North Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - The City of North Tonawanda has introduced a new way for folks to travel across town with rentable electric scooters, courtesy of Bird.
Bird is a company working with cities and universities to provide methods of transportation that are not only clean for the environment, but also complement public transit systems, and invest in safety infrastructure that benefits everyone.
"Bird scooter reached out to my office probably six, nine months ago, and wanted to bring it into North Tonawanda, which I was pretty surprised to hear," said North Tonawanda Mayor Austin Tylec. "You usually see these in like a Washington D.C., New York City, larger municipalities. But we went through the discussions, brought it to our attorney's office, the council, and the council ended up approving it, I signed off on it, and they brought them in this weekend for a five-week trial before the winter hits."
As of now, the plan is to bring these electric scooters back in the spring, or whenever the weather gets better for people to ride throughout North Tonawanda.
"It's a new form of transportation, it's not a bus, it's not a bike, it's a scooter," Tylec said. "They're certainly not alien ships of some sort, where people don't know what they are. It's just a rentable version of those bikes, or anything of that sort."
As of right now, the only other place in Western New York that Bird is offering these electric scooters to is the City of Dunkirk. However, the company is in talks with the Cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls to offer their services for the community.
As of right now, North Tonawanda has 20 of these scooters available across the city. People are able to rent the scooters anywhere from North Tonawanda City Hall to Gateway Park to Gratwick Park. It's a starting point for Bird, who will evaluate the hot spots in town before the potential of adding more scooters.
"You can download the Bird app, and it will have a map of North Tonawanda and where these are rentable," Tylec explains. "They'll have a little dot, more or less, you click on it, and you have the opportunity to reserve it.
"Everything's through the app. They sign up on the app, they look at the map, they click on one, they say I want to reserve this. You have a certain timeframe to actually start using it, you get on it, and then however far or however long you really go for, that's what they'll end up charging you."
According to the mayor, the charge to start the rental for a scooter is just $1, and then it is $0.49 per-minute of use. In addition, the rider of the scooter must be 18 years of age or older.
"The city holds no liability, in the fact that Bird is specifically holding that liability. We're just working with them, more or less. And they're just a fun way to get around town," Tylec said. "You can only stay within our perimeter, you can't go outside of North Tonawanda. They'll just stop if you try and cross the border there, and we'll see how it goes."
If the scooters don't work out in North Tonawanda and the public isn't receptive, then Mayor Tylec and the rest of the City Council will make the decision to keep them or push them out. However, it seems like the public has been pretty receptive and open to the idea.
"People seem really receptive online. It blew up quite a bit," Tylec said. "There's, of course, comments like, 'How are the seniors supposed to ride them?' Or, well, it's not maybe for everyone. I'm not going to use them every day, and I'm 30. It just depends, you know what your limits are. If you don't like roller coasters, don't go on roller coasters. But for the most part, people are open the idea, they like it, they think it's fun. It's relatively inexpensive, their electric, it's environmentally friendly, and an interesting way to zip around town."
Already in the Buffalo-Niagara region, there are other rental forms of transportation available for the public, including Reddy Bikeshare, which now has over 100 locations locally.
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While anyone renting out these bikes have to return them to a designated station for Reddy Bikes, Mayor Tylec says that isn't necessarily the case with Bird scooters.
"There's a fleet manager that Bird hires, and this fleet manager takes these scooters, places them in locations that might be more populated than others. You might see them at the Plaza, you might see them at Gateway Park, Gratwick Park, and so on. And they take them back to wherever their storage facility is, they charge them, they fix them up, they put them back out. That individual, through Bird, is the manager of all of them," he explained.
However, there being no need to return the scooters to their designated spot or another location could lead to people carelessly leaving the scooters in someone else's property or somewhere that is not an ideal spot to leave it.
"People can leave scooters, bikes, anything they want in different locations. We're giving somewhat of an avenue accepting Bird in the community, but we're hopeful that people will be responsible like they are with their own equipment or own scooters, their own bikes," Mayor Tylec said. "We'll really see how it goes, and we hope that, again, people are responsible."
While every community is different, and the ability to have this type of transportation may be more or less suitable than other places, Tyles believes that if another municipality locally is looking to turn to something similar, keep an open mind, and maybe take the chance to see how something works out.
"This is a little different than most things, and if it works out, great. If it doesn't, oh well. But there is a revenue source with this too," he said. "There's a portion that the city does make off of these rides. In addition, it contributes to the economy here, as well, in the sense where people are maybe going to buy food or go to a concert or visit anywhere to buy something that they might not normally do if they couldn't get there easily or conveniently. So there's another layer of this where there's potential for the city, and businesses to thrive off of this."
Tylec also recommends everyone wears a helmets and rides safely with the scooters, while also knowing your limits. Oh yeah, and have fun with it!