I think that $100 is important because it needs to be a disincentive for the companies to allow us to do it. Some providers have people who go out and do that all the time and their costs are far below $100 per movement. And so I think that keeping it at the same hundred dollars would be a mechanism for encouraging that.
Speaker 10: Certainly, I think your rebalancing idea is is worthy. I think we would still want an impounding fee.
Speaker 13: Absolutely.
Speaker 10: If if, in fact, people don't comply with their their approved number. Oh, absolutely. I agree. There's no reason to have it travel back and forth. If we can simply rebalance it and address the fine through a binding structure, we can include that when we return to the ordinance.
Speaker 13: And then finally, I think that the component that the community really talks about is mobility is nothing without the ability to continue to walk. And so that kind of is covered in our sidewalks side, but also a lot of the revenue sharing models, money goes into sidewalk repair to adding to the mobility of our communities. And so my friendly amendment would be in keeping in mind what Councilwoman Pearce said and then also in discussions with the companies about how they determine deployment based on upfront costs versus ongoing costs. I'd like to do the following as an option for for revenue sharing of $0.10 per ride with a minimum $15 per month per scooter due quarterly or $0.05 per paid ride with a minimum of $5 per month due quarterly for senior friendly scooters or low income scooter riders. So your low income scooter riders or your senior scooter riders would be at the lower rate so that there's an incentive to put those in the communities that are. Lower. Ridership, let's say. So what that does is it takes the $120 a year and it spreads it over the entire year. So if they wanted to deploy, let's say, 400 scooters, they wouldn't have to have all that upfront cost. Because I heard from some of the scooter companies, it would be better for them if it was spread out because then they don't have that same kind of cost up front.
Speaker 10: So, Councilmember, just if I could, what I heard you say was we would charge a ten cent per ride. Cost with a minimum of $15 a month per unit. So if that unit didn't generate enough rides at $0.10 a ride to create a $15 a month fee.
Speaker 13: So what it does is it really takes it makes it $150 a year spread over.
Speaker 10: Would be it would be more than that.
Speaker 13: Oh, let's make it $10 a month, $120, $120 a year at $10 a month. So that's your base fee that you were thinking.
Speaker 2: Of as is still part of your motion? I need. Yes. We need some clarity here. Yes. You got to help me. It's a.
Speaker 13: Friendly.
Speaker 0: Amendment. I think right now it's a it's a friendly amendment discussion about this idea.
Speaker 13: So I'm trying to get it so that they'll still deploy the scooters because there was a discussion that there's no incentive. Don't deploy them around Long Beach City College because the ridership is low. And so if they had to pay $120 upfront to deploy them, they wouldn't be interested in doing that. But the students there feel that it's important. So what I was trying to do, and in discussions with some of the providers, I stated, well, what if that was $10 a month? It's still a $120 a year to the city, which allows us to pay for our compliance officer, which is really important because I can't I cannot support this without compliance. But it doesn't make the scooter companies who are deploying 1500 scooters have to walk into city hall with their $25,000 plus thousands of dollars. It just kind of puts it over a greater timeline. And they had stated in some of their discussions that that's very helpful to them because they're trying to deploy scooters , 10,000 scooters in L.A. and 2500, 2500 scooters in Santa monica. And there's only so many scooters and so much budget for deployment. So I was just trying to be helpful.
Speaker 10: So could could I offer maybe a suggestion?
Speaker 13: I would love a.
Speaker 10: Suggestion to address what I believe you're trying to get to. So we talked earlier about a discounted per unit cost in our low income communities, and we talked about using the census data to be able to deploy and understand how those would be applied. It wouldn't be a stretch if council wanted to designate high priority areas to also have that fee. So for example, if Long Beach City College was designated by this Council as a high priority area, we could then only charge the $40 rate per unit at those high priority areas as designated by this council. So that would be an alternative.
Speaker 13: That's very helpful.
Speaker 10: And I'm also very open to having the fees paid over time instead of everything upfront. So if it's easier for deployment of the scooter companies, maybe a quarterly payment structure or something, if it needs to be monthly, we can go there. I would prefer not to have to collect monthly.
Speaker 13: I don't want to collect monthly.
Speaker 10: More staff were.
Speaker 13: Collected quarterly, but the idea would be that it's spread out over time.
Speaker 10: Certainly open to that. Thank you.
Speaker 13: So I would like staff to look into that and bring back what they believe to be in discussion with the scooter companies equitable and deployable, and for them to determine for us where those priority areas are. So in the heat map that I saw, there were certain areas that drove directly along City College and directly out, and the neighbors around Long Beach City College really appreciated that because there was a reduction in cars coming in and out of the campus during those hours and a reduction in people who are parking in the neighborhoods versus on campus because parking on our college sites has become so expensive. So I would appreciate that. I'd also be interested in deputizing individuals to be compliance officers on an incentive program, because what I fear is for us to start hiring all these staff members. There's a lot of need. And so kind of in the same. Idea that they have the Chargers or the juicers or whatever they're called, depending on your your company. I would be interested in a long term solution where we incentivize either business associations or others, but I don't know what that technology looks like, so I just kind of like to throw it out there for you to think about in the future before you come back to this council asking for a third and fourth compliance officer, but knowing that we can't survive without really strong compliance and we're going to need to rely on the people who are already there all the time. It's kind of like people are always obeying the law when the cops are there. If we had deputized community members, it might be helpful. I appreciate the revised emblems of the drop zones. That was something we had a lot of complaints about and in my request, I support that. As the funding comes in. It would first fund the compliance officer and then apportionment of future revenues into both sidewalk repair and the second staff member that public works has created or requested. And I think that really covers a lot of the concerns. I know I spoke quickly. I know it's getting late, but I appreciate everyone's time and input on this because I think it's really important to balance the needs of certain populations with the needs of other populations, to still maintain the ability to walk around our own community and not have these obstructions in our way. So thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Austin.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm going to do my best to keep my questions short. I do appreciate all of the thoughtful questions already presented by my colleagues, and I appreciate staff's work on on this this issue. Obviously, this is a new new market, new technology. And I want to say that I think I'm one of the more supportive council members, although I haven't had the the level of complaints coming from my residents. And so I'm sensitive to those who have, I think, because this is such a new, new motto, I've mentioned this before, I think we need to maintain our flexibility as as policy makers and as a council, because this is an evolving business model. You know, things have improved in in technologies that change just during the pilot period that we have experienced here in our in our city. And we have to recognize that that these e-scooters are serving the mobility needs of the public. There is a demand for them people. We've heard public testimony here today. Individuals are using them to transport to to work as transportation, to work school. And and I'm for one, one of those individuals with with teenagers. I wouldn't I have a teenage son, 16 years, 17 years old, who's driving a car. I would much prefer him being on a scooter, going to or from school. So the age limit, I think, is a little restrictive for for that to happen. But but I think we need to be thinking broader here because, again, there are a number of school age children, high school children who are who are driving cars. And we should be looking to reduce our greenhouse gases of the vendors proposed. I did have a couple of questions. I know I heard from staff you wanted to use up to four in the data that has been presented in a staff report shows that really three are really in high demand. I'm curious to know what what methodology and what goes into the reasoning for up to four providers.
Speaker 10: So Councilmember, when we really think about Long Beach and how we would potentially deploy in Long Beach. We know that while we have some good operators in our city, that there are other operators out there that aren't or haven't been part of the pilot program that may express interest in being in our city. And we want to make sure that we have an opportunity to work with them if they can meet all of our requirements and are a good operator. So we think that maybe four is the right number, maybe ultimately that shrinks, but we didn't want to be too restrictive as we start our pilot program moving forward.
Speaker 3: Well, I think this is all about we want to promote competitiveness and we want to complete report. I mean, I'm sorry. And I've heard from several my colleagues, you want to promote compliance and the best actors, those who are and we've had a history of doing this before in other industries. If if the the E-Scooter provider is being a good actor is doing all that we've asked them to do is being working with us, working with the public works department, listening and being responsive to the to the council offices and business districts. I think they need to be rewarded. And so I think that that needs to be taken in the serious consideration when awarding the contracts. I would only support contracting only with the scooter companies that have, you know, shown to be most responsive and who have shown that there is a real demand for their services at that. I can also say that that in the north part of the city and Councilmember Pearce referenced that again and it might be a correlation with the complaints. We haven't received the complaints, but we don't. See as many scooters in our areas. And that could be for a number of reasons, be it lack of bike infrastructure. And I know we're working toward doing that, but or the the business districts where they're there, there isn't really any where to to ride because it's only sidewalk specific anyway. And I think we do need to also keeping in mind the safety of our pedestrians. And so we don't see as many. And so the other question I had is why and what goes into the number for the 6000 scooter deployment plan? Why 6000 and and would 4000 suffices for for for the first six months?
Speaker 10: I'm certainly stats ready to implement whatever this council adopts. We're proposing 6000 if the council believes 4000 is a better number. We're certainly ready and willing to implement that number.
Speaker 3: So help me out. Well, why 6000? What would what's moving that number?
Speaker 10: So if we were to adopt four vendors, the vendors have shared with us that they need more scooters on the street to be able to to to address profitability for operating in Long Beach. We certainly appreciate that. They've been working with us with a limited number during our pilot program. But we're told somewhere between 1002 thousand is a regular deployment for a scooter vendor. So if you did four vendors at 1500 splitting a thousand or 2000, that's 6000. That's how we came up with the number.
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, I would as I again, I'm very supportive of E-Scooters, but also, like I said, sensitive to some of the concerns raised by my colleagues as well as their residents. I think we need to like many other things that we do in this city, we need to take a phased in approach. And so I support a 4000 number, and I think that's fair. And again, really, really scrutinizing and vetting are these contractors to the vendors in terms of their ability to comply with the needs that have been expressed by the council here. I think the other big issue in front of us is the the fee structure. The per unit fee is interesting. We're proposing or staff has proposed $120 per unit. And that is that would raise up to half a million dollars. Is that a one time fee per unit or is it a annual fee?
Speaker 10: Staff is proposing an annual fee. There's two components. It would be a permit fee annually at 25,000 and a per unit cost of $120 per unit annually.
Speaker 3: Okay. And then the discount for low income areas being $40. How will the low income area be defined? I think Councilmember Pearce touched on this a little bit. I'm kind of trying to understand what is it going to be, a census block number, if it's. Is it going to be?
Speaker 10: Yes.
Speaker 3: So how do you put that on a unit?
Speaker 10: So in my example, we currently have divided the city in what we're calling three zones. So we'll just say in zone one, if we looked at all the census tracts in Zone one, if 30% of those census tracts qualified as low income census tracts based on HUD information, which we have that data available to us, then anybody that deployed in Zone one would get 30% of those units at the discounted number. That's what I'm proposing. As staff, we're certainly open to other interpretations of how this might go. But that's kind of how we, we believed, would be the best approach.
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, I think that that clarifies a few of the questions I had. Again, I just want to express my my support. I do think this is a new mobility option that is important for for our future in getting people out of cars, introducing new mobility. I don't see an electric scooter much differently than I do a skateboard or or a bicycle. In a lot of ways, there are clean options and alternatives to to to to to get around our city. I do understand the challenges. This is something new. But when you look at the data that has been produced already, it shows that that that the the the E-SCOOTER program is actually meeting its its intent when you can read that 1.2 miles of average distance, you know, these were introduced into the model was first last mile options for individuals. And then again I do appreciate Mr. Sand. I can't say coming in and talking about, you know, being a commuter or a user of this this this mode for to get to and from work and how it has saved him over, over, over time. And so I think there's there's options for for us to improve this. I think coming back after six months is something that I can support because I think I do think it would require some some regular check ins, as you said, Mr. Beck. And and again, as a council, we need to just just be be flexible and nimble with with this this move in policy, because there will be some changes moving forward. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Come to my city council meeting.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Very, very robust discussion. A lot of good ideas thrown out there. And I think that from what I've seen in the staff report, that to commend staff for coming up with a lot of good ideas here and it shows that they've been listening, especially when one of the comments that I had previously on this first came up to us was about safety videos and that requirement that that would help the city when it when you're looking at people having to sign a liability and indemnification waivers because if you don't see a video, what what does that what does a site liability release do anyway? So anyway, I'm very pleased that you're you're looking at dotting some some I's and crossing some T's on this. My whole discussion on this basically is that any approach that we use that is measured as strategic is a good approach. I mean, we need to look at it very carefully. As my fellow colleagues have already stated, it's new technology and it's a new program. And it's and it's something that we are being confronted with that has new different types of approaches to it and new challenges. Then, of course, like everything else, when you have a chance, you have an opportunity. So here's an opportunity for us to review this more carefully, more major league, more strategically, to make sure that once we do adapt, adopt a program into the future, that it's one that's going to work for us. We always talked about the Long Beach way. Well, here's an opportunity to do it again for the long doing it. The Long Beach way and it's always the Long Beach way is going to be the right way and that's what we want. One of the other concerns that I have and it was brought up, but it hasn't really been discussed. One of our public commentators mentioned the fact that there are sometimes you see these scooters, people riding scooters that impact, if you will, three or four or five at a time. And that might lead to raise a red flag in regards to that, each one of those scooter riders rent that scooter alone, or was there one individual using a credit card that rented all those five scooters for that for all those five individuals? And I see that one of the one of the pie charts in the in the report indicates that although there's 14% under age, I tend to disagree with that. I see. I mean, most most scooter riders that I've seen have been definitely under age and definitely not following the rules and definitely not wearing helmets. So, I mean, there's something that we have to look at in terms of when these scooters are being rented. Are they being rented responsibly by individuals who have signed the liability waiver? By people who have seen the. Safety videos by people who have helped. So those are my concerns. But again, this is a pilot program. We're moving forward. And I think that the vendors are listening to us. They're hearing our concerns. And and staff has certainly been listening to and hearing our concerns, as I see in this report. So moving forward, I'm looking to towards what we develop for very near future. I'm not going to raise any new concerns. I think the staff has been doing an adequate and phenomenal job in studying this very carefully. And I want to also throw a shout out to the vendors for cooperating with us and trying to address every concern that we've raised before them. And they are responding. Other than that, let's that look forward to what comes out in the next six months. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Superman.
Speaker 5: Thank you. The fourth district has received a number of complaints, and I think the number one complaint is scooters on the sidewalk. And Craig Peck, you mentioned that you're looking for alternatives to drop zones or as the bird company very cleverly calls them, nest. The irony to me is that our number one complaint is that scooters are on the sidewalks, yet the drop zones are on sidewalks. So technically you have to violate the law to get the scooter out of the drop zone. So I think your point is very well taken that we ought to look at alternatives to that and also the litigation that Mr. Parking mentioned, scooters interfering with ADA access. So that's what I'm glad you brought it up and I'd like to see that pursued a brand new issue for the first time today was brought to my attention so I have to blindside staff with this is dismantled scooters I've got complaints on that today. I hadn't seen it before, but I was reminded of the great legislation that Councilwoman Pryce brought about in 2017 when bicycle parts became currency. So I'd like to keep an eye on this to make sure that we don't have a black market on scooter parts moving forward. Oh, okay. Yeah. And, Mr. Parkin, maybe we could take a look to see if our existing ordinance already includes that, or it could be altered to look at that. Also, for the city attorney, the legal liabilities. I certainly don't want to invite any lawsuits. But you had mentioned that there are cases where the city would be liable in in certain instances. And if I know you can't comment or probably don't want to comment on pending litigation, but could you give us some ideas for how we might be proactive and prevent those types of situations?
Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember I think that in dealing with the scooters. The work is done on the front end with our agreements with the vendors who are selected to be provide the scooters in the city of Long Beach with our agreements on indemnity and in our waiver documents that the scooters have the user sign. So that's that's our first step. The others obviously then would be the street maintenance if we have them in the bike lanes. Obviously, if they you know, we're talking about making sure that all of those are maintained as the city does. And so it's just a it's just another mode of transportation in the city generally has litigation dealing with all types of mobility and transportation.
Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you. Then to the item of 4000 versus 6000 scooters. I wonder if staff could comment on if, let's say we chose 6000 scooters as the number. How long would it take to ramp up to that number of scooters actually in existence in the city?
Speaker 10: Well, Councilmember, the best way I can answer that, I think it depends on the company. And we know there are companies that have inventory available to deploy right away and others would probably rely on on adding to their inventory to be able to deploy that number.
Speaker 5: Okay. So would it be safe to say that if we chose the number of 4000, would it be. And maybe you can answer this. Would it be months before we got up to that number or you just don't know?
Speaker 10: Well, first things first. We have to finalize the ordinance, bring it back to this council, have the council adopt the ordinance, and then we would be able to go through an application process, get to an approved vendor, and then get to those deployment numbers. So nothing is going to happen overnight. We're not going to go from our current deployment to 4000 in a night or a week. So, yeah, I would say weeks and maybe months.
Speaker 5: To get there. Right. So my point being that we would get a lot of data back before we ever reach those top numbers, I would suspect, I think finally. Well, second last question is that application fee. It just strikes me if you could just give the public any indication why that doesn't apply here and maybe why Oakland's it is $2,500.
Speaker 10: Are you asking the question of why staff is recommending a $25,000 option?
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no. I'm sorry. So down here for for Oakland, we have 20 $500 for an application fee. And Long Beach is not applicable. It's right up your chart.
Speaker 10: Yes, I can. I can address that. So we believe that an application for you is redundant and that a permit process and a permit fee should include anything related to the application process.
Speaker 5: Okay. Think, you know, I will be asked that question. So that's why I am asking you tonight. And finally, I'd just like to say our council Mungo's idea about deputizing compliance officers. There are few folks who lodge a lot of complaints with our office, so I think I'll have some volunteers right off the bat for that. Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's that's true. Councilman Kendall.
Speaker 4: Yes. Thanks so much for all of the work and to my colleagues in their discussions. So I think with the revenue that we receive from this, I do believe the compliance officer, I think from hearing from everyone and certainly in my district, the compliance officer is a big deal. I would just like to know again on the liability, I have seen different cities potentially being sued on the ADR issue and if there's any update, city attorney parking. Can we just get a two from four on any sort of issue related to that, though?
Speaker 2: Absolutely. As I indicated, we are aware that a case has been filed, but we have not been served. As soon as we get that, we will forward that up to the council.
Speaker 4: And that is the main issue in my district that I'm hearing. People that are using wheelchairs and I have someone who is in my office, uses a wheelchair and has issues going home every single day from City Hall to her house in Wilmore. So take very much issue with that. And then of course, safety, which is also very, very important. I know we're addressing a lot of those kind of moving along to the business improvement districts, as Councilmember Mongo mentioned. I don't know about deputizing necessarily, but I think that what I can foresee some of our business improvement districts doing is maybe asking for additional funding or, you know, to be a part of the process somehow in enforcing. Or I know in downtown they ask, you know, we do pedestrian data work along Pine Avenue. So I can see that kind of being a thing down the road. So I just want us to be prepared for that as this evolves, as this program evolves. And I also like the phased in approach as well. I think specific specifically with an emphasis on vendors who have the technology. And I hope that as this evolves, the other vendors, if we're working on two or three or four, that other vendors will upgrade their technology to have more capacity for data. And then as far as the had one last question with our Parklets, I know we had talked about a compliance officer with revenues we would receive. Would we be paying for Parklets or is that going to be parklets included in the revenue that we receive or what are we looking at down the road?
Speaker 10: So, Councilmember Gonzalez. Yes, I think the goal would be that the city would install certain parklets for specifically for either bikeshare e-bike or E-Scooter parking. And wherever we identify those that would be used from revenues from micromobility to pay for it.
Speaker 4: Okay, great. And then just another side note, because I know that a lot of food vendors sort of in the gig economy utilize scooter these e-scooters. So I'm wondering what type of outreach could be done, whether it's through the vendors directly or from us or in collaboration? Because you think about Postmates, I mean, these are just rampant in in our city and many of them are encouraged to use e-scooter scooters. So I think there could be some sort of outreach we could do or perhaps just recommend to the vendors to do that. I'm sure they're doing that already, perhaps. And that is it. And thank you so much for the presentation.
Speaker 0: Council member Pearce.
Speaker 7: Thank you and thank you to all our colleagues for a fruitful discussion. I want to just kind of recap. I heard compliance officers absolutely support that. I would I'm anxious about deputizing residents. I just want to say that that seems like a very no no. We could get neighbors yelling at each other and it could just not be great. So if it's about the business improvement districts playing that role, that's something that I fully support, that I support the four companies. I had an idea while sitting here and I don't know if the companies could do something like it, but a helmet incentive, you can take pictures of where the the scooter is. If you take a picture of yourself with a helmet, could you get 50, $0.50 off your ride or. We know it's not law anymore, but anything that we could do to try to incentivize people wearing helmets, I think looking at the data, seeing that we have had that had injuries, I think is an interesting one. So I think that the two big questions for me, one is that I would like to have staff come back. The fee per scooter. I heard at least two of my other council colleagues trying to address this. And I just I'm going to rely on you on staff that's done this work because you guys know it best. But really hearing that we're trying to balance the needs and making sure that people get on scooters and whether that's a phased in approach, knowing that we're going to put these in parts of the city that haven't had them, we don't want to deter people from getting on them. And so I just want to make sure that that's something across the board. And if we had one fee, like $60 or $70 across the board, that that would take away all the work of trying to identify the low income areas and the school zones and LBC or Cal State, Long Beach that if it just was across the board. So I'm going to ask you guys to come back with something that you think is reasonable and not try to dictate that from the floor here. And then I wanted to ask on deployment, understanding that that's going to take a long time. I know there was conversation around 4000 versus 6000. Could we say 4000 deployed in areas first that are not high impact areas currently?
Speaker 10: Again, staffs ready to implement whatever this council passes this evening. I think not speaking on behalf of the scooter companies, but they would be looking at a distributed model where they could rely on their commonly used areas to supplement as they march out into areas that maybe they haven't deployed in yet. So I think being overly too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak, being overly cumbersome in how we detail what this ordinance would be. I think we want to rely on the private marketplace.
Speaker 7: Point received. Point received. I know that there was a friendly on the floor for 4000. If everybody here is comfortable with 4000 starting, I'm good. But I wanted to make sure that we didn't take away from areas that don't have them. And so that's what I was trying to get out a phased approach, 4000, then adding the other two. So I'm very happy that you guys are working on this ordinance, happy that we're at the place that we're at.
Speaker 0: So I want to make sure I'm clear on on the motion on that last piece. Maybe you're the same. I just want to make sure. Councilmember Pier So your motion is to do 4000, not 6000. Is that motion and to just when you said a phased in approach, you want to phase them in. How so? So six months have review to go up to 6000.
Speaker 7: As a pro scooter person. I love 6000, but I, I recognize that there's a friendly on the floor, so I want to be respectful of that. So I get 4,001st, right?
Speaker 0: And so I just want to clarify. So basically it would do 4000 for that six months after the review, we could go up to the additional 6000 depending on the review. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. Got to make sure I heard that correct. Mr. Parking is that we got that? Yes.
Speaker 2: I think just for point, clarification, if we are directed this evening to go prepare the ordinance, would you want the 4000 for the six months? And then it would automatically go to six unless directed by the council at six months. Or do you want it to come back and you just just automatically go up?
Speaker 7: It automatically go up, please. Thank you.
Speaker 2: And then if I may, after hearing the council's comments this evening, if we could hold off on adopting the fees so that we can adjust that, and if it passes this evening, we will bring back the ordinance and the fee resolution at the same time so that we're doing them together that way.
Speaker 7: Perfect.
Speaker 2: We get some clarity because there's been a lot of different discussion here, and I'm not sure I have it right.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 0: And I just want to make sure, Mr. Modica, just from a from a fee schedule with the state attorney just said a word with that process on, I just want to make sure that I know that the fee part is is critical to rolling out the projects and the enforcement piece.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is. But we would that's more of a technicality. We would like to bring back the fee. Will we notice it for a hearing? And we would put that fee into place. So a chance they're going to come back with that. Okay.
Speaker 0: But that's I'm fine. Count. No, that's it. Okay. I think we've answered all the questions. We have a motion in a second on the floor, please. Members, cast your votes.
Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Speaker 0: Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think that was a good discussion. Good resolution. So appreciate appreciate that. So I have public comment next. I just have a request right now, Councilman Manganese, to go do some some other duties, according to her. And so she's asked that we hear 18 and 19 really quick and then do public comment, which I'm going to watch, I'm fine with. So can we just hear item 18 and then 19, please?
Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution amending the Master Fee and Charges Schedule by adopting new fees relating to the micro-mobility program; 

Request City Attorney to prepare an Ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the use of shared micro-mobility, in accordance with existing state and federal laws, and staff recommendations detailed in this report; and

Extend the current Electric Scooter Pilot Program until the new Ordinance is adopted.  (Citywide)