Uber and Lyft are seeking permits to operate electric scooter sharing services in San Francisco.
They are among 12 companies that applied for permits with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which will grant them later this month.
Uber applied for the permit through Jump, an electric-bike sharing provider it acquired in April. Uber's CEO recently said he envisions his company going beyond car sharing and into bikes, and possibly scooters, so people have more commuting options. Lyft also confirmed to PCMag it submitted an application for a permit.
Electric scooters can certainly be an eco-friendly way to get around town, with the cost to ride them as cheap as $0.15 per minute. (To ride, you download the provider's app, find a nearby scooter, and pay $1 fee to unlock it.) But the services have also gained an infamous reputation in San Francisco, with critics calling them a nuisance over how they can be parked anywhere and clutter up the sidewalks.
The trouble with the new electric scooters: they end up as litter on #sf streets. I'm pro scooter but anti-these scooters. Poorly constructed. It's a small city! Just walk. #limebike #bird pic.twitter.com/fZk8pnUy94
— Jess McCuan (@jessdujour) April 11, 2018
In April, San Francisco took action after three companies—Bird, Lime, and Spin—unloaded hundreds of scooters across the city. To regulate them, SFMTA demanded that all electric scooter-sharing services first apply for a city permit in order to park them on sidewalks or public spaces; Thursday was the deadline to apply.
The permits are part of a one-year pilot program that will initially allow 1,250 scooters to operate in the city, and double the amount in six months. The other catch is that the SFMTA plans on granting only five permits.
"As part of their permit application, companies must demonstrate how they will minimize their impact on San Francisco's sidewalks, while maximizing their transparency to the public," the SFMTA explained in how it'll choose which applicants will receive the permits.
Preference will be given to companies that can ensure their customers properly ride and park the scooters on streets and sidewalks. The other companies who applied include Spin, Lime, ofo, Scoot, Skip (Waybots), Razor, Hopr (Cyclehop), USSCooter, and Ridecell, an SFMTA spokesman told PCMag.