The snow has melted, streets are being swept and birds are migrating back from the south but another sure sign of spring in Edmonton has yet to reappear.
In the six years since the launch of electric scooters (and later e-bikes), the city said they’ve been embraced by Edmontonians and visitors to commute, get home from a transit centre or simply have a fun ride.
The scooters and bikes are set to return — by this time last year, operators Bird and Lime had already been out for a month — but the City of Edmonton says they likely won’t be available until closer to the end of May.
The reason for the delay? The city is renegotiating with the scooter companies from two- to three-year contracts and changing up some of the rules to allow more flexibility and areas the scooters and bikes can operate, while also improving parking compliance and safety.
“I think there’s some really smart changes in the agreements that we have,” said Ward O-day’min Coun. Anne Stevenson, who represents central Edmonton.
“There are incentives that are built into how the agreements are set up that will lead to, I think, greater distribution of some of the scooters — which helps other areas of the city access those modes, and also just helps relieve a little bit of the pressure in the downtown,” Stevenson said.
She said her ward is lucky to have access to micromobility but at times, there has been too much of a concentration on central Edmonton.
“Sometimes too much of a good thing can create challenges.”
Both Bird and Lime have operated scooters in the city each year since the program launched in 2019.
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A third company, Spin, joined the fray for a year in 2021 but the following year, the city limited the number of vendors to two, Bird and Lime, and also required they provide both e-scooters and e-bikes.
The request for proposals for the city’s new three-year contracts closed on April 5 and the suppliers will be announced by the end of May. The city is keeping the limit at two companies.
“We hope to announce in the next week or two who the vendors are and then when they will be on the street,” said Jenny Albers, general supervisor of planning permitting with the City of Edmonton.
It can’t come soon enough for many Edmontonians.
“People are people are excited about it. We’re hearing lots of commentary about, ‘Why are they not on the road already?’ There’s an eagerness,” Ward Karhiio Coun. Keren Tang said.
“I’ve been feeling the lack of scooters the past few days,” Stevenson added, noting this time last year, e-scooters and e-bikes were used heavily by people taking in the Edmonton Oilers playoff activities in the downtown core.
“Hopefully our playoff run is not ending in May, so there’ll be opportunity in subsequent rounds.”
A report was presented to city council’s urban planning committee meeting on Thursday, outlining changes to the micromobility program.
The changes include incentives for the scooter companies to offer a broader riding zone, and the vendors being encouraged to incentivize customers to pick up or drop off scooters and bikes in a greater range of areas.
“We know the core is a really great place to have shared e-scooters and e-bikes and we’ve seen that utilization. But we want to continue to expand across the city of Edmonton,” Albers said.
When scooters first came to Edmonton, the riding zones were essentially limited to Old Strathcona/the Whyte Avenue area and downtown.
The city began to allow scooters to operate in a bigger area two years ago, and the zones expanded to include more of south Edmonton to the Whitemud, as well as north of downtown and towards the west end.
The city said it wants to see vendors expand even more.
“This is about creating more alternative modes of transportation on the road. It’s creating more options for people to get around our city,” Tang said.
Tang represents a section of southeast Edmonton that includes half of Mill Woods, Summerside and several other new neighbourhoods where the scooters have never been deployed.
She’s hoping the opening of the Valley Line LRT leads to more scooters in the southeast suburbs, noting Lime has a pilot project integrating with transit in Richmond, B.C., that she’d like to see explored here too.
“What could a pilot project look like in Mill Woods Towne Centre? Even designating a zone around that area within, I don’t know, one- to two-kilometre radius, but really helping solve that first and last mile connectivity issue,” Tang said.
Albers said that aligns with the city plan to increase alternative modes of transportation.
“So the idea that you can get off at a LRT station and then you can grab a shared e-scooter or e-bike to make that sort of last five kilometres home,” she said.
The city said the demand for shared micromobility in Edmonton continues to increase and the e-bike and e-scooter program has seen great success over the last two years.
In 2023, the city said users took approximately 1.06 million rides on shared e-scooters and e-bikes — more than double the number taken in 2022.
A cap on the number of scooters and bikes companies can deploy has been removed, as having that limit in the past led to the devices being concentrated in the city’s core instead of available over a larger area of the city.
The city will also allow year-round operations as weather allows for it, as was the case this past fall and winter, when significant snowfall didn’t arrive until after Christmas.
“There will be a lot more flexibility about when these vehicles are getting dropped and when they get picked up in the winter,” Stevenson said. “I think that’s going to really help in subsequent years and one of the best things about the changes.”
There will be real-time data tracking so the city can see where bikes and scooters are at any given time.
“This will really help with fleet utilization and management — so ensuring that you don’t see that street cluttered or you see a whole bunch of them in one area that they’re not being used,” Albers said.
The fleet fee structure is changing from quarterly to daily, which means scooter companies will pay the city per vehicle, per day on-street. The city said this will encourage the companies to improve utilization rates per bike or scooter.
“We can work with our vendors to make sure that all the fleets are appropriately managed but you’re also able to find an e-scooter or e-bike when you’re looking for one.”
Additionally, the city said it can adjust the per-vehicle fee for either the bikes or scooters, to encourage changes in on-street fleet composition.
The companies will be expected to be adaptable in their day-to-day service. The city is introducing new compliance fees it said will help address concerns with fleet management, improper parking and street clutter — without the need for fleet maximums.
“So if we’re seeing issues that they’re parking them in areas where they should not be or we’re seeing that too many scooters or e-bikes in the downtown core versus other areas where they should be, then we can work with vendors, but we’ll also have in their licence of occupation, more of the compliance fees we can use as well,” Albers said.
Other new program features include having clearly identifiable parking locations as well as no-parking zones, exclusion and slow zones on shared pathways, bike lanes and sidewalks, and the placement of more parking corrals.
The city, in partnership with Bird and Lime, conducted a survey last summer and received just over 5,000 responses. Some of the highlights included:
- 22 per cent of respondents have ridden a shared e-scooter or e-bike.
- 75 per cent of respondents agree that shared e-scooters and e-bikes are beneficial in providing another way to travel.
- 64 per cent of respondents agree that shared e-scooters and e-bikes increase access to sustainable active transportation options.
- 71 per cent of respondents reported often encountering sidewalk riders. Forty per cent reported that they did not receive proper warning by voice or bell when being passed.
The city will also launch an educational campaign that will include reminding people to not leave bikes and scooters in inappropriate places like the middle of sidewalks.
“What we’ve heard from our public engagement survey is that a lot of times there’s e-scooters or e-bikes that are blocking people’s paths. We really want to ensure that accessibility so individuals can still use our sidewalks without any issues,” Albers said.
There isn’t much the city can do to prevent scooters from being vandalized or chucked in the North Saskatchewan River — Albers said preventing the scooters from being left where they shouldn’t is the responsibility of the vendors.
The city said while things are delayed this year, the contract being nailed down now should ensure scooters and bikes are ready to hit Edmonton streets earlier in 2025 and beyond.
The scooter and bike program is fully funded by money from automated traffic enforcement and there are not expected to be any significant increase in program costs as a result of the new contract, so the city said no additional funding is required.