The Scooter Subcommittee did not meet in April or May due to conflicting travel of members. However, members accomplished several tasks, including:
- Distributing scooter riding rules informational flyers prepared by the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) to 24 hotels in the UpDoNA area;
- Updating the safe scooter riding PSAs displayed on Denver Theater District changeable message signs–keep an eye out for them on 14th Street signs;
- Continued meeting with Armando Saldate, the Executive Director of the Denver Department of Public Safety regarding initiating more active enforcement laws regarding scooter riding.
Please join us for our next meeting on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at 4:00 PM in the 10th-floor common area of the Spire. We will be discussing:
- Changing our meeting frequency to every other month;
- Suggestions made to District 10 council member Chris Hinds by Peter Babin from the Lower Downtown Neighborhood Association (LoDoNA) regarding potential technology to slow scooters to safe speeds when they are on sidewalks and signal providers when they are not parked upright;
- Future direction and efforts for the subcommittee.
With respect to the last two items, I just returned from a trip in Europe that ended in Paris. A year or two ago, Paris decided to ban the e-scooter operators in the city. It was nice not being passed by scooter riders traveling at high speeds and dodging scooters parked on the sidewalks. Since the subcommittee’s inception, we have considered scooters to be an important micro-mobility option for reducing auto travel in the UpDoNA area and have focused our efforts on safe riding education through PSAs and other messaging as well as encouraging DOTI to remove confusing signage implying that bike lanes were to be used only by bicycles. These approaches have yielded limited success in increasing pedestrian safety. In addition to Peter Babin’s ideas, other possibilities that UpDoNA could encourage the city to consider might include more drastic approaches up to the “Paris Approach.”
Photo attribution: David Kurth
