- Credibility:
LOGAN SQUARE — The city’s second scooter pilot will launch in late July or early August — and it’ll be twice the size of last year’s pilot.
The city will allow three scooter vendors to participate in the pilot, according to the Department of Transportation. They’ll be allowed to deploy 10,000 scooters throughout the city — a significant change from the last pilot, when there were half as many scooters and they were confined to the Northwest and West sides of the city.
The city will also allow vendors to leave scooters out at night. Last time, vendors had to pick them up at night and re-deploy them in the morning.
There will still be some restrictions, though: People will only be able to ride scooters 5 a.m.-10 p.m., and they won’t be usable on the Lakefront Trail, the 606 or Downtown.
Vendors will have to send half their scooters to “priority areas” on the South and West sides to ensure they’re distributed equitably, according to the Department of Transportation.
Scooters will also need to have lock-technology, meaning riders will have to lock them to a bike rack or other object to end their trip.
Vendors have until June 25 to submit applications to participate in the pilot. Only vendors that were part of the first pilot are eligible to apply.
After that, the city will choose three vendors to participate and each will be allowed to deploy 3,333 devices at a time. The second pilot will begin in late July or early August.
The city’s first pilot for scooters in 2019 ended with “mixed results,” which is why officials opted for a second one.
Survey results and data from 2019’s scooter pilot showed more than 820,000 rides were taken during the four-month pilot.
But Chicagoans were divided over the scooters, with some saying they were a hazard or nuisance while other said they provided a more environmentally-friendly and convenient way of traveling small distances.
A map of scooter boundaries for this pilot:
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