On September 8, 2020, I voted against scooters in Seattle and here’s why:
I support improved mobility options by encouraging environmentally friendly alternatives to gas-powered, single occupancy vehicles. Ideally, electric scooters (e-scooters) would provide an alternative for some trips for some travelers. At the same time, the City government is essentially authorizing a new mode of transportation — thousands of scooters traveling within our streets and other rights of way. This is big change that warrants a careful tracking of the results.
I had been looking forward to a standard Pilot Project that would measure results for scooters as we are seeing elsewhere in King County but, in my opinion, this SDOT legislation is not a detailed pilot. The proposed legislation transmitted by SDOT to the City Council did not explicitly and fully address safety, financial liability, infrastructure costs, or measures for success.
SDOT, however, said this legislation was time-sensitive, so I fulfilled my role as Transportation Committee Chair to facilitate discussion, ask questions, and enable my fellow Councilmembers to vote on it. While a majority of my colleagues approved it at my Committee on August 19 and at the full City Council on September 8, I was personally not willing to vote yes for something that, in my opinion, lacked details. Both Council Bill 119867 and Council Bill 119868 totaled only 2 pages in length. The legislation essentially cedes ALL details of the program to the Executive branch.
To retain some oversight role and to encourage a more standard pilot program that evaluates initial results, as Chair of the Transportation Committee, I sent to our SDOT Director a letter asking SDOT to return to our Committee by next June and next December to report on specific metric from the first 6 months and first 12 months of the new program. To view my letter to the SDOT Director, CLICK HERE.
Having SDOT report back to the Council Committee on specific metrics of success – that would be standard with a pilot program — will enable SDOT to report consistently and thoroughly to the Councilmembers and to the general public on the pertinent details and results so that, together, we can evaluate this new program. In my conversations with Director Zimbabwe, I have been assured the Durkan Administration also wants to measure the results of this new scooter program.
I believe we need to measure the results so that we can truly assess whether the program is safe, equitable, and effective in getting people out of their cars—all without requiring tax dollars to cover injury lawsuits or to build special infrastructure that would subsidize the profits of private companies headquartered outside of Seattle.
I want to thank Dr. Fred Rivara, founding director of the Harborview Injury and Prevention Center, for his compelling letter in August expressing his concerns about the scooter safety by providing several studies from around the country showing scooters to be dangerous. To view his letter, CLICK HERE. To view an interview with Dr. Rivara, CLICK HERE.
I’d also like to thank the City Council blogger Kevin Schofield of SCC Insight.com for providing such comprehensive coverage of the scooter proposal on his website.
For one of the many news articles about the Council adopting SDOT’s scooter program, CLICK HERE.