Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Shareable scooters headed to Nevada? Lawmakers eye bill to regulate them

scooter

Jason Henry / The New York Times

A Lime scooter is shown on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, April 16, 2018. Representatives from electric scooter companies such as Lime have urged Nevada legislators to support a measure involving the mini-vehicle.

Those who dream of riding shareable foot scooters through their neighborhoods may have some good news on the horizon.

Nevada lawmakers are debating a bill that would legislate electric scooters in the same way as electric bikes and that would allow local municipalities to set up their own agreements with companies like Bird or Lime to control where and how such scooters could be used.

“We’ve all recognized that Nevada tends to be a leader with respect to welcoming new technology to the state in transportation,” said Jonathan Hopkins, a government affairs worker with Lime, who added Nevada was one of the few states that didn't allow shareable scooters.

Under the bill, cities can control where the scooters are allowed to operate, institute speed limits (most max out around 15 mph) and charge scooter providers a fee for operating within the municipality's limits.

Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, D-Las Vegas, raised concerns that people may rent a scooter and then allow a child to operate the machine. Bird and Lime both require drivers to be over age 18, and the bill would set a limit at 16.

“There’s other vehicles that sometimes parents may want to let their kids have the keys to, and we just think it’s important to establish the norms with the community about what’s right,” Hopkins said. “And parents don’t normally hand over the keys to the car to a 14-year-old.”

The assemblywoman agreed.

“That would be a crime to hand over the keys, that’s kind of my point,” Bilbray-Axelrod said.

Shareable scooters are making waves in many cities. A cheap transportation method that businesses frame as a way to get from points like a bus stop to home, they’ve also created controversy.

Riders sometimes don’t know where to drive the machine, whether on the road or the sidewalk (hint: it’s the bike lane), and the drop-them-wherever-when-you’re-done philosophy has raised concerns that they’re eating up public space.

The businesses have also sometimes annoyed local governments by dropping their scooters into cities without any formal agreement, leading to legal and regulatory disputes in cities as far apart as Salt Lake City and Nashville, Tenn.

The Clark County Commission punted the issue in February, with commissioners saying they would wait until the Legislature acted. It was made clear, though, that the scooters would not be welcome on the pedestrian and traffic-heavy Las Vegas Strip.

Lime operated a fleet of pedal bikes in Reno until March, when the Reno City Council decided not to renew a contract with the company.