It’s one thing to make rules for scooters, but on Alexandria’s City Council, there are concerns about how the city can enforce proposed new restrictions in Old Town.
During the City Council meeting last Tuesday (Nov. 26), the council worked to fine-tune the next phase of the city’s electric scooter pilot program and shape how that implementation looks when it’s applied on Alexandria streets.
While geofencing for scooters generally means blocking them from scooting through an area, new geofencing measures in Alexandria are aimed at keeping scooters parking in certain places.
New scooter regulations have blocked scooters from parking in a multi-block stretch east of N. Union Street, between Oronoco Street and Prince Street. The result has been an 80 percent decrease in scooter parking on the waterfront, staff told the Waterfront Commission at its meeting last week.
When Alexandria officials said they hope to see birds return to the Four Mile Run wetlands, they weren’t referring to Bird scooters — but yet, there was at least one there, in the water.
Concerns about scooters on sidewalks have dominated the local debate about the personal mobility devices, but the issue of abandoned scooters is nonetheless something with which Alexandria policymakers will have to grapple.
Over 200,000 trips have been made on e-scooters in Alexandria this year, but a sticking point with local officials is equitable access to scooters throughout the city.
Now the City Council is considering pushing scooter companies to ensure more scooters are available in parts of Alexandria outside of Old Town and Del Ray.
