COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
IRVIS OFFICE BUILDING ROOM G-50
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2 019 10:05 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON H.B. 631, TO DEFINE LOW-SPEED SCOOTERS
BEFORE: HONORABLE TIM HENNESSEY, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE MINDY FEE HONORABLE GREG ROTHMAN HONORABLE MARTINA A. WHITE HONORABLE MIKE CARROLL, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN HONORABLE SARA INNAMORATO HONORABLE STEPHEN KINSEY HONORABLE ED NEILSON
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2
COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT: ERIC BUGAILE MAJORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ELIZABETH SICKLER MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST MATTHEW RUCCI MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST MICHELLE WHITMYER MAJORITY ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
MEREDITH BIGGICA DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KYLE WAGONSELLER DEMOCRATIC RESEARCH ANALYST 3
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
* * *
NAME PAGE
REPRESENTATIVE GREG ROTHMAN CO-PRIME SPONSOR OF H.B. 631...... 7
REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN KINSEY CO-PRIME SPONSOR OF H.B. 631...... 9
NGANI NDIMBIE EXECUTIVE POLICY SPECIALIST, PENNDOT...... 14
DONALD HANNON TRANSPORTATION POLICY CONSULTANT, COUNCIL OF STATE GOVERNMENTS-EASTERN REGION ....30
DOUGLAS SHINKLE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES...... 37
SAM MARSHALL PRESIDENT AND CEO, INSURANCE FEDERATION OF PENNSYLVANIA...... 65 ACCOMPANIED BY: JONATHAN GREER VICE PRESIDENT, PA INSURANCE FEDERATION
MEGAN RYERSON TRANSPORTATION CHAIR AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA...... 88
MATTHEW KOPKO DIRECTOR OF POLICY, BIRD RIDES INC...... 94
SHARI SHAPIRO DIRECTOR, MIDATLANTIC GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, LIME...... 99 4
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS (CONT'D)
* * *
NAME PAGE
WAYNE S. MARTIN CITY ENGINEER, CITY OF HARRISBURG...... 117
GEOFFREY KNIGHT PLANNING DIRECTOR, CITY OF HARRISBURG...... 122
SCOTT PETRI EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PHILADELPHIA PARKING AUTHORITY...... 125
DAN MULVENNA OFF-STREET SUPPORT COORDINATOR, PHILADELPHIA PARKING AUTHORITY...... 128
DEREK WHITESEL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HARRISBURG YOUNG PROFESSIONALS...... 137
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
* * *
(See submitted written testimony and handoutsha online.) 1 5
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 * * *
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Good morning,
4 everyone. My name is Tim Hennessey. I'm the Republican
5 Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, and I want
6 to welcome you to this informational meeting of our
7 Committee dealing with legislative inroads so to speak for
8 the use of electric scooters across the country. We're
9 going to hear from a number of people that'll give us that
10 national perspective and maybe even an international
11 perspective, but I think that it's important for us as a
12 Committee and as legislators to learn about what the future
13 might be at least in a portion of our transportation
14 network.
15 I will remind everyone we are on PCN and we're
16 trying to work out some of the technical kinks so that some
17 of the PowerPoint presentations may actually show up on all
18 the screens and also on PCN.
19 But with that, I'm going to ask Mike Carroll, my
20 Democratic Co-Chair of the Committee, if he has any
21 introductory comments, and then we'll call on Greg Rothman
22 and Steve Kinsey, both who have interest and are prime
23 sponsors of this bill.
24 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Thank you,
25 Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate everybody's attendance this 6
1 morning on this important subject, and I'm eager to hear
2 the sponsors of the bill provide us their background and
3 their thought process related to the subject and then the
4 rest of the testifiers, so thank you.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Before you get
6 started, Greg, I guess you're going to go first?
7 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Yes. Yes, Mr. Chairman.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Why don't we
9 just go around the table or the desks up here and introduce
10 ourselves? Again, I'm Tim Hennessey, the Republican Chair
11 of the Committee. I come from the southeastern part of
12 Pennsylvania about an hour outside of Philadelphia.
13 Mike?
14 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: And I'm Mike
15 Carroll from the Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Lackawanna,
16 Luzerne County region.
17 REPRESENTATIVE INNAMORATO: Hi, I'm
18 Representative Sara Innamorato. I represent the 21st
19 District, which is Pittsburgh and northern Allegheny
20 County.
21 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Good morning. I'm State
22 Representative Martina White from northeast Philadelphia.
23 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: And I'm Mindy Fee from
24 northern Lancaster County. Good morning.
25 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: I'm State Rep. Ed 7
1 Neilson. I am from northeast Philadelphia as well here to
2 hear from our colleague from Germantown.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Go ahead.
4 MR. WAGONSELLER: I'm Kyle Wagonseller, Research
5 Analyst for the Transportation Committee.
6 MR. RUCCI: Matt Rucci, also Research Analyst for
7 the Transportation Committee.
8 MR. BUGAILE: I'm Eric Bugaile. I'm the
9 Executive Director of the Transportation Committee for the
10 Republicans.
11 MS. BIGGICA: And I'm Meredith Biggica. I'm the
12 Executive Director for Chairman Mike Carroll.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay, thank you.
14 But that as a kickoff, we'll hear from House Bill 631, one
15 of the prime sponsors, Representative Greg Rothman from the
16 87th Legislative District I think right across the
17 Susquehanna from us, right?
18 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Just a scooter ride
19 away.
20 Mr. Chairman, I -
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Do you have a
22 dedicated lane for that? Never mind. We'll hear about
23 that as you go on.
24 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Thank you, Chairman
25 Hennessey, Chairman Carroll, and my colleagues. I want to 8
1 first start by -- I'm Greg Rothman from the 87th District
2 in Cumberland County, the co-prime sponsor of this bill
3 with Representative Kinsey. Between the two of us, we each
4 have four daughters, and his daughter Myla is here today to
5 join us. She's a fifth-grader, 11 years old.
6 And this legislation is about the next generation
7 and making Pennsylvania friendly to millennials. And we
8 know through studies that millennials don't use cars the
9 way that our generations use cars. They understand that
10 cars are only used about 4 percent of the day, they're
11 expensive, the cost to insure them and rising cost of
12 gasoline and parking, all these are factors in why we need
13 to come up with alternative forms of modes of
14 transportation. And we call it micro-mobility. The
15 scooters are low-speed electric, good for the environment,
16 and provide, as I said, an alternative mode of
17 transportation.
18 So I look over to hearing from the testifiers
19 today, and I've seen the scooters, I've ridden on the
20 scooters in other parts of the country. My son lives in
21 Santa Monica; they're everywhere. And I'm grateful for the
22 support of my good friend Steve Kinsey, and he's going to
23 talk a little bit about the bill, too, so thank you very
24 much.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. Steve, 9
1 before you start, would you introduce your daughter again
2 for us all?
3 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Sure. Thank you,
4 Mr. Chairman. In fact, as Representative Rothman
5 mentioned, she's in fifth grade, she's 11 years old, so I'm
6 going to have her introduce herself.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
8 MS. KINSEY: Hello. My name is Myla Kinsey.
9 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: What school?
10 MS. KINSEY: I go to Valley Christian School.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Valley Christian School
12 is actually in Representative Tom Murt's district. So
13 Myla -
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: And you're going to
15 keep your dad on track as he testifies before the
16 Committee? You brought her in today.
17 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Mr. Chairman, actually,
18 my daughter is actually on spring vacation, and she's been
19 up here a few times. Her class will be coming up here in
20 fact next month. But she watches PCN. And I recognize
21 that, you know, fifth-graders don't normally watch PCN, but
22 she's very interested in regards to the work we do here at
23 the Capitol, so what better way than to bring her up here
24 today as we talk about the House Bill 631. So thank you
25 for allowing me to bring her here. 10
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Sure.
2 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Thank you. Thank you.
3 Thanks for joining me also, Myla.
4 I just have to watch her hand because her hand is
5 towards the side where my wallet is, and when you have
6 those fifth-graders, you know, they tend to just sort of
7 think that your money is their money and that's how it
8 goes.
9 But, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you, Chairman
10 Hennessey, Chairman Carroll, my colleagues on the
11 Transportation Committee, for allowing me to share my
12 perspectives on House Bill 631.
13 As you know, this proposed legislation is co
14 sponsored by my good friend Greg Rothman and myself. As
15 co-sponsors, our legislation would allow for the use of
16 electric low-speed scooters or e-scooters on Pennsylvania
17 roadways and sidewalks just as we do now with bicycles and
18 electric-assist bicycles. These e-scooters are small
19 electric or human-powered vehicles with two or three
20 wheels, handlebars, and a full board that can be stood upon
21 while riding. Most weigh less than 100 pounds and go no
22 more than 2 0 miles per hour on ground level. And when I
23 bring up the 20 miles per hour on ground level, Mr.
24 Chairman, I want to be clear about that because a bicycle,
25 a pedal bicycle can travel up to 25 miles per hour. 11
1 These scooters can provide an innovative,
2 flexible, and low-cost transportation service to millions
3 of Pennsylvanians. They can help to relieve traffic
4 congestion while reducing population and stress by reducing
5 car trips and increase access to public transit.
6 Because these devices travel at low speeds and
7 weigh less than 100 pounds, States across the country have
8 incorporated e-scooters into their motor vehicle code by
9 regulating them like bicycles. However, in my opinion,
10 Pennsylvania is quickly falling behind our neighboring
11 States that have already embraced this next generation of
12 transportation.
13 On March 16th I participated in a demonstration
14 of these scooters, along with Rep. Rothman and others, who
15 are able to ride them right outside the Capitol. And even
16 though it was the first time since I was a child that I
17 rode a scooter, I have to admit it was like I've been
18 riding a scooter all my life.
19 I want to be clear. I recognize that each of us
20 have certain skill levels and that it may not be as easy
21 for others. I also do not want to downplay the fact that
22 traveling by any means in and of itself has its challenges.
23 And I'm sure that others will speak to that point. But
24 I've come to believe that these e-scooters could bring
25 about a wealth of benefits to Pennsylvanians, especially 12
1 those struggling with cost-effective and convenient
2 transportation needs.
3 Other benefits, as I previously mentioned,
4 include decreased road congestion, decreased population,
5 and cheaper transportation alternatives. E-scooters are
6 ideal for college students, tourists, and commuters,
7 especially those who have to travel a short distance. I
8 believe that citizens are better off having this option
9 available to them and the freedom to choose what mode of
10 transportation they wish to use.
11 I would urge city administrators in Pennsylvania
12 to look at other cities for examples of how overregulation
13 can get out of control and work together to find a balance
14 to ensure safety and access.
15 And for those with safety concerns, note that a
16 recent Washington Post report on the first recorded scooter
17 death in D.C. was at the same time as 25 other
18 transportation fatalities in the same year. This included
19 nine pedestrian on foot, five motorists, three bicyclists,
20 and seven car passengers, my point being these are just as
21 safe if not safer than any other mode of transportation
22 currently used on our roadways. Most importantly, the
23 government should not decide how we get to work or how we
24 get to visit our families. Pennsylvanians deserve the
25 freedom to choose any mode of transportation they believe 13
1 in.
2 With that being said, Mr. Chairman, I just want
3 to thank again the Committee for allowing us to testify. I
4 also want to keep in mind that there are over 8 million
5 registered drivers in the State of Pennsylvania. It's a
6 slight increase from last year. If I'm not mistaken, I
7 believe that for 2019 we're going to see a slight uptick
8 with more individuals registering to get their driver's
9 license. So I just think that, again, the important part
10 here is that we're looking at this as another alternative
11 option, simply an option.
12 Thank you very much.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. Thanks
14 for your testimony. And also both of you guys and anybody
15 else who's testifying today, I'll invite you to send
16 Internet links on the use of e-scooters across the States
17 and around the world. I mean, Eric has been keeping me
18 abreast on some of these things with regard to -- I think
19 he sent me one in Paris where they were all piled up on one
20 part of the sidewalk. It didn't look particularly
21 appealing to me, but I'm looking at it from a different set
22 of eyes than some of the younger generation who'd probably
23 much more prone to hop on the scooter than I would.
24 But I think it's part of our future, and we have
25 to learn about it, and so I invite you if you have any 14
1 Internet links that would school us even further beyond
2 your testimony and the other testimony we'll here today,
3 please feel free to get that to us and we'll get it
4 disseminated to our Members so that we have a better idea
5 of, you know, all the different aspects and perspectives
6 that we're going to have to deal with as we deal with this
7 bill. Okay?
8 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Great. Thank you, Mr.
9 Chairman.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you very
11 much.
12 Myla, thanks for coming up and keeping your dad
13 on track.
14 Our next testifier is -- let me see if I get this
15 -- here from PennDOT. She's an Executive Policy
16 Specialist, and her name's Ngani Ndimbie. Did I get that
17 right?
18 MS. NDIMBIE: Pretty close. Pretty close.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Okay. Begin
20 whenever you're ready.
21 MS. NDIMBIE: Thank you. All right. Thank you,
22 Chairpersons Hennessey and Carroll and Members of the
23 Committee, for inviting me to speak today. My name is
24 Ngani Ndimbie, and I'm a Policy Specialist specializing in
25 low-speed and shared modes of transportation. Together, 15
1 Roy Gothie, the Statewide Bike and Pedestrian Coordinator,
2 and I have led the Department's conversation on electric
3 scooters and have been diligently keeping tabs on the
4 national conversation. My testimony is the product of
5 multiple conversations with department staff,
6 representatives from our largest municipalities, and with
7 officials from other States and cities.
8 PennDOT's mission is to build a safe, high-
9 quality, sustainable transportation system, and we support
10 this effort to define and allow the use of low-speed
11 electric scooters. These devices are a low-cost, flexible,
12 low-emissions transportation device with the potential to
13 reduce car trips and increase access to public transit,
14 especially for citizens without access to a motor vehicle.
15 However, an amendment to the bill language is
16 needed to best enable a safe and rational integration of
17 electric scooters into our transportation ecosystem for use
18 by both renters and private owner-operators.
19 Our research into public deployments in cities
20 across the country indicates that electric scooters have
21 the potential to be a flexible mobility tool for urban
22 areas. Benefits of electric scooters include their
23 usefulness as a connection to transit and as a car trip
24 substitute. Another advantage of electric scooters is
25 their affordability, often priced at 15 cents per minute 16
1 after an initial $1 fee. Electric scooters also provide a
2 transportation option for people in a wide variety of
3 clothing, including dresses and heels, a level of
4 flexibility above that of a bicycle. A recent survey of
5 75,000 scooter users in Portland, Oregon, found that
6 shared, dockless electric scooter users represent a swath
7 of incomes and ages.
8 Challenges faced by local governments when
9 allowing the deployment of electric scooters have included
10 the enforcement of rules, safety concerns, education, and
11 creating appropriate permitting. The safety of the devices
12 has been called into question by many news outlets that
13 have reported increases in emergency room visits following
14 large-scale electric scooter deployments. While studies
15 are expected to come out over the next few months, there
16 aren't that many available reports measuring the safety of
17 the devices, which is a concern.
18 Issues have also been raised about electric
19 scooters conflicting with the needs of the disability
20 community and other pedestrians. This bill will allow
21 local government to regulate scooter parking and sidewalk
22 use in response to these concerns.
23 If legalized, the electric scooter user would
24 become a new vulnerable roadway user alongside bicyclists,
25 pedestrians, horse and buggy users, and disabled persons. 17
1 In recent years, PennDOT has engaged in many efforts to
2 increase safety for vulnerable roadway users that would
3 also benefit scooter users. Our obligation here is to
4 balance the two sides of our mission by preserving safety
5 while expanding mobility and access.
6 The amendment we offered is based on three
7 elements of analysis: One, device characteristics and
8 capabilities; two, considerations about current and private
9 use; and three, concerns raised by municipalities. A
10 method of understanding these devices is by the operating
11 characteristics such as maximum speed, braking, and turning
12 characteristics, along with the width, length, and weight
13 of the device. The electric low-speed scooter bill will
14 authorize scooters that are less than 100 pounds, have two
15 or three wheels. And electric scooter fleets deployed by
16 companies have top speeds generally in the 11-to-20-mile
17 per-hour range.
18 Handling characteristics involving braking and
19 turning vary depending upon the design. This is a device
20 that has significantly different operational
21 characteristics than other devices on the roadway, which
22 makes it so that our current infrastructure design and
23 maintenance standards may not adequately accommodate them.
24 By permitting these devices within the public right-of-way
25 the Department will potentially increase exposure to 18
1 liability issues related to design, operations, and
2 maintenance.
3 The portions of our amendment that are in direct
4 response to the device characteristics are limiting scooter
5 use to roadways with a posted speed limit of 30 miles per
6 hour or less except when an operator is riding on an
7 available shoulder or bike lane; prohibiting the attachment
8 of a child carrier; requiring a rear light after dusk given
9 the low floorboard of the device; and enumerating a braking
10 distance.
11 While electric scooters have been made popular in
12 the last two years by micro-mobility companies, they have
13 been commercially available for many years; first marketed
14 to children and now to adults. Yet this bill would make it
15 illegal for a child to ride an electric scooter purchased
16 by a parent. We encourage additional thoughtful
17 conversations around the age restriction. Also, based on
18 current use and availability, we recommend changing the
19 definition of a low-speed electric scooter to include a
20 device with a seat, as similar devices with seats are
21 commercially available.
22 Department Representatives have spoken to our
23 counterparts in city and State Departments of
24 Transportation across the country to understand the
25 challenges posed by electric scooter use. We have also 19
1 hosted calls to hear the concerns of our major cities and
2 MPOs. Municipalities have requested the ability to define
3 the use of electric scooters to meet their specific
4 mobility needs of their residents and to allow for sensible
5 enforcement.
6 Our amendment language makes 15 miles per hour
7 both the maximum speed for the device definition and the
8 maximum speed at which it can be operated. Making these
9 two speeds the same will allow for easier education and
10 enforcement efforts.
11 From multiple conversations with States and
12 municipalities that have deployed electric scooters, the
13 resounding refrain is that protected infrastructure and
14 tools like parking-protected bike lanes give cities the
15 necessary ability to provide safe places to ride and allow
16 for the devices to best benefit the public.
17 Our final concern is that this bill does not
18 adequately address the substantial range of personal
19 mobility devices, beyond electric low-speed scooters. We
20 hope that we can create a broader definition as soon as
21 possible to encompass the full range of low-speed personal
22 transportation devices.
23 Thank you for considering our testimony.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Ngani.
25 I just have one question real quickly, and that's you said 20
1 in the bottom of page 2 of your testimony the current
2 infrastructure design and maintenance standards may not
3 adequately accommodate these kind of scooters. What kind
4 of infrastructure improvements will we need, at what cost,
5 and are they critical that we should do that before we
6 allow the widespread use of scooters on highways or
7 roadways that are not considered to be up to standard?
8 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes. So we anticipate that these
9 will be most -
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Could you get
11 closer to the mic, please?
12 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes, that these will be most
13 desired as a tool in larger municipalities. They are there
14 already generally bicycle users, and there are some of the
15 similar concerns. But when we consider this as a
16 department internally, we discussed issues like sweeping
17 road debris with the small wheels so there's a really -
18 typical electric scooters have small wheel diameter, and so
19 they're more susceptible to things like road debris like -
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: After a storm, any
21 kind of limbs that have fallen, things like that.
22 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes, those types of things are a
23 little bit more dangerous for a scooter, given their
24 general handling characteristics, than they are for a
25 bicycle, and so it's generally something that we are aware 21
1 of and will expect to be able to be flexible. But our
2 Bureau of Maintenance and Operations can offer some more
3 thoughts on that, and I can bring those back to you.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: And what -
5 MS. NDIMBIE: As we discussed, there weren't any
6 specific numbers given what we think what cost would come
7 to the Department if this bill were to become law.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: And then one other
9 comment I would make about your testimony is you said the
10 municipalities are requesting the ability to define
11 scooters in their own words, and it seems to me we'll have
12 2,500 or 2,600 different definitions in Pennsylvania alone
13 if we allow all the municipalities to do it, but -
14 MS. NDIMBIE: Oh, no, just -
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- I think you're
16 talking about getting information from all these people and
17 then finding an adequate definition that covers the high
18 points of all the -
19 MS. NDIMBIE: I more mean in permitting and
20 regulations, so they'll make sure that the way that
21 scooters are used within their municipality meet the needs
22 of their residents. That is to say that they will set the
23 max number of devices that can be used -- that can be
24 deployed within the city if they are to allow scooter
25 fleets in the first place, and so, yes, those types of 22
1 things.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you
3 very much.
4 Mike, do you have any questions?
5 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: I'll pass.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Representative
7 white, Martina White?
8 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 My question to you is in Philadelphia the Mayor
10 has proposed a congestion tax because of the sheer volume
11 of vehicles we have flowing at particular times of the day.
12 Have you come across any studies that indicate this could
13 increase our congestion issues in the city, these devices?
14 MS. NDIMBIE: They're generally small. None of
15 the research that I've come across would suggest that there
16 would be an increase in congestion. It's a smaller device,
17 so it takes up less space. Congestion is like a
18 geometrical -- it's a space issue, right? So smaller
19 devices of people traveling in a smaller device rather than
20 a larger device would generally lead to less congestion.
21 And we also saw that in Portland their scooter survey
22 suggested that I think 34 percent of users replaced a car
23 trip, a trip that they would've otherwise taken in a car, a
24 personal vehicle or an Uber or a Lyft and opted for a
25 scooter instead, so that would suggest that this has the 23
1 potential to reduce congestion.
2 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: And briefly, could you
3 just describe some of the safety concerns that would be at
4 issue with regards to these devices?
5 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes, so there is some emerging
6 analysis of the types of dangers that have come with
7 scooter use. UCLA's study found that most people who had
8 crashes were people who had fallen or collided with an
9 object or struck by a vehicle, but most of them hadn't been
10 struck by vehicles. Then there are some incidents that
11 were pedestrians who had collided with scooters or tripped
12 over them, so those seem to be the numbers, though most
13 cities that have analyzed the incidents have also found
14 that they think that the benefits outweigh the risks.
15 Baltimore most recently or relatively recently published
16 their study, and they found that, while doing a very
17 careful analysis of injuries, they found that there were
18 also some benefits.
19 And, as Representative Kinsey mentioned, our
20 streets have been pretty dangerous for all vulnerable road
21 users, so they're kind of looking at the challenges that
22 electric scooter users have faced in sort of the broader
23 context of vulnerable road users, and it seems to be in
24 line with those.
25 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Okay. Thank you very 24
1 much.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you.
3 Representative Neilson?
4 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Thank you, Chairman.
5 Thank you for your testimony here today.
6 I want to follow up on the safety aspect of it.
7 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes.
8 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: You brought up in your
9 testimony YOU talked about breaks. In the legislation it
10 doesn't call for these vehicles to be inspected or anything
11 like that.
12 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes.
13 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Brake failure is one of
14 them. We talked about the UCLA study -- I have that right
15 in front of me -- on the injuries. Do you think they
16 should be registered and we should know whose scooter is
17 what laying on the ground? I mean it seems like a concern
18 because I'm from the city of Philadelphia, and, you know, I
19 could have potentially 100,000 of these laying on the
20 sidewalk throughout the city. I mean, they're all over.
21 My kids in my shed, all right, I've had these. I
22 have them. I can say that I have electric skateboards, I
23 have electric pocket rocket bikes they call them, the
24 little, you know -- and they only go 20 miles an hour, and
25 I get that, but I make my kids wear helmets and there's 25
1 nothing in here about any of that. Do you have anything,
2 studies or information, that you can share with the
3 Committee on that?
4 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes. So I think the first part -
5 so on helmet use this bill has it consistent with what we
6 have for a bicycle, and bicycle, including an electric-
7 assist bicycle in the State of Pennsylvania currently you
8 don't have to use a helmet unless you're under -- well, I
9 guess you can't use an electric-assist bicycle until you're
10 16, and you don't have to use a helmet unless you're under
11 12 if you use a bicycle, so those are our current rules.
12 One of the reasons I would assume that this bill
13 doesn't address helmet use is because it sets the age
14 restriction at 16, and we don't require helmet use for
15 bicycles at 16 and above, so it's consistent with bicycles.
16 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: All right. I'm just
17 looking around the State because of some of the stuff I
18 did, some of them are requiring it, California tried to,
19 they stopped it. I mean, I'm looking at your information.
20 You have statewide information. I'm sure we'll hear from
21 NCLS. They'll give us -
22 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes.
23 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: -- a little bit more on
24 it, but -
25 MS. NDIMBIE: I mean, yes, I think that -- 26
1 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Yes.
2 MS. NDIMBIE: -- for example, Oregon, I think
3 they have a bill to get rid of their helmet requirement,
4 but they do currently -- in their law it says that you have
5 to have a helmet. The only place that I've ever ridden an
6 electric scooter is in Portland, Oregon, and I didn't see a
7 single helmet user the whole time I was there. I think
8 that it's more reasonable to suggest that people use it and
9 recommend that people use it, which both the scooter
10 companies and the city does, but then recognize that, you
11 know, the way that people are actually using it. We as the
12 Department would obviously recommend helmet use, as we do
13 all the time with bicycle use, while not requiring it.
14 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Thank you.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
16 Representative Fee?
17 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
18 I just have two questions really. One is in the
19 bill it talks about the age requirement must be sufficient
20 age to operate an automobile -
21 MS. NDIMBIE: Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: -- and in your testimony you
23 talk about you encourage additional thoughtful
24 conversation. Does that mean you would like to see them
25 younger than the age of 16 or -- 27
1 MS. NDIMBIE: We're just highly aware that people
2 like your colleague have them, have scooters, electric
3 scooters today, and that kids are riding them today, and
4 recognize that this is an opportunity, if you so choose, to
5 define how they should be used by younger users of the same
6 technology and to sort of think through that if we, you
7 know, choose not to take that opportunity to define what we
8 think that reasonable use should look like for a younger
9 user.
10 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Okay. And then my second
11 question, which wasn't highlighted in your testimony, is
12 about insurance. But just out of curiosity, I mean, what
13 if I'm riding a scooter and I, you know, rear-end a car and
14 there's damage? How does that work?
15 MS. NDIMBIE: That would be similar to a bike
16 incident, a bike-car incident and/or, if, you know, you're
17 a pedestrian carrying a, I don't know, blunt object, I
18 don't know. Yes, so it would mostly fall on -- you know,
19 I'm not insured for walking per se. I'm not insured for
20 riding my bicycle, so in those same situations, it would
21 fall to the personal responsibility of the scooter user.
22 I'm not -- and, I mean, and also the insurance of the car
23 user, though I'm no expert in insurance, but just to say
24 that it's comparable to an incident that would occur
25 between a bicyclist and -- 28
1 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Okay. Well, good. Well,
2 they're -
3 MS. NDIMBIE: --a car.
4 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: -- I just saw the Insurance
5 Federation's testimony. Okay. Thank you.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
7 MS. NDIMBIE: Oh, and then also the scooter fleet
8 companies have insurance, and I'm sure they could also
9 answer some questions about -
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
11 MS. NDIMBIE: -- how that would be handled.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Ngani, thank you
13 very much for your testimony. Like I said, I think there's
14 a wave of the future whether it's coming whether some of us
15 want it or not. And it's probably going to be -- I would
16 think it's mainly in cities at the beginning. I was even
17 thinking if we were going to do a pilot program, we could
18 do it on college campuses for kids who are much more likely
19 to opt for this kind of transportation and also probably be
20 able to handle it better at least, you know, starting from
21 scratch, although I think somebody said -- was it Steve
22 said that it's like falling off a bicycle. You get back on
23 your scooter and ride it like you did when you were a kid.
24 I'll invite you again, on behalf of PennDOT, if
25 you have Internet links that would help us learn more about 29
1 this, please get them to us and we'll get them
2 disseminated, okay?
3 MS. NDIMBIE: Absolutely. Yes.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you very much
5 for your testimony.
6 Our next testifier, it looks like we've gotten in
7 the technical problems worked out, so Doug Shinkle is
8 Transportation Program Director for the National Conference
9 of State Legislatures, which I think is meeting in
10 Nashville this year in August?
11 MR. SHINKLE: Correct, Chairman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. We have Don
13 Hannon, also Transportation Policy Consultant for the
14 Council of State Governments in the Eastern Region. And I
15 think the Council of State Governments is meeting in
16 Pittsburgh in late July.
17 MR. HANNON: Yes.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you both for
19 being here. Begin -- all of a sudden we've lost -- get
20 those IT guys back here so they can figure out which button
21 we should -- do you want to wait and we'll see if we can
22 call somebody back and -- I mean, you've worked out most of
23 the kinks already, so it was probably just a -
24 MR. SHINKLE: I can certainly give the
25 presentation without the slides, but I think the slides are 30
1 going to be a benefit to you all in terms of your
2 understanding of the issue.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Why don't we just
4 have Don go first then, and can we see if we can get the IT
5 people back?
6 MR. SHINKLE: And if it doesn't work at that
7 point, that's totally fine.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Go ahead.
9 Thanks.
10 MR. HANNON: Chairman Hennessey, Chairman
11 Carroll, and distinguished Members of the House
12 Transportation Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
13 speak on the pending e-scooter legislation. I'm Don
14 Hannon, and I serve as a Transportation Policy Consultant
15 with Council of State Governments-Eastern Regional
16 Conference. We provide research and analysis to State
17 policymakers across all three branches of government in the
18 11 Northeastern States from Maine to Maryland, including
19 Pennsylvania.
20 I was asked to speak on what actions neighboring
21 States have taken or have planned for e-scooters and also
22 to report on what's happening on city-level pilot programs.
23 Pennsylvania is not alone in the Northeast or
24 even across the Nation and looking to address e-scooters.
25 States are actively enacting legislation paving the way for 31
1 local governments to consider the introduction of e-
2 scooters. Pennsylvania's deliberate actions have given
3 city officials the opportunity to examine the experiences
4 of other cities to learn from the best practices and also
5 from their not-so-successful practices.
6 First to the 10 States in our region, three of
7 the most Northern States -- Maine, New Hampshire, and
8 Vermont -- have seen little legislative activities in these
9 largely rural States. Maine's largest city is Portland
10 with 8,000 residents, less than in the city of Bethlehem.
11 New Hampshire's largest city, Manchester, has just under
12 110,000 citizens, making it about the same size as Erie,
13 while Vermont's largest city, Burlington, have 8,000 less
14 people than here in Harrisburg. In Delaware, similar to
15 Pennsylvania's law, e-scooters are not allowed anywhere.
16 Unlike Pennsylvania, there is no pending enabling
17 legislation in the State.
18 I'd like to focus more attention on the six
19 remaining States in the Northeast. Rhode Island may be
20 small in geographic size, but it does have the third-
21 largest city in New England. The city of Providence would
22 rank third in Pennsylvania behind Philadelphia and
23 Pittsburgh much closer in population size to Allentown.
24 Providence has an ongoing pilot program which allows
25 e-scooters almost everywhere, including sidewalks. 32
1 However, city officials are considering limiting their
2 usage on sidewalks due to perceived e-scooter pedestrian
3 conflict.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Don, excuse me.
5 Can I interrupt you and just ask how long has the pilot
6 program been in existence up there in Providence?
7 MR. HANNON: Since last year, 2018. All of these
8 places have just started in this past year.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you.
10 Sorry for the interruption.
11 MR. HANNON: That's okay. The current
12 Massachusetts State law treats e-scooters the same as
13 mopeds, requiring them to have brake lights and turn
14 signals. However, the State is looking to change that, and
15 the bill closely matching the parameters that this
16 Committee is considering is moving forward. The
17 legislation is expected to be signed by Governor Baker
18 shortly.
19 Less than two weeks ago, the Connecticut House
20 Transportation Committee favorably reported out a bill that
21 amends State law to treat e-scooters like bicycles. It
22 would allow municipalities to issue local ordinances that
23 bars them from sidewalks.
24 As for New Jersey, both the State Assembly and
25 Senate passed legislation that would enable e-scooters to 33
1 operate in streets and paved bypaths. Additionally, it
2 sets a maximum speed of 19 miles per hour. The bill awaits
3 New Jersey Governor Murphy's signature.
4 In Maryland earlier this month, the legislature
5 approved a bill that, when signed into law, allows local
6 governments the ability to regulate e-scooters similar to
7 bicycles.
8 E-scooters are not legal for operation across New
9 York State. An attempt last month to make them legal
10 failed. As part of Governor Cuomo's budget submission, he
11 proposed forbidding localities to authorize them. However,
12 the legislation didn't make it into the April 1st approved
13 State budget. One reason given was that legalization of
14 e-scooters didn't have any State fiscal impact and could
15 instead be considered outside of the budget process. The
16 current New York legislative session continues, so
17 legislation could get advanced and approved in the coming
18 months.
19 Clearly, there are similarities between
20 Pennsylvania's e-scooter legislation and the regional
21 States. What is not in Pennsylvania's legislation but is
22 found in some other States is a requirement that e-scooter
23 companies carry insurance coverage for their e-scooters.
24 However, where States have not set any insurance
25 requirements, cities have included clauses in their 34
1 agreements to indemnify the cities from liability claims
2 and requires e-scooter providers to carry insurance
3 policies.
4 By the latest count, 39 of America's 100 largest
5 cities have e-scooter rental services, and of those 39
6 cities, 32 have some local oversight in place. Cities must
7 balance how e-scooters can operate while ensuring both
8 safety and public access to them. To help encourage the
9 equitable distribution and usage, many cities have
10 stipulations in their agreements requiring the companies to
11 make them available across all neighborhoods.
12 Of course, challenges have been found in the
13 pilot programs, including riders illegal operating them on
14 sidewalks, concerns over improper ridership and the lack of
15 enforcement of the rules, and e-scooters being improperly
16 parked, adversely affecting pedestrian movement and ADA
17 access.
18 I'd like now to focus on three cities, Baltimore,
19 New York City, and beyond our region, Portland, Oregon. In
20 the view of many, including its city officials, Baltimore's
21 pilot program has proven to be a success. Last week,
22 Baltimore City Council gave preliminary approval to
23 legislation that makes the program permanent. The
24 legislation would give Baltimore the ability to issue
25 permits to e-scooter companies, impose fines on both the 35
1 companies and users, collect taxes on each ride, and let
2 riders under the age of 16 use them as long as they wear a
3 helmet. Additionally, penalties could be placed upon the
4 companies for violations such as having more scooters than
5 allowed or failing to provide equitable access. Baltimore
6 officials see the fiscal benefits and estimate that the
7 renewed program could bring in over $1 million in revenue
8 from fees, fines, and taxes.
9 As I noted earlier, e-scooters are still
10 considered illegal in New York State. However, New York
11 City officials are gearing up to launch a pilot program.
12 America's largest city presents unique opportunities for
13 both the traveling public and e-scooter companies. In
14 Austin, Texas, there are over 15,000 e-scooter permits.
15 Austin has a population of just under 1 million people and
16 is slightly larger in size than New York City. However,
17 New York City's population is over eight times greater than
18 Austin's. If we were to apply Austin's scooter-to-citizen
19 ratio to New York City, we could see nearly 125,000
20 e-scooters in the city. While that seems somewhat
21 unlikely, you can imagine the desire of e-scooter companies
22 to enter this untapped market.
23 I'd like to conclude my city-level comments
24 highlighting the city of Portland, Oregon. E-scooters were
25 introduced in Portland last summer, and in a recent 36
1 citywide poll, 1/3 of Portland is said that they use them
2 in place of driving or ridesharing. Portland's pilot
3 program ended last November, but it's set to return next
4 week with a few new conditions, including that users wear
5 helmets and new harsher penalties for those that abuse that
6 program. Portland's pilot study also highlights e-scooter
7 safety. Portland found that the injury rate for e-scooters
8 was comparable to the rate of bicycle injuries.
9 In summary, we see many city programs expanded or
10 renewed often with tweaks to the agreements to reflect
11 lessons learned such as using geo-fencing technology to
12 restrict vehicle speeds in designated areas. Additionally,
13 cities are issuing regulations requiring a set operating
14 fee on each scooter, annual fees, caps on fleet sizes, and
15 that a portion of the fees collected go to improving roads
16 and bikeway infrastructure.
17 We also know that there are places where local
18 governments have banned e-scooters. These include Seattle,
19 Washington; Asheville, North Carolina; and South Carolina's
20 capital city of Columbia. There are many reasons for the
21 bans, but most have cited safety concerns over blocked
22 sidewalks, the breaking of traffic laws, incidences of
23 accidents, and the need for cities to first develop
24 regulations.
25 Finally, the legislation before the Committee, if 37
1 enacted, would enable local governments to weigh the pros
2 and cons of e-scooters. The challenge for Pennsylvania
3 cities and towns will be to strike a balance between not
4 holding back on the micro-mobility opportunities for
5 e-scooter users and imposing order to ensure the safety of
6 all.
7 On behalf of the Council of State Governments-
8 Eastern Regional Conference, I'd like to thank you for the
9 opportunity to speak on House Bill 631, and I look forward
10 to any questions you may have.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Don.
12 I'm going to ask you to be just -- we'll keep the questions
13 till later if you would.
14 MR. HANNON: Sure.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: The technology is
16 working now. We'll have Doug Shinkle give his
17 presentation. And if we have to, we'll call the IT people
18 back once again.
19 MR. SHINKLE: I think I can just wing it from
20 here at this point. I appreciate it.
21 First of all, thank you very much for having me.
22 This is my first time at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.
23 Thank you, Chairman Hennessey and Minority Chair Carroll.
24 Thanks, Representative Rothman and Representative Kinsey,
25 for your opening remarks. 38
1 I worked a lot with the Pennsylvania House
2 Transportation Committee over the years, especially Eric
3 Bugaile, who's been very involved in a lot of our efforts,
4 so happy to be here.
5 So I'm just going to give an overview of kind of
6 what I see in terms of State legislative trends for the
7 electric scooters, and that's pretty much a trend that's
8 just this year, although I will comment on a few bills from
9 last year. And I try to mostly stay away from talking
10 about the New England States and leave that to Don, so I
11 will kind of note them in a few places.
12 But, just quickly, NCSL is a membership
13 organization that all legislators and legislative staff are
14 members of. And, as you noted, we are holding our annual
15 legislative summit in Nashville the summer, August 5th to
16 8th, and we will actually have a scooter tour there. I was
17 in Nashville a few weeks ago kind of checking out the route
18 and making sure it's safe, and so the opportunity will be
19 available for some of you all if you attend. This is just
20 an overview of all the things that NCSL's transportation
21 program covers.
22 I do want to note that NCSL has a cooperative
23 agreement with NHTSA that we've had for 23 years now, and
24 that enables to do things like travel here from Denver to
25 do this. And I want to note that we have this traffic 39
1 safety database that has traffic safety bills going all the
2 way back to 2007. I am tracking electric scooters in this
3 database. They are under the slow- and medium-speed
4 vehicle category, so if you look in there, you should be
5 able to find all the ones I'm going to talk about here.
6 So to back up, and I think the two speakers
7 before me did a good job of kind of talking about like why
8 are we talking about this. It's because, you know, you go
9 to certain places, you go to Austin, you go to Santa
10 Monica, and they do seem like they're everywhere, and there
11 are pretty big fleets in those cities.
12 So there's actually an exciting piece of research
13 that just came out I believe yesterday. I don't know if
14 it's actually been officially released yet by the National
15 Association of City Transportation Officials, and they're
16 really a group that's good at thinking about the nitty-
17 gritty granular on-the-ground operations, some of the
18 pieces that the States may kind of allow municipalities to
19 put in place. But they came up with this great report
20 yesterday, so this map right here shows you the State -
21 basically the different shared micro-mobility programs
22 throughout the country. So the yellow dots in this map
23 indicate cities with both scooter-share and bike-share
24 programs. The orange-only dots mark cities with only
25 scooter share provided the fleet is above 150 scooters. 40
1 So this is just kind of fascinating. So NACTO
2 has been kind of tracking these numbers and this data since
3 around 2 010, and what you see is of course that, you know,
4 scooter share isn't even on there until last year because
5 that's basically when it started to be unveiled in places
6 like California basically first and some other markets like
7 Austin, Texas and what have you. So they essentially went
8 from zero shared scooter trips in 2017 to 38.5 million in
9 2018. And that's the overall amount of shared trips is
10 noted on there is 84 million. So they're already almost
11 half.
12 And some of what the other research shows you is
13 that the adoption of these vehicles is much higher than it
14 is for bike share or electric bikes. There is something
15 about these vehicles, devices that is more just to the kind
16 of novice beginner, which is more attractive or they want
17 to use them, and so basically the rate at which they're
18 being adopted or people are trying them out is much higher
19 than these other shared services. And I think that speaks
20 to, you know, the kind of -- their stunning popularity and
21 kind of the fact that they are, you know, a legitimate
22 transportation option.
23 So this map kind of gives you an overview of 2019
24 State e-scooter legislation. So 31 States and D.C. have
25 considered or enacted nearly 80 bills related to electric 41
1 scooters in 2019. States in blue are currently considering
2 bills. The two yellow States are States, New Mexico and
3 Mississippi, that considered bills but didn't end up
4 enacting them in their sessions. And then Utah, Kentucky,
5 and Virginia are the three States that have bills signed by
6 the Governor. Also note that Arkansas and Maryland
7 currently have bills that are on the Governor's desk, and
8 from what it sounds like, they're likely going to get
9 signed by the Governor as well.
10 So I'm going to focus my remarks on the common
11 aspects I'm seeing in these bills, and so we're going to
12 talk about the definitions a little bit, the speed, both
13 the maximum design speed and the operating speed, the
14 minimum operator age, the helmet requirements, sidewalk and
15 road operation, and State-versus-local control.
16 So in Kentucky, defined as an electric low-speed
17 scooter; Utah, a motor-assisted scooter; Virginia, a
18 motorized scooter. I think the more important is that are
19 they basically relatively consistent in the kind of vehicle
20 they're describing? Mostly so. Kentucky and Virginia
21 further define these vehicles by stating they must weigh
22 less than 100 pounds. Utah's law is silent on this
23 attribute. I found that most States did -- because most of
24 these are pending, right, most of them did have that 100
25 pounds in there. I did notice that Connecticut's was 65 42
1 pounds, and I thought that was kind of interesting.
2 And they typically mostly have, you know, you
3 must be able to break on dry pavement and most of them but
4 not all of them require that you have some sort of head and
5 rear lights and those other kind of attributes.
6 Virginia notably -- and the PennDOT
7 Representative was talking about that there's perhaps an
8 opportunity in the future. You know, this isn't going to
9 be the last micro-mobility kind of option out there. There
10 are things like motorized skateboards and other things that
11 are going to probably maybe become part of shared services,
12 and so at some point it might behoove States to develop
13 kind of a standard definition for all of these different
14 kind of devices, but that's kind of hard to do when you
15 don't know what they are.
16 Virginia did also define motorized skateboards as
17 part of their new law with the same operating requirements
18 and weight standards.
19 I will note that most States have similar
20 language disallowing the parking of a scooter in a manner
21 that impedes the reasonable movement of pedestrians or any
22 other traffic, and there's a lot more I could go into and
23 very happy to provide a lot of other supporting
24 information.
25 So speed, I think when you think about the safety 43
1 of these things is the thing that's kind of utmost in
2 people's minds is people have alluded to, you know, the
3 speed capabilities or maybe not much different than a
4 bicycle. Of course, these aren't motorized. There are
5 electric bicycles, though, that are semi-motorized but you
6 still have to use human power.
7 So here's the kind of trends of where we're at.
8 So the majority of States have a 20-mile-per-hour maximum
9 kind of design speed of the electric scooter and the
10 operating speed. However, there are a good amount of
11 States -- you'll see the ones in the middle -- where the
12 design speed being 20 miles per hour but the operator is
13 not allowed to exceed 15 miles an hour. And you'll see
14 that includes Utah, one of the States who have enacted
15 their legislation, and of course the legislation here in
16 Pennsylvania. And then there's two States with 15 miles an
17 hour just for the design speed and operation speed.
18 And I can't necessarily speak to -- you know,
19 some of these bills are pretty far through the process, but
20 it's kind of hard to know, you know, which ones are going
21 to get enacted. And when I was looking yesterday, some of
22 them have been amended and changed since I looked at the
23 presentation last week. I did notice that Oklahoma had a
24 25-mile-per-hour, which kind of struck me because that was
25 definitely an outlier there. 44
1 So the other key piece I think is the scooter
2 operator minimum age, and so what I've found is the most
3 common was 16. Note that Texas -- and I'll talk about this
4 a little bit more. Texas and a few States maybe go in a
5 little more detail about things that localities maybe
6 reserve the right to further regulate themselves.
7 There's a few States that reference motor vehicle
8 driver age, including Pennsylvania's law. A few States
9 with 15; one with 14, Virginia, one of the enacted States;
10 Utah with eight, which I was a little bit surprised by, but
11 then there are a number of States that don't even mention
12 an age in theirs. And, you know, like I said, who knows if
13 that will -- I think it will be very interesting at the end
14 of this year because I have no doubt things will change,
15 but this gives you kind of a snapshot in time.
16 Helmet requirements, not very many of them thus
17 far, so I should note that California, kind of maybe
18 unsurprisingly was, you know, ahead of the curve on this
19 because they were the first State -- this is where a lot of
20 these companies are from, and this is where these vehicles
21 were first deployed, so they did pass a bill last year, and
22 they made some changes, and I'll talk about a few more of
23 those changes. But they do require helmets for riders
24 under 18, as would Hawaii's pending bill. Louisiana has a
25 couple different bills, but one of them would be under 17 45
1 would require helmets. And then as I reference in Texas,
2 they reserve the right for a locality to require the
3 operator to wear a safety helmet.
4 And on the safety part, I'm really glad that Don
5 brought up the Portland study because there is a lot of
6 anecdotal discussion of how safe these vehicles are, but
7 it's really hard to get a sense of vis-a-vis how safe are
8 they compared to being in a motor vehicle or walking or
9 being a bicyclist.
10 I will note that the Centers for Disease Control
11 is doing a study of I think 200 or 300 or so crashes that
12 involve scooters in the city of Austin over a two- or
13 three-month period in late 2018, and they're doing that
14 analysis now on kind of what led to those, the severity of
15 those and what have you, and obviously CDC is a very
16 important organization in terms of the rigor that they
17 bring to that kind of thing. I don't know what the
18 expected timeline is for that, but I'm hopeful to see that
19 soon and other studies like the one that Don mentioned
20 because I do think that's an important part of the
21 conversation.
22 So sidewalk and road operation, and this really
23 goes with -- you know, this is difficult because, as the
24 PennDOT Representative said, if you don't have good kind of
25 road systems that are amenable for bicyclists and scooters, 46
1 you're probably going to lead to more sidewalk riding than
2 you want, and that creates a whole set of other problems.
3 But people are making that choice to ride on the sidewalks
4 probably because they feel unsafe themselves, not because
5 they want to make conditions unsafe for other people. So
6 that's something States have really been grappling with.
7 So States are typically treating e-scooters like
8 bikes in these bills, and many States are just straight up
9 saying that an e-scooter is kind of a subclassification
10 under a bicycle. It has the same rights and
11 responsibilities as a bicyclist. And motorists'
12 interactions with e-scooters are similar as they would be
13 with bikes. And Pennsylvania's law is basically along
14 those lines, so I list out some of those other States that
15 have those kind of attributes.
16 And then another interesting, you know, dynamic,
17 I didn't see this in a lot of bills, is States giving a top
18 posted speed basically above a scooter may not be able to
19 operate on. So Iowa, Oklahoma currently proposing 35 miles
20 an hour, Texas 30 miles an hour, Louisiana 25 miles an
21 hour. California it starts to get a little more
22 complicated. Basically if there's no bike lanes, you could
23 operate on a road up to 25 miles an hour. My reading of it
24 basically is like if there's a road that's 55 miles an hour
25 but as long as it has a bike lane, you could ride it on 47
1 there. But it does allow a locality to authorize operation
2 on roads up to 35 miles an hour.
3 I did see a few examples of making it clear that
4 you can cross a roadway that's a higher top speed because,
5 you know, you have to be thoughtful about this. You want
6 to be safe, you want to provide a transportation option,
7 and if you're limiting the roadways that are available,
8 then you're, you know, limiting the reach of these vehicles
9 basically.
10 And in Wisconsin as another example with
11 basically they say that municipalities could keep operation
12 to streets less than 25 miles an hour. And that's a pretty
13 common trend that just States are -- some of them are not
14 even getting in the local control part, but some of them
15 are definitely ceding some of these and saying the
16 localities can go further.
17 And that's kind of the last piece here is that,
18 and then I have kind of a few other remarks. But you're
19 seeing many States not really weigh in on the State-local
20 control piece at all but some are trying to create some
21 common standards, especially when it comes to scooter share
22 because we have to remember that -- and I don't have
23 numbers and I wonder if someone does, but, you know, a lot
24 of people own these scooters, as Representative Neilson
25 alluded to. They individually own them. But really what 48
1 we're largely talking about here is scooter-share
2 operators.
3 So one good example is Utah put in place a number
4 of kind of just common standards that municipalities have
5 to use when they're regulating at the local level so they
6 can authorize their operation on sidewalks and designate a
7 maximum speed on sidewalks, but the regulation must be
8 consistent with the regulation of bicycles. And penalties
9 for any moving or parking violation would also have to be
10 consistent with a violation for a bicycle.
11 Localities may -- and this is something I saw in
12 a decent amount of States. Localities may require fees
13 from the scooter-share operator, reasonable fees, you know,
14 for basically access to a right-of-way and what have you.
15 They may designate locations where scooter-share operators
16 may not stage shared scooters, and this is the Utah
17 example, provided that at least one location shall be
18 permitted on each side of each city block in commercial
19 zones and business districts. So they went definitely into
20 a little more detail.
21 And this is something, an important piece, is
22 require scooter-share operators to provide anonymous fleet
23 and ride activity data for completed trips starting or
24 ended within the jurisdiction because how are you going to
25 know how this is really playing into the overall 49
1 transportation system if you don't have the data?
2 It is important that they have privacy safeguards
3 built in. I know the scooter-share companies have some
4 concerns about how that information is conveyed and that it
5 doesn't give away any business trademarks, you know, or any
6 identifying information of the individuals. And, as I
7 mentioned, Texas, their bill as now would really give a lot
8 of power to the localities to further restrict the location
9 a person may operate a motor-assisted scooter, increase the
10 minimum age for the operator, restrict the parking
11 locations, require a safety helmet, and a number of other
12 things.
13 And that's all I have. I'm happy to say
14 questions, and thanks a lot for having me.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Doug. I
16 appreciate it. Thank you for the testimony from both of
17 you.
18 Doug, let me just ask, in States that are
19 considering amending their vehicle codes to allow for
20 e-scooters, you know, do you have any information on
21 whether the States are saying they're going to allow it in
22 cities of the first class or the second class? Are they
23 limiting it to population areas where more people might
24 choose to use the scooters? How are they handling it?
25 Because we've heard from Don that there are a number of 50
1 cities that are doing pilot programs.
2 MR. SHINKLE: I -
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Tell us what's
4 happening there.
5 MR. SHINKLE: I saw one or two references to kind
6 of allowing a pilot program to be developed, but I actually
7 did not see -- and, like I said, I didn't look as closely
8 at the Northeast States, so I'm wondering if he might know.
9 But I saw no examples of any such restriction like you're
10 stating. They were basically all enabling them to be used
11 -- and, once again, we're talking about -- in some
12 instances some aspects of these bills, they're very much -
13 and they make it clear sometimes that they're talking about
14 scooter share. But really most of the time they're talking
15 just about scooters, and that may be individually owned.
16 So only the pieces of the bill that really get into scooter
17 share, and that really has to do about the kind of
18 relationship between the municipality and the scooter-share
19 operator in the State setting these overall rules. But to
20 answer your question, Chairman, I didn't actually see any
21 examples of any restriction or saying you can only be in
22 this size city or anything like that. I didn't see any of
23 that in the bills I looked at.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. And one
25 other thing that struck me, I think you said the city of 51
1 Austin in Texas was examining 300 crashes in two to three
2 months?
3 MR. SHINKLE: Yes, I think it was -
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Maybe we'll hear
5 more from Jonathan Greer from the insurance concerns that
6 that might raise, but this seems to me, you know, that's a
7 lot of crashes for a relatively short period of time.
8 MR. SHINKLE: Yes. And I can't speak too much to
9 the details. I mean, of course, whether -- the severity of
10 the crash is a question. You do have to keep in mind the
11 fleet size. I went to Austin about four or five months
12 ago, and, you know, I'm based in Denver, and Denver has a
13 scooter fleet of about 2,000 currently, which is a good
14 amount, but, you know, Denver is a pretty big city. It
15 doesn't seem overwhelming. But then I went to Austin and I
16 was like, wow, there's a lot of scooters here. And so
17 afterwards I looked it up and they have like 9,000. I
18 think they have even more now.
19 And so when you start thinking about it in those
20 numbers, maybe it's not, but I do think that at the end of
21 the day it needs to be carefully considered. Are they
22 really as safe as riding a bicycle, which is probably the
23 closest equivalent? I think it's probably too early to
24 really tell that with certitude. And I think probably some
25 of that has to do with, you know, just encouraging 52
1 responsible riding and maybe having some targeted
2 enforcement that's not really focused maybe on citations as
3 much as just educating people on -- because you see a lot
4 of -- and I hate to get into the anecdotal, but you see a
5 lot of the I'm on the sidewalk, I'm on the street, I'm on
6 the sidewalk, and that's just confusing and hard for people
7 to interact with. But once again, that may be a response
8 to people just feeling I don't feel safe on the street, I'm
9 going to get on the sidewalk.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Yes. Okay.
11 Chairman?
12 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Thank you so much.
13 And I'm going to follow up. The liability question is one
14 that I have questions related to. I thought I heard, Doug,
15 you mention that in some of the States the State law passed
16 along the ability to impose liability requirements on the
17 local governments, and then in other States there was a
18 State standard that was applied. And whether the community
19 will be on that, I'm not sure. How can you best
20 characterize which is more prevalent? Is there any data
21 that would suggest which has provided more protections for
22 those that might find themselves in that sort of scenario?
23 MR. SHINKLE: Thank you for the question. And
24 I'll preface the same thing. I am not an insurance expert,
25 but I saw mostly examples of States -- and Utah comes to 53
1 mind, which I might actually have the info back on this
2 slide if I can -- that mostly did -- most of the States
3 didn't even mention insurance. Some of these bills are
4 very much like just defining a scooter and some basic
5 operation standards about it. But the ones that did tended
6 to be more -- Utah was an example that I don't have there
7 that they basically come up with a common standard for what
8 a scooter-share operator, the kind of liability they would
9 have to cover. And I can certainly provide that
10 information to you.
11 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay.
12 MR. HANNON: In our investigation we did find
13 that Washington State's legislature did require e-scooter
14 operators to carry commercial liability coverage with a
15 limit of at least $1 million for each occurrence and $5
16 million in the aggregate. Automobile insurance coverage
17 with a combined single limit of $1 million and if a local
18 authority authorizes e-scooter operation by individuals
19 under the age of 16, the local authority may require the
20 e-scooter operator to carry insurance at a greater amount
21 negotiated between the operator and the local authority.
22 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay. Thank you.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Representative
24 Martina White.
25 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Thank you again, Doug, for 54
1 being here today. I was curious along the lines of the
2 collections of the fines and if you had any information in
3 regards to what the municipalities are doing when it comes
4 to these scooter-share operators. Do they collect the
5 fines on behalf of the municipality? And also, are there
6 zones that are selected by a municipality in coordination
7 with these scooter-share operators to say, you know,
8 obviously we prefer that these things be parked in a
9 certain area and therefore it gets more expensive the
10 further away you go from those areas? Can you talk a
11 little bit more about that?
12 MR. SHINKLE: I can, and I imagine of course the
13 scooter-share operators would be more able to speak to
14 that. Just knowing from riding these and what have you,
15 they're typically geo-fenced because, like you said, you
16 want to have them in an area where they're most going to be
17 used. And the more they get to the periphery, that's
18 harder for the operators to bring back and they're also
19 less likely to be ridden.
20 Your question was asking about where the fines
21 that may be assessed by a municipality, like who's doing
22 that, first of all? From the instances I know -- and
23 that's probably not as much of that now, but there were
24 some instances -- and I can't think of the city -- whereas
25 from Denver where they started fining the companies for not 55
1 redistributing scooters to agreed-upon locations, for them
2 cluttering the public way, for things like being thrown
3 into rivers which, you know, is unfortunate and not really
4 the fault of the scooter-share operating company. And I
5 don't think there's any good numbers in terms of
6 violations.
7 It sounds like you're talking maybe about like
8 the overall operations. There's not good information about
9 individuals speeding or, you know, riding these drunks,
10 although there was one -- someone prosecuted in Los Angeles
11 for that after hitting someone, but, you know, yes, to put
12 it in that perspective of how many people drive a motor
13 vehicle every day. But I don't really get a great sense of
14 where that money is necessarily going either, but really I
15 think the focus of the cities -- and there's other folks
16 that can talk to those better, but the focus of the cities
17 is on making sure that the right-of-way is clear and that
18 people are staying safe and that the operators are in a
19 good-faith kind of operating agreement with the city.
20 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: And I guess just along
21 those lines, are the municipalities coordinating with these
22 operators, the companies to identify those areas that the
23 city prefers these bicycles be placed or the scooters be
24 placed?
25 MR. SHINKLE: I think largely so -- and, Don, you 56
1 might have thoughts on this, too. But from what I know
2 very much -- and once again I'll use the example of the
3 local city that I'm in, Denver. They actually -- and
4 they're actually starting to move away from this a little
5 bit, but they prescribed that scooters had to be kind of
6 repositioned to certain areas near bus stops and transit
7 areas so they were kind of more in like little nodes rather
8 than spread out.
9 But I think what's been found from what I've
10 heard kind of anecdotally but also through an official
11 report from Denver is that, you know, people might ride a
12 scooter up right to their house at 10:00 at night, and they
13 might want it there the next morning and it's going to make
14 it more likely -- now, someone else may take it, but I
15 think they're finding that may be as long as it's within
16 kind of just a general zone that it might not make as much
17 sense to do that sort of kind of prescription that it needs
18 to be in a certain place.
19 I think when you start getting into kind of a
20 dense downtown environment and there's a lot of different
21 uses and activities and a lot of pedestrians, and somewhere
22 like New York City certainly comes to mind where, I mean,
23 sidewalks are already too full to begin with, that you
24 would then maybe look to what -- like the example that from
25 Utah where they said maybe in these central districts you 57
1 have a prescribed area where you actually have parked on
2 the street, you know, either bike racks or little painted
3 areas, which some cities do have now, and those often can
4 be bike-share parking as well.
5 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Okay. Thank you.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you.
7 Representative Neilson?
8 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: I'd like to follow up
9 with Representative White because the enforcement issue
10 isn't the problem. I mean, we're from the city of the
11 first class, and like New York City, we have a lot of
12 people on our sidewalks. I've never seen a person in my
13 lifetime get pulled over on a bicycle because by the time
14 you get any kind of enforcement, they're gone. Yes,
15 there's yelling, screaming, ba, ba, ba, ba, pushing people,
16 but just going, that's -- how can you enforce it? Have we
17 seen any kind of -- I mean, there has to be some kind of
18 data on enforcement because we're sitting here saying it's
19 safe to ride on sidewalks, but how can we -- logistics-
20 wise, it just doesn't work. Bike lanes it works in the
21 street and stuff like that but just not -
22 MR. HANNON: You know, this is really a new
23 phenomenon, too. This is, you know, a year and a half that
24 this has started. I think that if you look to the city of
25 Baltimore, they're the ones that had a pilot project and 58
1 now the city itself is really putting in a lot of new
2 regulations about enforcement and giving the power to
3 the -- well, of course to the city police but also to the
4 city Department of Public Works, the ability to go in and,
5 you know, find the companies if they find out that the
6 e-scooters are not being parked appropriately. They are
7 looking at implementing a lot higher fines on both the
8 users and on the companies, and I think it's from lessons
9 learned.
10 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: So both of you spoke in
11 your testimony, and I thank you for that today, about the
12 local government creating regs. And like just like take
13 like speeding, we know that scooters can go a little faster
14 than allowed. Would that be something you feel that we
15 should regulate those companies to monitor and send out
16 fines to those users? I mean, because how does an officer
17 look at somebody and say, hey, look, I think he's going 17
18 miles an hour, he should only go 15. And I know there's
19 regs on these products because, like I said, I've owned a
20 couple and there's little stuff you can do to regulate
21 them, but how should we as legislators address that issue?
22 If you have any opinion, I'd love to hear it. And that's
23 all I have, Chairman. Thank you. I'll wait for your
24 answers.
25 MR. SHINKLE: Most if not all of the scooter- 59
1 share scooters like this one here to my understanding are
2 governed so that they cannot go faster than 15 miles per
3 hour. Now, if you're going downhill, of course, you might
4 be able to go faster than 15 miles per hour, but generally,
5 that helps possibly solve that. I think to your questions
6 when you get further in the process it might be really
7 helpful to have the National Association of City
8 Transportation Officials, that NACTO group, because they
9 can really get in to talking more about the nitty-gritty
10 operation granular things.
11 I think the other thing to your point about how
12 do you enforce this is that many States and cities -- and
13 I'm sure PennDOT and the Office of Highway Safety here,
14 which I'm not sure if it resides in PennDOT or where here
15 in the State -- but typically they receive dollars from the
16 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to do target
17 enforcement on a number of different things. And this
18 happens in Denver where I am, and I can give you an
19 example.
20 I don't know if you know what an Idaho stop is
21 where you're on a bicycle and you're supposed to stop at a
22 stop sign but, you know, if you see most people on a bike,
23 you don't really actually really stop. And I know that you
24 get tickets for it because I got one. And it was at an
25 intersection where they deemed to be a problem, and so I 60
1 think that's what you do is you look to certain places.
2 And I don't want to be flippant by giving that, but I'm
3 giving you an actual example of like where they kind of
4 identified an intersection where they felt like they needed
5 to make kind of an example of people, and I was one of
6 those examples of the $90 ticket for going 10 miles per
7 hour through a stop sign. And I'm not complaining about it
8 because I broke the law, but you focus on some
9 intersections and some problem areas.
10 I personally don't think the citing part is
11 really necessary as much as just making sure that people
12 understand that this is, you know, a shared system and
13 everyone has their responsibilities. And that's probably
14 the best way to approach that and involving local law
15 enforcement, but there's a lot of money available federally
16 and state-wise to do that kind of targeted enforcement.
17 It's typically done in the May, June, July time periods.
18 There's actually some preordained times of year that, you
19 know, of course correspond when lots of people are walking,
20 biking, and doing things like taking scooter share.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you.
22 Representative Innamorato, did I get that right?
23 REPRESENTATIVE INNAMORATO: Thank you.
24 Innamorato, but very close.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. 61
1 REPRESENTATIVE INNAMORATO: Thank you for your
2 testimony. And thank you for speaking to the trends in
3 permitting fees and fines. But I was hoping that you could
4 speak a little bit to taxes imposed on the individual user
5 by localities and what you've seen there and how you've -
6 if they have -- I know Baltimore has, but if these cities
7 or municipalities have imposed taxes, how those funds have
8 been used.
9 MR. HANNON: Well, in Baltimore they're looking
10 to use it to improve the bike paths and also the
11 infrastructure. It's an agreement between the companies
12 and the localities. That's signed up pretty much up front
13 as to how much funds will it be in order to use it, $1 to
14 unlock it, 15 cents per minute.
15 But the one thing that is very new is so much
16 information is going to be available, so much data. When
17 you go to get on an e-scooter, the only way you're going to
18 unlock it is with your app, and it's going to say that Don
19 Hannon is unlocking this and Don Hannon is going to be
20 having it for the -- you know, I have it for the next 10
21 minutes. And if I go and I throw it in somebody's front
22 yard, the police come, they are going to be able to say,
23 well, let's go talk to Lime and see who was the last person
24 that had that. Well, that was Don Hannon.
25 So this amount of data that's available now is 62
1 going to be something -- that scenario that's going to be
2 new to the cities and to everyone really. And, you know,
3 it will be interesting seeing what happens with it.
4 MR. SHINKLE: And I think that NACTO group once
5 again that probably would have a very -- they would
6 probably actually have a catalog of exactly what those fees
7 are, and I'm happy to see if I can find that for you. I
8 think you generally covered like the general dynamics of
9 the situation well.
10 The other thing to keep in mind is that you want
11 to -- I think there's an exciting opportunity because I
12 know that maybe like the bicycling advocacy world sees this
13 as a way as like, hey, now there's more people that are
14 wanting to use bike lanes. This is a way to help us
15 advocate for more of that, and that's interesting.
16 What you see -- and this is another example from
17 Denver from the report I read is that you have to keep in
18 mind, I mean, if you're going to charge a fee, you want to
19 be thoughtful about how much that fee is because the
20 average trip length for these -- and it depends by city of
21 course, but it's typically less than a mile. So if you
22 start adding on a fee, then it might adjust people's like
23 likelihood to use it, so I guess that's just something to,
24 you know, keep in mind. But I'm happy to look in and see
25 if NACTO has that information because I think that they 63
1 probably do.
2 REPRESENTATIVE INNAMORATO: Okay. Thank you.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Gentlemen, thank
4 you very much for your testimony today. I don't see
5 anybody else asking questions of you. Doug, I'd be remiss
6 if I didn't tell you, since this is your first visit to
7 Harrisburg, you should take some time and visit our State
8 Capitol. In 1908 President Teddy Roosevelt said this was
9 the handsomest State Capitol in the entire country. Most
10 people today, what is it, 111 years later, still agree it's
11 the prettiest State Capitol in the entire United States,
12 not quite as grand and voluminous as the National Capitol,
13 but frankly much more vibrant in terms of its colors. And
14 it's well worth taking an hour or two, and we have tours
15 all the time that you can latch onto and learn about this
16 beautiful building.
17 So thank you very much -
18 MR. SHINKLE: Thank you for that.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- for being here.
20 Thanks for making the trip to be here to lend us expertise
21 in this.
22 Our next group will be -- or testifiers -- I'm
23 sorry, we only have one testifier, Jonathan Greer on behalf
24 of the insurance industry -- and Sam Marshall? Oh, wait a
25 second, last-minute substitution here. Okay. Sam Marshall 64
1 from the Insurance Federation. And also we have a
2 submission hear from Ted Leonard, who can't be here today,
3 from the American Automobile Association, the Pennsylvania
4 Federation, so we'll pass around his testimony.
5 MR. MARSHALL: Thanks.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Jonathan is going
7 to join you here?
8 MR. MARSHALL: Yes. Yes.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. That's good.
10 MR. MARSHALL: We're here. He can be Ted
11 Leonard.
12 But thank you for the chance to be here. Sam
13 Marshall, joined with Jonathan Greer with the Insurance
14 Federation.
15 And we appreciate the appeal of the scooters.
16 Going up to 20 miles an hour, I'm not sure that quite
17 qualifies as low-speed. That would be a pretty fast
18 sidewalk pace to a person like me. But, you know, we
19 appreciate how popular they are. It doesn't surprise me at
20 all.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Sam, can you get a
22 little closer to the mic?
23 MR. MARSHALL: Sure.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thanks.
25 MR. MARSHALL: It doesn't surprise me at all 65
1 that, you know, people -- I mean, it's a lot more fun than
2 a bicycle because, you see, you have to pump a bicycle.
3 You just hop on one of these and it moves. That doesn't
4 surprise me that the take-up rate would be a little
5 quicker.
6 You know, we don't mean to be wet blankets on
7 this, but we do have some safety and liability concerns
8 that we think should be addressed in the bill and in your
9 own deliberations.
10 You know, the bill says that these you know,
11 should be regulated consistent with bicycles, pedal cycles,
12 or whatever the technical term is. Everybody would have to
13 be of legal driving age, but other than that, the
14 regulation of bikes would be about the same. You don't
15 need a license, you know, no training, no helmet
16 requirement, and we're insurance people, no insurance.
17 You know, and also, you know, it says, okay,
18 localities, you can regulate them on your own, but only to
19 the extent you do so consistent with bicycles. You know,
20 we think that raises, first and foremost, some safety
21 concerns. We hear that these are as safe as bicycles. I'm
22 not exactly sure of that. I think you want to check that
23 out. And there was reference by the last panel to some of
24 the studies going on. Our experience is that when you have
25 something with wheels and then you put a motor on it, it's 66
1 a lot different than if you have to, you know, power it by
2 hand or foot.
3 You know, we've seen -- you know, we were
4 impressed by the demonstration of it that you had a couple
5 of weeks ago out in front of the Capitol. It's a good-
6 looking scooter, you know, wide handlebars which I think is
7 important, you know, for the balance, a substantial
8 floorboard, and again, that's important in terms of the
9 standards that you have in the regulation on these. It was
10 also being ridden on a beautiful day with no traffic. You
11 know, but I think that some of the standards you may want
12 to consider in terms of how you define an e-scooter having
13 a higher standard for that safety. There's a big
14 difference between substantial handlebars and something
15 like we all had when we were little kids and, you know,
16 very narrow just in terms of the balance of it, same thing
17 with the floorboard.
18 You know, as to their impact, you know, whether
19 it's on roads, sidewalks, or bike paths, I'm not sure these
20 are really the same as bicycles, you know, certainly from a
21 safety perspective. I think it makes sense to allow a
22 locality to have different rules of the road in that
23 situation. There are some localities that have bike paths,
24 bike lanes, some localities with sidewalk concerns.
25 You know, I think, as we've heard from the past 67
1 testifiers, it's very early in the advent of these
2 e-scooters. You know, right now, we envision that they'll
3 all be on a sharing arrangement, not an ownership
4 arrangement. Who knows in four years how that will be
5 true? I don't know. That's why you need to have some
6 flexibility as you do this. You know, frequently, you have
7 something like this, they end up being used in ways that
8 none of us today are going to be able to imagine.
9 You know, I do think -- and localities obviously
10 have their own different traffic concerns, their own
11 different, you know, capabilities. I mean, you know,
12 certain areas have sidewalks that are, you know, wide and
13 plentiful. Other places have sidewalks that -- I mean, I'm
14 a Philadelphian. Our sidewalks are pretty narrow and
15 already congested. You know, you're bombing along at 20
16 miles an hour and something that can, you know, really
17 weave in and out, that's a real concern there.
18 You know, on an insurance -- you know, and I'd
19 ask -- I'll just put this in because I am a Philadelphian
20 and there are a lot of Philadelphians up here. You know,
21 to say that they're the same as bicycles, we have them in
22 Philadelphia and I think it's the same in a lot of places,
23 but we have a great bike path in the city called Forbidden
24 Drive, and, you know, I suspect everybody from Philadelphia
25 has been on that. I mean, it's even older than the 68
1 Capitol. It goes back that far. It's called Forbidden
2 Drive, and it's probably the most beautiful spot in
3 Philadelphia. It's called Forbidden Drive because
4 motorized vehicles are forbidden from driving there.
5 And you go out on a Saturday or Sunday in the
6 morning and, you know, there are people out walking dogs,
7 there are people going for a jog, there are people on
8 bicycles. But the one thing there isn't in this, you know,
9 little jewel inside of, you know, Fairmount Park in
10 Philadelphia, there aren't any motorized vehicles, you
11 know, no electric-powered bikes. I mean, it's all -- you
12 know, if you're out there, you're on foot, you know, it's a
13 very quiet moment.
14 If you're going to call these e-scooters
15 bicycles, I mean, I guess I'm not sure how Forbidden Drive
16 and places like that are going to hang out. You know, bike
17 paths, you know, I think that's where localities would want
18 the ability to maybe have different regulations than what
19 they might have for bicycles, and I'd use Philadelphia and
20 I'd use Forbidden Drive as an example of that.
21 On the insurance concerns, you know, there's a
22 question. And Representative Fee started to go into that,
23 as did Representative Carroll. You know, these are going
24 to be rented, and that seems to be the way, you know, that
25 most of them are going to be used. And the question is 69
1 what happens in the event of an accident? You know, is
2 there any insurance on it? The answer to that is going to
3 be no. I mean, not from the person who's doing the -- you
4 know, maybe the -- not from the individual's perspective.
5 You know, there have been other States, you know,
6 Utah, you know, being an example, and I sent yesterday to
7 Eric, you know, and Representative Rothman -- I shared the
8 Utah law, and as the past testifiers said, you know, the
9 Utah law is pretty extensive on what the insurance
10 requirements would be for these, you know, because there
11 will be accidents. You know, Chairman Hennessey, as you
12 noted, you know, here in Austin, you know, they've had a
13 bunch. It is not surprising, I mean, there are going to be
14 accidents. What's the insurance? You know, there is a
15 danger.
16 One thing from -- Representative fee asked, you
17 know, what about insurance? And it's actually a
18 recommendation that we would make in the bill. You may
19 want to say that for Title 75 purposes these things are
20 going to be treated, you know, from now and henceforth
21 evermore as if they're bicycles, you know, but then we
22 would want a clarification that they're not going to be -
23 you know, that -- for purposes of insurance they're not the
24 same as bicycles.
25 We have in insurance policies if you're riding a 70
1 bike and you get in an accident, your homeowner policy will
2 cover that, cover the damage you do. You know, I didn't
3 know it myself, but in most auto policies, you know, if you
4 have an auto policy and you're riding a bike, it will cover
5 your first-party medical damages if you get in an accident.
6 Those are things that companies do with bicycles.
7 Electric scooters, I mean, again, it goes -- our
8 experience is that the minute you put a motor on something,
9 it's an entirely different type of use, you know, when it's
10 used, who uses it, how it's used, and, you know, it no
11 longer is a means of exercise as well as transit. It's a
12 means of transit. That makes a difference.
13 You know, we are -- you know, we share the goal
14 to ease congestion on roads. You know, that's an insurance
15 concern as much as a broader societal concern particularly
16 in urban areas. You know, and we see the value of these
17 scooters in that. You know, there's -- you know, but we
18 talked about what kind of roads and you might want these
19 moving around, again, as in Philadelphia, you might want
20 them going from West Philadelphia to Center City for all
21 the kids at Penn or Drexel or whatever. You don't want
22 them on Roosevelt Boulevard, you know, just a totally
23 different deal. You know, you don't want them on the
24 expressway in the morning, you know, so just exactly where
25 you can have them, you know, that's something that has to 71
1 be, I think, cleared up as you do it.
2 And, I think, you know, we'd echo some of the
3 points that others have raised, how you monitor these, how
4 you enforce any laws on this, you know, what you're going
5 to do on that safety end. You know, I'm a proponent of
6 helmets. You know, these aren't going to be -- and
7 everybody says, well, you don't have it for a bike, why
8 would you have it for here? As you all know, on the
9 motorcycle end, we differ from the General Assembly on
10 that. We were in favor of the helmet law. We didn't
11 support its repeal.
12 But, you know, it becomes a much different deal
13 if these are going to be primarily shared things for
14 somebody just, you know, spur of the moment gets one.
15 That's a lot different than a bicycle where you're leaving
16 your home, you have to lock up the bike at the end. I
17 mean, it's your bike. You have sort of an equity stake in
18 that and you're removed from -- easier to have a helmet,
19 easier -- you know, I mean you -- and speaking as a person
20 who does a fair amount of bike riding, people generally
21 have helmets, and because they're going from home, it's
22 easy. You just put it on as you're there. You know, when
23 you're coming out of class at school, it may be not so
24 easy. You know, if you're leaving a bar at night, not so
25 common. It's just I think the way these will be used is 72
1 going to be, you know, much different.
2 And actually that graph that sort of showed,
3 okay, here's the rise in how bicycles are used in these,
4 you know, shared bicycle deals and all of a sudden
5 e-scooters come along and, you know, in one year's time,
6 you know, they match with bicycles are. It doesn't
7 surprise me. I mean, we understand the appeal of it.
8 But I think, you know, if you're going -- in that
9 sense, if you're going to provide for their regulation and
10 their oversight whether on a State level or on a local
11 level, you have to acknowledge that they're really not
12 quite the same as bicycles and you may want to adjust to
13 that. Thank you.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you.
15 Jonathan, do you want to testify at all?
16 MR. GREER: Sam had covered our testimony.
17 I wanted to respond to something that I think
18 Representative Neilson brought up earlier, which is the
19 inspection of these I'll call them vehicles -- scooters.
20 And there is a connection to insurance. Given the nature
21 of the relationship between the renter and the scooter,
22 it's like if you rent a car, you're probably not quite as
23 careful with that car as you are with your own.
24 You have no idea when you rent one of these how
25 well it was used by the prior user, and you don't know if 73
1 the brakes are working properly, you don't know if the
2 wheels are attached properly, and given the nature of the
3 transaction -- and again, we're talking about situations -
4 it's a platform situation where you're picking one up where
5 someone left it off. You have no idea how that was
6 previously used by the prior user or the 10 before that.
7 And I don't know -- you may hear from some of the
8 purveyors of these scooters later today how they address
9 it, but that's an interesting question in terms of their
10 ongoing safety, in terms of their reliability, their
11 mechanical reliability. Initially, that may be very
12 different than when it is 50 times removed after it's been
13 used.
14 And I don't know how frequently they're examined
15 to make sure that they're in proper operating, you know,
16 function. And that's not something that we contemplate.
17 That's a good point.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you.
19 You guys, seem to me, are in a pretty good position,
20 probably better than the rest of us, for accumulating
21 information from insurance companies in other States. Some
22 of them might be affiliated with Pennsylvania insurers,
23 whatever, but if you could provide any information of how
24 some of these States where seems to be growing like topsy,
25 the use of these electronic scooters. Portland, Oregon, 74
1 we've heard about California, we've heard about -- if you
2 could find out any -- how the insurance industry is dealing
3 with those issues and get that to us, we'll get it to our
4 Members.
5 MR. MARSHALL: And I know -- I mean, now I know,
6 as an industry, the Utah law for instance is one where the
7 insurance requirements in that we would endorse.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: I'm sorry, the
9 insurance -
10 MR. MARSHALL: The insurance requirements in the
11 Utah law, and I forwarded -- I'd just gotten it yesterday,
12 and that -- you know, and it's a detailed insurance
13 requirement at a State level, and we would endorse
14 something like that.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. I'm not so
16 much interested in what the, you know, initial requirement
17 for carrying what coverage levels are. I'm interested in
18 how the insurance industry is handling and what experience
19 they have in terms of the claims that are coming in because
20 three years ago you probably had no claims for this kind of
21 stuff and now you might have -- well, we heard, you know,
22 300 accidents in two months in one city seems like
23 something that you guys would be tearing your hair out
24 about.
25 MR. MARSHALL: And I understand, but it goes to 75
1 my point about generally insurance policies. We may cover
2 bikes and we'll cover mopeds if it's registered. These,
3 you know, depending on how you're going to classify these,
4 they aren't covered in your standard auto policy or
5 homeowner policy, you know, so we, you know -
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Let me just
7 -- I thought you said that, you know, if we had an accident
8 in today's world here in Pennsylvania it would be covered
9 by your homeowner's policy, not so much -
10 MR. MARSHALL: A bicycle. A bicycle would, not a
11 bicycle with a motor on it. And our concern with this
12 legislation is, you know, these say -- for purposes of
13 Title 75, these say that e-scooters would be bicycles. For
14 purposes of insurance, we don't think that e-scooters are
15 bicycles because they are motorized.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
17 MR. MARSHALL: Your homeowner policy may cover
18 you for a bike. It specifically excludes in your standard
19 homeowner policy. It would specifically exclude a
20 motorized deal.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you.
22 I get the distinction now. Thank you.
23 Chairman Carroll?
24 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: And that is exactly
25 what I was going to drive towards. So, today, a homeowner 76
1 with a homeowner policy and a private-owned scooter, does
2 this policy specifically prevent a claim against that
3 policy with a privately owned scooter?
4 MR. MARSHALL: Yes. An e-scooter we'll call it,
5 I mean, if it's a -
6 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: All right. What
7 we're describing today.
8 MR. MARSHALL: -- you know, a motorized scooter,
9 yes, that would be exempt.
10 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay. And then if
11 this were to go forward as currently suggested that we
12 equate these scooters with bicycles, there'd be no need to
13 amend homeowner's policies as a result because the policy
14 then -- which supersedes which? Does the policy supersede
15 Title 75 or does Title 75 supersede the policy?
16 MR. MARSHALL: And that's why law schools crank
17 them out by the bushels, you know, and that's why we would
18 want there to be a clarification. We would say, no, you
19 know, this bill applies purely for PennDOT, you know, for
20 Title 75 purposes, but, you know, there are a lot of
21 lawyers out there, and somebody would say, you know what,
22 the General Assembly just said that these are the same
23 thing as bicycles. Therefore, for insurance purposes, even
24 though you made the distinction, it's no longer valid.
25 And, you know, that's a clarification that we would want. 77
1 I mean, we would say, no, no, we think these are distinct.
2 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay. And I guess
3 then the hypothetical scenario where you have your wish and
4 we draw that distinction and then somebody's on one of the
5 rideshare scooters and they cause $1,000 worth of damage to
6 a motor vehicle, what happens in that scenario then?
7 MR. MARSHALL: And in that scenario, you know,
8 the -- you know, the vehicle that they damage, that
9 person's insurance is going to have to pick up the tab.
10 But the concern that we would have -- and, you know, we do
11 that now. I mean, if you're driving along somebody, I
12 mean, it's going to be an added risk. You know, we would
13 say that these probably should come, therefore, with their
14 own insurance coverage on it, and that's what Utah did.
15 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay. Thank you.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thanks. Sam, just
17 to follow up on that, if somebody hits my car, you know, my
18 insurance company will go after that person who was
19 operating the scooter. Would they not subrogate it?
20 MR. MARSHALL: Pay -- you mean go after -
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: After I pay my
22 deductible they'd pay me and then they'd go after the rider
23 of the scooter I would think.
24 MR. MARSHALL: And the experience is that going
25 after individuals is, you know, frankly generally more cost 78
1 than it produces.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Got you.
3 MR. MARSHALL: And these are going to be used on
4 college -- I mean, you know, I'm not sure that anybody's
5 going to say let's go sue a lot of college kids.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you.
7 Representative Kinsey.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 I think Mr. Marshall answered the question. I was a little
10 bit confused. Initially, I was going to ask about the
11 electric bicycles or I guess the mopeds that are pedaled
12 and then just to get started, but I think you did answer.
13 They are insured under homeowner's insurance?
14 MR. MARSHALL: You know what, to the -- I mean
15 we've, frankly, never seen a claim come up on one of those.
16 To the extent that they are those motor-assisted, you know,
17 bikes, you know, if you pedal it and you're -
18 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Yes.
19 MR. MARSHALL: -- you know, you're going way
20 uphill and the hill gets a little bit steep for you and all
21 of a sudden an engine kicks in, those -- in your homeowner
22 policy I'd still regard that as motor-assisted. We've just
23 never seen claims coming up on those.
24 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
25 MR. MARSHALL: Now, that'd be -- you know, so I 79
1 can't -- you know, and that's -- and what I'm talking about
2 is in the standard form. But, no, those would be motor-
3 assisted and therefore excluded.
4 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Excluded?
5 MR. MARSHALL: A general rule.
6 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay. Well, listen, I
7 just want to say I appreciate your testimonies, you and Mr.
8 Greer. I think that, as Representative Rothman and I
9 talked, we do talk about the safety issue and, you know,
10 we're going to have greater discussion on that as well. I
11 guess I still have a lot to learn. You know, I'm still
12 learning -- like I said, I didn't recognize that mopeds
13 were under the homeowner's insurance policy. I just did
14 not realize that, so it sort of creates -
15 MR. MARSHALL: Well, now, a moped, I mean, if
16 you're talking about like a Vespa scooter, that's its own
17 vehicle and subject to registration and, I mean, you know,
18 those get -- you know, mopeds -- people, you know, that's a
19 pretty common form of transit in the city. You know, the
20 weather gets warm, you see a lot of mopeds out in Center
21 City. Those are licensed and have their own insurance
22 requirements.
23 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Are they allowed on
24 Forbidden Drive? I'm from Philly also, but -
25 MR. MARSHALL: No. 80
1 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
2 MR. MARSHALL: They're not at all. You know, I
3 mean, Forbidden is as the name suggests. I mean -
4 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Well, I've only -
5 listen, you know, I ride my bicycle there. I'm just -- I
6 wasn't sure about that because, again, I'm thinking about a
7 bicycle, but then there's -- I've seen bicycles that also
8 have -- that are powered but folks are still pedaling it;
9 they're just not using the power. So -
10 MR. MARSHALL: You're right. I mean, as I
11 understand this now, two guys who have both ridden on
12 Forbidden Drive, you don't see those on Forbidden Drive,
13 you know, I mean there it's just truly, you know, bikes and
14 people out -
15 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Just -- okay.
16 MR. MARSHALL: -- you know, jogging and walking.
17 But, you know -- and frankly those -- I mean, you know,
18 that's not a very -- you know, those motor-assist, you
19 know, pedals, you know, pedal bicycles, that's not a big
20 market. I mean, they're not -
21 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: I got you.
22 MR. MARSHALL: -- common.
23 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
24 MR. MARSHALL: You know, I mean, that's a very
25 niche deal. You know, these -- you know, these scooters, I 81
1 mean, the appeal of the scooter is, guess what, you don't
2 have to do any pumping. You know, there's no aerobic value
3 in these. There's a great transit value.
4 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Right.
5 MR. MARSHALL: You know, they're not -- that
6 engine isn't assisting you as you do most of the work.
7 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Right.
8 MR. MARSHALL: It does all the work for you.
9 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Right. Right, I
10 appreciate that. Thank you very much.
11 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Ed? Ed.
13 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Yes.
14 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: May I follow up with a quick
15 question -
16 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Yes, go.
17 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: -- while we're on that
18 subject?
19 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Go ahead.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Yes, go ahead.
21 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Sorry.
22 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Please.
23 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: I'm interrupting, but I'm
24 sorry.
25 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Yes. 82
1 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: I just want to be clear on
2 something so I understand it. In Utah, the ones who carry
3 the insurance are the rideshare companies, not the
4 individual. Is that what you said?
5 MR. MARSHALL: Yes. You know, and I'll get
6 you -- or Eric has, you know, the copy of that law. And,
7 you know, we just got it ourselves. I mean, it was just
8 enacted.
9 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Okay.
10 MR. MARSHALL: You know, and I don't normally
11 follow Utah law. You know, but that is the scooter-share
12 operator is the way they refer to it there. And I -
13 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: For the company, not the -
14 MR. MARSHALL: And I believe that means the
15 company.
16 REPRESENTATIVE FEE: Yes. Okay. Thank you.
17 Sorry about that.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: [inaudible].
19 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: No, Mindy just stole it.
20 I appreciate that, though, Chairman. Being a gentleman
21 sometimes costs you the good questions.
22 However, hopefully later on on the liability end
23 on the working of the equipment itself I hope maybe that
24 one of the companies can address that because that might be
25 addressed in the wrap, so we're all trying to learn that 83
1 here today. And the liability both for the person, as we
2 know, Sam, going down, getting run over by one of these
3 might happen. There's only 11 cases in the last year that
4 Santa Monica had because there was a case study done there,
5 which I read last night.
6 But there are also class-action lawsuits because
7 they're fighting over liability, both the individual who
8 did the damage, who hurt the person or vice versa. There's
9 a whole bunch of lawsuits out there for that. And it looks
10 like everybody's fighting, whether my health insurance
11 should cover it, why should I have to have my health
12 insurance pay? You hurt me. I was walking, minding my own
13 business and stuff like that. So it's curious to see.
14 So if you can talk your colleagues nationally
15 because I know you're part of a large organization. Maybe
16 they have some studies on this as well. That would be
17 great.
18 MR. MARSHALL: Yes. And we'll look at -- and,
19 you know, I mean, I'll be fascinated to see the Austin
20 study that the panel before talked about.
21 REPRESENTATIVE NEILSON: Thank you, Chairman.
22 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Are there any -- thank
23 you, Chairman. Are there any aspects of the Utah law that
24 you felt were extremely important or anything that you feel
25 should be added to that here in Pennsylvania? 84
1 MR. MARSHALL: You know -- and I'm -- you know,
2 and I'm not familiar that much with the deliberations that
3 went into Utah. I mean, you know, it did fascinate me. I
4 mean, you know, and this whole issue is fascinating to see,
5 and I'm impressed by the thoroughness and the concern for
6 safety. You know, we were joking with, you know, some of
7 your colleagues from the Senate side, you know, there's a
8 lot more concern about the safety of these than sometimes
9 there seems to be about testing autonomous vehicles on
10 public roads. You know, it amazes me, you know, because I
11 think that you are on that.
12 In the Utah law they had more definitions, you
13 know, and tighter definitions on what qualifies as an
14 e-scooter. You know, we saw I guess the demonstration was
15 with a Lime scooter. I was impressed. You know, it goes
16 to Jonathan's point how often they're inspected and, you
17 know, and make sure that they're just as good on the
18 hundredth ride as they are on the first, you know, that's a
19 good question. But, you know, you may want to have those
20 types of standards, and I think Utah is an example that did
21 that and, you know, some of the other States.
22 But I haven't seen, going to the point that we
23 were talking about here and Jonathan makes, I'm not sure
24 that there have been any sort of, you know, inspection and,
25 you know, maintenance type deals, and that -- you know, 85
1 particularly given that these are rented, it's not unlike
2 when you rent a car and you turn it in, somebody is
3 checking to see if you had any dings and, you know, they
4 then get it ready for the next guy. You know, these are
5 just the next person picks it up.
6 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Do you think that these
7 types of scooters being present, say, in the city of
8 Philadelphia -- we obviously have higher insurance rates in
9 comparison to other areas. Do you feel that these could
10 potentially cause -- you know, if there are a significant
11 number of accidents that occur in part due to these
12 scooters being on the roadways, do you think that could
13 cause insurance rate increases potentially?
14 MR. MARSHALL: Oh, yes, you know, because just
15 the way life works. I mean, if an e-scooter is hit by a
16 car, you know, we can all argue about who's at fault, you
17 know, but generally the insurance company of the auto
18 driver is going to have to pay. And that goes into, you
19 know, where I'd say that the -- you know, you want to allow
20 the city of Philadelphia to have some autonomy on rules of
21 the road, you know, where these can be used.
22 I mean, frankly, you know, you worry about it on
23 the roadways but, you know, I'm speaking more as a
24 pedestrian when I'm in the city. I'd worry about it more
25 on sidewalks. So you get into the whole bike path, you 86
1 know, keeping them in bike lanes and, you know, there in
2 Center City. But you start going into the neighborhoods.
3 That's a tougher question. And that's where I think you're
4 going to want the city to be able to step in and say, you
5 know, we have some unique concerns. These aren't quite the
6 same as bikes, you know, because they're motorized.
7 They're just different than bikes.
8 REPRESENTATIVE WHITE: Well, thank you for your
9 time.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Sam, just as I've
11 been thinking about this, motorcycles and bicycles, you
12 know, aside from -- you know, they seem more similar than
13 scooters and bicycles, especially if I'm standing on a
14 platform that the rear wheels are a foot, two feet, three
15 feet apart. It would seem to me that that scooter would be
16 more stable. But if you did lose your balance, it would
17 almost be impossible to recover your balance like you might
18 on a motorcycle or a bicycle.
19 I share your concerns about -- you know, I don't
20 know if you should rush headlong into saying that these are
21 the same as bicycles because I think your ability as a
22 rider on a two-wheeled vehicle to recover your balance is
23 probably a lot better, and harder to lose your balance on a
24 scooter with wide wheels in the rear but maybe harder to
25 recover the balance if you do lose -- and once you do lose 87
1 your balance so -
2 MR. MARSHALL: Yes, I guess, you know, I think
3 the handlebars on the Lime one were not quite as wide as on
4 a standard bicycle, but, you know, they were wide and the
5 platform was fairly substantial. But, you know, from an
6 insurance perspective, it's putting a motor on it that
7 makes it different.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Right.
9 MR. MARSHALL: I mean, a motorcycle and a
10 bicycle, from an insurance perspective, entirely different
11 because a motorcycle -- again, and the reason is one says
12 motor, you know, and that from -- you know, I think from a
13 liability perspective is that motorized aspect that's going
14 to be the concern where it's going to be different.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. The
16 comparison I was trying to draw is that we used to have
17 motorcycles and we all knew them as the two-wheeled bikes
18 and now we have these -- the three-wheelers, sometimes the
19 two wheels are in the front -
20 MR. MARSHALL: Yes.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- and one rear
22 wheel drive I guess, and sometimes it's reversed, the
23 single wheel on the front. But, you know, we should be
24 able to find something in terms of the stability,
25 comparative stability between two-wheelers and three- 88
1 wheelers by looking at that experience. And maybe you guys
2 -- you know, your insurance industry could help us with
3 that as well.
4 MR. MARSHALL: Yes.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you
6 very much -
7 MR. MARSHALL: Thank you.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- for your
9 testimony, both of you. Where's the list here?
10 Our next testifiers we have Dr. Megan Ryerson,
11 the Transportation Chair and Associate Professor at
12 University of Pennsylvania; Matthew Kopko, the Director of
13 policy from Bird Rides Incorporated; and Shari Shapiro,
14 who's here on behalf of the Lime company.
15 Okay. So now we've been talking in terms of
16 theoretics, and now suddenly we're going to have people who
17 actually can talk to us about the practical aspects of, you
18 know, this new form of transportation.
19 So, Doctor, are you going to lead off?
20 DR. RYERSON: Great. Absolutely. And thank you
21 so much for the opportunity to speak today.
22 I'm Professor Megan Ryerson. I'm the UPS
23 Foundation Chair of transportation at the University of
24 Pennsylvania, and I'm a Professor of Transportation,
25 Engineering, and Urban Planning. My expertise is in 89
1 studying how travelers, you and I, choose our mode of
2 transportation for each trip and how these choices affect
3 the economy, how they affect pollution, how they affect
4 congestion, and how they affect quality of life.
5 So from my expertise and from my position as a
6 professor and a researcher, not as an advocate of any
7 particular mode, I'm here to speak in support of a
8 transportation system that includes e-scooters, helping
9 people get from A to B while promoting a vibrant
10 transportation system and economy.
11 Scooters will be a new choice that some but not
12 all will choose for getting around. Across the U.S. -- and
13 we've talked about these studies throughout the morning -
14 we've seen the demand for driving and rideshare drop when
15 scooters are introduced. Now, this is great news for many
16 of us. This is great news for all of us, but it's also
17 great news for people who want to keep driving. Fewer cars
18 on the road means less congestion and less scrambling for
19 parking.
20 And I'd like to just note that I disagree that
21 there's no aerobic benefit to scooters. People could scoot
22 to transit and then walk on the other end. Scooters are a
23 piece of the transportation puzzle that we're all solving
24 throughout the day that enables us to make choices that are
25 more active. 90
1 These new scooter riders will create a safety-in-
2 numbers effect for others. When you and I see more people
3 out walking, biking, and scooting, we feel drawn to do the
4 same. So safety in numbers gets more people out biking,
5 walking, and scooting, which brings an increased demand for
6 these separated transportation facilities, these
7 multipurpose lanes, bike lanes in some places that we've
8 been talking about throughout the morning.
9 Across Pennsylvania, separated lanes for slower
10 vehicles and having the faster vehicles in another lane
11 have made people safer and keep everyone behaving, another
12 topic that we've talked about throughout the morning.
13 Drivers pay more attention, cyclists don't bike on the
14 sidewalk, and pedestrians wait for crossing times when we
15 have safe transportation systems.
16 Now, we certainly need more safety. In
17 Pennsylvania last year in our transportation system without
18 scooters there were over 1,100 fatalities and 81,000
19 injuries on the roads. My city of Philadelphia has the
20 dubious distinction of having the highest rate of traffic
21 deaths per capita. Nearly half of those deaths are
22 pedestrians and cyclists. Ten percent are children.
23 We have a transportation safety crisis today, and
24 we cannot just rely on expensive enforcement. The only way
25 to address this crisis is through design, which is at the 91
1 core of what I do in my work: infrastructure that slows
2 down traffic at intersections, makes pedestrians and
3 cyclists more visible, and physically separates fast cars
4 and slower bikes, scooters, and pedestrians.
5 So again, I have to mention, with all due
6 respect, I would rather have a few scooters on Forbidden
7 Drive and safe transportation infrastructure so we can all
8 walk our children to school without feeling like we're
9 taking our lives in our hands, which is currently how I
10 certainly feel in Philadelphia.
11 Building safe infrastructure and giving people
12 new modes like electric scooters will have a positive
13 ripple effect across the economy, congestion, and quality
14 of life. Very recently, researchers at the University of
15 Missouri just discovered that if Kansas City implemented
16 safe protected infrastructure, local businesses would
17 benefit from $500 million in increased spending and more
18 than 700 lives would be saved over the next 20 years. Why?
19 In short, safer transportation infrastructure effectively
20 brings businesses, people, and opportunities closer
21 together by making it easier to get from A to B.
22 Let's forget scooters, any sort of mode of
23 transportation except for walking just for a second, and I
24 want you to imagine that the sidewalk between the Capitol
25 and the Amtrak station was not there. Very, very few of us 92
1 would walk between the Capitol and the Amtrak station, like
2 I had the pleasure of doing this morning. Those of us who
3 did walk would slow down traffic significantly, causing
4 congestion and so much weaving as vehicles tried to get
5 around us. We would certainly also be putting ourselves in
6 an unsafe situation. People would stop walking in
7 Harrisburg because they would feel alone out there. There
8 are no eyes on the street. Many of us would take a taxi,
9 causing needless congestion. But build a sidewalk and
10 people will walk, shop, and experience the city, which
11 reduces congestion, pollution, and increases the vibrancy
12 of a place. Build safe infrastructure, and people will use
13 it.
14 I would like to take a minute to encourage the
15 Committee to consider the inequity of prohibiting
16 e-scooters while not restricting other forms of automotive
17 mobility, namely, to bring it back to my own city of
18 Philadelphia, the rideshare vehicles stopped in almost
19 every crosswalk when I'm trying to cross the street. And
20 we talked about the Idaho stop, how cyclists often don't
21 stop at stop signs. Well, in Philly, we have something
22 called the Philly slide, which is cars not stopping at stop
23 signs which, very sadly, took a child's life this past
24 year.
25 And I feel like I'd be remiss if I did not 93
1 mention that, with all due respect, we didn't ban cars
2 because people might drive after going to a bar. And we
3 didn't ban Uber because a driver might misbehave. We
4 should not ban a mode of transportation because of a few
5 possible bad effects. We should plan for them, we should
6 study them, and we should implement policies and
7 regulations to make sure they don't happen, while promoting
8 mobility.
9 So for these reasons I really believe that
10 scooters are an ally in safe transportation mobility and in
11 building economically vibrant places. I encourage the
12 Committee to allow for electric scooters to put protections
13 in place to ensure that scooters themselves are safe and
14 well-maintained and operated safely and to encourage the
15 cities to work with the scooter companies to invest and
16 design safe transportation infrastructure to build a
17 vibrant Pennsylvania. Thank you.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Doctor.
19 I think we're all on the same page. That's where we want
20 to be. We want to get to a point where all forms of
21 transportation are safe, especially, you know, in our
22 cities.
23 But frankly, where I come from we roll up the
24 sidewalks at 10 o'clock at night, you know, so we just
25 don't have those available. I'm just joking but, you know, 94
1 we're all on the same page. We all want to get as safe as
2 possible transportation options for our citizens.
3 So who's next? Matt, you want to -
4 MR. KOPKO: Sure.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- testify?
6 MR. KOPKO: So, hello. My name is Matthew Kopko.
7 I'm the Director of Public Policy for Bird Rides, and I'm
8 very glad to be here to testify in support of House Bill
9 631 today.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Get a little closer
11 to the mic if you could. Thanks.
12 MR. KOPKO: So, first of all, thank you, Chairmen
13 Hennessey and Carroll, and I'd also like to thank our
14 sponsors Rothman and I'd also like to thank Member Kinsey
15 and more than the 20 sponsors we already have on the
16 legislation.
17 I'm very excited to be here for the opportunity
18 to discuss how Pennsylvania can promote innovation, clean
19 and affordable transportation, and the fundamental right of
20 mobility. This legislation is very modest in nature, the
21 one here before in Pennsylvania, and it simply cleans up
22 the code by defining a new vehicle type, the electric low-
23 speed scooter, and leaves the choice to local governments
24 where it belongs belongs in our view as to whether and how
25 to allow shared electric scooters. 95
1 I imagine in some Q&A we'll probably get into
2 more on that, you know, with the insurance questions
3 raised, and I hope Sam would be happy to hear that our
4 company alone -- and I imagine Shari's as well -- is paying
5 millions of dollars in insurance premiums to cover in every
6 city where we operate.
7 So Birds are electric scooters that are designed
8 to share the road safely, to reduce congestion and carbon
9 emissions, and to be easy and above all fun to ride. Birds
10 are low-power and low-speed. They operate at a speed on
11 par with if not less than the maximum speed of bicycles, as
12 was mentioned earlier, and, as also noted, they are
13 phenomenally popular.
14 Since our founding just a year ago, I mean, if
15 you think about this in 2017 scooter sharing wasn't even
16 really a thing, and now we're in over 100 cities, on three
17 continents, and we're serving up over tens of millions of
18 rides on a regular basis. And I think that chart that was
19 raised from NACTO earlier where essentially in a matter of
20 just one year we have cumulatively as an industry created
21 as many rides for people as the entire docked and dockless
22 bike-share industry has after a decade of growth just shows
23 how popular this new mode is and how attractive it is and I
24 think also the opportunity of this new industry.
25 So since we've been founded in 2017 we gained 96
1 valuable experience in how to serve the needs of travelers
2 while working with local communities to ensure their goals
3 are met, and we're excited to bring this here to
4 Pennsylvania.
5 We go the extra mile at Bird to advance the
6 highest industry safety standards, and we offer a number of
7 proactive solutions to manage sidewalk clutter. Dockless
8 electric scooter sharing systems have been implemented
9 successfully and safely in hundreds of cities and not just
10 in the U.S. but around the globe, and including a bunch of
11 Philadelphia's peer cities, as previously discussed,
12 Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Atlanta, and many others.
13 Also, as was raised, was the example of Portland,
14 and they concluded there in Portland after a lot of data
15 that scooters do not pose a disproportionate risk in terms
16 of safety. The general numbers we're talking about is a
17 fatality approximately every 10 million miles traveled,
18 which is almost exactly, from an order-of-magnitude
19 standpoint, where we are with bicycles. So the general
20 level of mortality and exposure from a rider basis is now
21 showing from the tens of millions, soon to be hundreds of
22 millions of miles traveled on scooters to be bearing out to
23 be about consistent with bicycles. So we have increasingly
24 robust data on that safety point, and it's very
25 encouraging. 97
1 So in our view, again, the scooters are no more
2 dangerous than bicycles and, in fact, could pose a benefit
3 to be even safer in the long run given the advances in
4 hardware.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Matt, I'm
6 sorry, just so I got it right, one fatality per 10 million
7 miles -
8 MR. KOPKO: Ten million, yes.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- ridden? Okay.
10 MR. KOPKO: Roughly.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thanks.
12 MR. KOPKO: Robust data is also showing, as
13 mentioned, that we have found a really exciting way to
14 actually finally replace car trips, too, and that has an
15 impact on congestion in our cities across the board, so as
16 was mentioned, about one in three if not more scooter trips
17 is actively replacing a car trip. And when we think about
18 the fact that almost half of all car trips are under three
19 miles, this is going to be concentrated in these shorter-
20 mile trips, so this is a huge opportunity to have a much
21 more efficient transportation system. To go one mile on a
22 scooter is about 1/100 the amount of energy as it takes to
23 move a car that same mile, so whether it's energy
24 efficiency or sustainability or just, you know, using the
25 right amount of power and hardware to get someone 98
1 somewhere, this is a much more efficient and nimble future
2 here in the 21st century we're super excited about.
3 So we know that even small reductions in car
4 trips can have a big impact on traffic and air quality.
5 Bird alone in our first year of operations which, again, in
6 January of 2018 we were operating in only a couple of
7 cities and we ramped pretty quickly, but, you know, this
8 was our first year of operations. It was the equivalent of
9 taking about 12 million pounds of carbon out of the sky.
10 That's taking 1,200 cars off the road for an entire year,
11 and that's just year one from one company in this brand-new
12 industry. It's really an exciting future in terms of this
13 micro-mobility revolution.
14 So Bird is also very excited to be bringing
15 economic opportunity and jobs to local communities where we
16 operate. For any community that has 10,000 Birds in
17 operation or across localities 10,000 Birds in operation,
18 that's 3,000 employment opportunities and, on an annual
19 basis, approximately $25 million in take-home pay to local
20 community members because we use people at our local
21 community, all of our companies do, for charging and
22 repairing our scooters.
23 So scooters on top of that are also an affordable
24 option for people, typically about anywhere from a half to
25 a quarter of the price of an Uber ride, and that means more 99
1 money in your pocket.
2 So together we are very confident that we think
3 we can make Pennsylvania a more innovative and more
4 environmentally friendly State than ever before, and we'll
5 be able to open a very new and exciting industry for
6 Pennsylvanians, so, for that reason, we really hope that
7 you join us in this mission and swiftly pass H.B. 631.
8 Thank you.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. Shari?
10 MS. SHAPIRO: Thank you, Chairmen, and thank you,
11 Representative Rothman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Why don't you
13 introduce yourself and give your -
14 MS. SHAPIRO: I will.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: It's hard for me to
16 read that far -
17 MS. SHAPIRO: I will.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- the name tag
19 there.
20 MS. SHAPIRO: I'm Shari Shapiro. I'm the
21 Director of Mid-Atlantic Government Affairs for Lime.
22 Lime is a company that offers shared
23 transportation options like electric bikes and scooters,
24 and we do all of it at no charge to communities, no charge
25 to taxpayers, and that is really an important fact to think 100
1 about when we're trying to bring new types of mobility on
2 the roads. And, as you know, as we're looking at the whole
3 transportation funding situation, how can we do that, use
4 our infrastructure better to reduce the cost of
5 transportation and offer more options here?
6 But I don't want to talk about what Lime wants or
7 what Bird wants. I have a letter here from a constituent
8 in your district, Chairman Hennessey -
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Oh, really?
10 MS. SHAPIRO: -- and he puts it like this -
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Is my son writing
12 to your company? Is that what he's doing?
13 MS. SHAPIRO: I'm sorry?
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: I said is my son
15 writing to your company?
16 MS. SHAPIRO: Yes, I have to admit it.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
18 MS. SHAPIRO: "I would love to have Lime scooters
19 available as an affordable, reliable, and equitable
20 transportation option in Pennsylvania. I recently heard
21 about H.B. 631 being introduced, and I hope you'll show
22 your support for innovative transportation methods." It's
23 a letter to you.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
25 MS. SHAPIRO: "We need to make sure that 101
1 Pennsylvania is on the forefront of technological change
2 and enhancements and not left behind due to outdated laws.
3 The world is moving forward with or without Pennsylvania,
4 and we don't want to be left behind. We need to make sure
5 all of Pennsylvania communities have equal access to
6 environmentally friendly and affordable transportation,"
7 from J.M. who lives on Olive Lane in Pottstown.
8 It's true that "providing access to scooters
9 would provide Pennsylvanians with an environmentally
10 friendly, cheap, and fast way to get from A to B," as E.C.
11 from Carlisle notes, and would "relieve a lot of stress
12 with transportation around the city," which is K.B. from
13 Mooresville.
14 Cities that have evaluated scooter programs have
15 also found that they increase access to transportation,
16 public transportation that is. A Philadelphia resident
17 explained how this would work. "I live one mile away from
18 the closest Metro stop. It's not practical for me to walk
19 there. Therefore, I drive. The last mile commute feature
20 is an unmet need in public transportation in Philadelphia.
21 I hope Philly continues to be a model of public transit and
22 allows a line to come to the city very soon."
23 So we're talking about making life more
24 convenient, we're talking about making mobility easier, but
25 we also need to be looking at it from an economic and 102
1 competitive standpoint for Pennsylvania. Fundamentally, we
2 are competing for young residents, and it's very true that
3 the enrollments in our State colleges are going down and
4 that we're having trouble retaining residents after
5 graduation.
6 As you rightly said, Representative Hennessey,
7 about 50 percent of our riders are under the age of 37, so
8 an average rider is 37, and we need to be thinking about
9 what we have to offer these young people. Are we going to
10 offer what Baltimore has? Are we going to offer what
11 Washington, D.C., has? Are we going to offer what every
12 major city has except for Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,
13 Chicago, and New York? And that's access to electric
14 scooters.
15 I think that we do. I hope that we do. And I
16 hope that we can do it between now and June. And there's a
17 very simple reason why: winter. If you do not pass this
18 legislation by the time that summer break comes, then it
19 will be in the fall when it's taken up again, which of
20 course will put any deployment that we would do in
21 November, December, January, which is not a time when
22 there's likely to be as much utilization, which means that
23 we wouldn't have electric scooters on the ground in
24 Pennsylvania for another full year.
25 This is a very small bill, and it enables 103
1 scooters to be on the ground. And then it requires the
2 cities to do what 90 communities in the United States have
3 done so far, which is to put together what I'll call the
4 rules of the road, what are the insurance requirements,
5 where can they park, where can they not part, what are
6 those requirements? And then to be able to tweak those in
7 a way that a statute wouldn't be as easy to change
8 depending on the outcomes of the pilots that are run.
9 So Lime and Bird and all of the scooter companies
10 that would like to serve Pennsylvania are asking you to
11 enable us to have scooters on the road, provide the
12 benefits to Pennsylvania, increase our competitiveness, and
13 to do it in this expedited manner. If we have to come back
14 and change something fundamental after we've seen it roll
15 out here, we're more than happy to work with you on that.
16 Thank you.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. I don't
18 know whether we can meet your time frame. We'll take a
19 look at it and see. It seems rather ambitious, and we'll
20 see. There's been a lot of other issues that were raised
21 today that we've got to get answers to.
22 MS. SHAPIRO: I would -
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: You guys, you're
24 talking about dockless scooters. You know, I'm more
25 familiar with the idea -- you know, you rent a car from 104
1 Hertz or Avis or Nationwide or whatever, National. You
2 know, at the end of the day or the end of whatever time
3 period you have it for, you take it back to National, it's
4 off the road. You know, as I understand, these dockless
5 scooters I can drive to, you know, 1412 Walnut Street
6 anywhere and just, you know, decide here's where I want to
7 get off and I leave it on the sidewalk, leave it somewhere.
8 You know, my wife and I shop at Aldi sometimes.
9 You put a quarter in, you get their shopping cart. In
10 order to get your quarter back, you have to take the cart
11 back.
12 And I've seen some videos on the Internet that
13 indicate, you know, you might be -- the thing was in Paris.
14 This thing you sent me was from Paris I think where, you
15 know, 50 or 60 or 70 scooters were just left laying piled
16 on top of each other. It almost looked like they were on a
17 junk heap, you know, not to be disparaging, but it looked
18 like they had almost been thrown away waiting for a trash
19 truck to come along and pick them up. And those were the
20 operable scooters the people just left in the right-of-way,
21 the sidewalks or the street -- I think it was sidewalks
22 what I was looking at or in parking lots someplace.
23 You know, it would seem to me it's fair to say if
24 you're going to create this plethora of vehicles being let
25 loose in a city, you ought to have some control over how do 105
1 you pick them up, you know, and do you -- if I do just
2 leave it someplace, do I just -- you know, instead of
3 bringing it to, say, a turn-in point, do I keep getting
4 penalized, you know, for how long I keep in a sense -- I've
5 given up possession by leaving it in the pile in the
6 street, but, you know, am I still penalized for that
7 because I haven't returned it or, you know, do I get away
8 scot-free by just, you know, adding to the pile of other
9 scooters on the sidewalk?
10 MS. SHAPIRO: So when you drive your car, you
11 drive it from the place that you have it even if it's a
12 rental car to a parking spot near where you want to arrive
13 at.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Right.
15 MS. SHAPIRO: And that's exactly the way that
16 these work. You pick them up from near where you are and
17 then, just look if you were taking your own car and parking
18 it outside of Aldi, you park it where you arrive, right?
19 And that is part of what makes this so powerful. The
20 cities and people do not want to bring something back to
21 someplace that is not convenient, and so you -
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: But it's not
23 convenient for the other people who come walking around or
24 try and trip over these things as they try to get by when
25 they get left someplace where they shouldn't be in the 106
1 first place.
2 MS. SHAPIRO: Right. So there are two things.
3 One, people will illegally park cars, and that means that
4 they will park them in crosswalks, they will park them in
5 front of garages. People will illegally park them. We
6 don't ban cars because of that. It is on us to make sure
7 that the scooter fleet is well-maintained. If it is not
8 well-maintained in all of the cities that we serve, we can
9 be thrown out of the city if we are not maintaining our
10 fleet.
11 So, for example, in the event that there was a
12 pileup of scooters, right, we integrate with cities 3-1-1
13 services, their nuisance lines. Any citizen could call
14 that nuisance line, and we would get that complaint. We
15 have to resolve that within two hours. Those are the terms
16 of our ability to serve the cities. Now -
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: That's all written
18 into an agreement you have with the particular
19 municipality?
20 MS. SHAPIRO: Right. Correct.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: And how do you do
22 that? You just send a big truck out and load up all the
23 scooters and take them? Because they don't do you any good
24 piled in the street or on the sidewalk where people don't
25 want to pick them up. You want to have them, you know, 107
1 where the next train comes in, for example, so people get
2 off there and actually rent them.
3 MS. SHAPIRO: Right. That's exactly right. It's
4 not to our business benefit either. But yes, we employee a
5 team of people in all of the cities that we operate, and in
6 fact, if we were allowed to operate in Pennsylvania, we
7 would be -- in just Philadelphia we would be creating more
8 than 3 0 jobs.
9 And yes, it is their job of some of those people
10 to go around and do a couple things. One, check the
11 scooters, as someone mentioned, maintenance, to check the
12 scooters. If there are mechanical problems, we have
13 mechanics, they bring them back to our warehouse where we
14 service them. If there are scooters that are not properly
15 placed, it's their job to go and pick them up. And it's
16 also their job to rebalance them, what we call rebalancing,
17 which means moving them to where there's more demand or
18 less demand during the course of the day.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: So you have people
20 that are constantly doing that, trying to move them around?
21 MS. SHAPIRO: Yes, three shifts, 24 hours a day.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
23 MR. KOPKO: And if I could add a couple points to
24 that, too?
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Yes, sure, go 108
1 ahead, Matt.
2 MR. KOPKO: So I think one thing that's important
3 to note in terms of fleet management that you're getting on
4 is I've looked at -- you know, I'm a recovering lawyer, so
5 I've looked at a bunch of contracts in this world now, and
6 the typical service-level obligation on these shared
7 bicycles tends to be within, you know, 10 days or a week
8 you have to take a bike out of circulation if it's reported
9 as damaged, as Shari mentioned. And we're on essentially a
10 10-times-or-greater quality of standard here, which is two
11 to four hours. So we're talking about in a matter of hours
12 resolving some sort of issue where, you know, previous
13 iterations of this micro-mobility were given days at a
14 time, so I think we're actually moving really fast into a
15 direction of much more active fleet management and much
16 more higher customer service.
17 And then secondly, there was a great report out
18 of the San Jose Transportation Institute, the Mineta
19 Institute, that surveyed scooters being parked, and they
20 found somewhere between 97 and 98 percent of all scooters
21 are parked correctly, so totally get it. It's annoying and
22 obnoxious when you see a scooter that's tipped over or
23 somewhere it shouldn't be, but again, I think that's kind
24 of frankly beyond the exception as opposed to the rule.
25 And some of these photos get pretty viral because 109
1 it looks crazy, but the average operation is much more
2 mundane and much less newsworthy, which is a person takes a
3 convenient ride from point A to point B, gets where they
4 need to go cheaper and faster than another mode of
5 transportation, and leaves it conveniently for the next
6 person.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: At some point in
8 time the docking station would allow you to recharge the
9 scooter. If these are dockless and, you know, at some
10 point in time the battery operation must rundown, what do
11 you do, come back, pick them up, take them back to your
12 shop and then charge them again and then redistribute them
13 once again?
14 MS. SHAPIRO: So it's actually more interesting
15 than that.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Well, I
17 don't want to take too much time because we have other
18 people to testify, but try to give it to us in a nutshell
19 if you would.
20 MS. SHAPIRO: I will. We have what's called
21 juicers, and Bird has a similar thing. Anyone can sign up
22 to get a charger from us. They take the vehicle to their
23 home, they charge it overnight, and we tell them where to
24 put it back. And of course they're serviced by our team,
25 not by the juicers. They earn up to $5 per scooter per 110
1 night, so it's an earning opportunity for them and it
2 ensures that the scooters are charged.
3 If there aren't enough juicers to charge all of
4 them, that is also something that our staff does.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Do you have
6 a question?
7 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Okay. So, yes, I
8 know you sat through the entire day, and I asked a couple
9 questions about liability, so let's have a scenario where a
10 rented scooter is on a sidewalk and hits a pedestrian and
11 broke an arm, what happens?
12 MS. SHAPIRO: A scooter that's simply standing
13 there and falls -
14 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: No, no, no, no,
15 somebody's operating a scooter, going -- let's assume
16 they're going whatever the maximum speed is allowed, and it
17 results in a broken arm.
18 MS. SHAPIRO: Right, so exactly the same thing
19 that would happen if someone on a bicycle, an e-bicycle, a
20 car, or a rental car. It is on that person to have that
21 liability.
22 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: That person meaning
23 the renter of the scooter?
24 MS. SHAPIRO: The renter of our scooter just like
25 a renter of a rental car. 111
1 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: No, but some people
2 don't have an automobile and they may not have automobile
3 insurance.
4 MS. SHAPIRO: Right, no, but a renter for a
5 rental car, if you don't have automobile insurance and you
6 turn down their insurance, then they are just in the exact
7 same position.
8 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: All right. And
9 there was a reference made to the Utah statute with respect
10 to the insurance requirements there. Do you have an
11 opinion on what -
12 MR. KOPKO: Yes.
13 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: -- Utah has done?
14 MR. KOPKO: So, frankly, we already over-comply
15 with the Utah requirement. Typically, all of our cities
16 require that level of insurance, which is why it became
17 kind of a standard that was put in in Utah.
18 I think one thing that is important to note here,
19 part of why this bill is so short is because there are two
20 things you could be tackling here right now, right? One is
21 talking about the scooter, how big it should be, how small
22 it should be, how much it should weigh, should it be
23 allowed on the road.
24 And then there's this whole big world of scooter-
25 share regulation, right? There's owning a scooter and 112
1 operating a scooter and then there's operating these
2 businesses that allow shared scooters to people. This bill
3 is only in that first small category, which we thought was
4 appropriate in terms of the first legislative step here,
5 just talking about the vehicle code and what's legal or not
6 legal in terms of the vehicle operation. You guys would be
7 having a much larger conversation if you wanted to tackle
8 scooter-share regulation right now because we would be
9 talking about insurance, we'd be talking about
10 indemnification, we'd be talking about parking locations,
11 would be talking about all these types of maintenance -
12 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: No, I'm just
13 talking about insurance.
14 MR. KOPKO: Right. So the short answer is we
15 already over-comply with Utah. We'd welcome that. But I
16 would just say that once you start opening the door to
17 scooter-share regulation, you're probably going to have to
18 have 10 more discussions about what else we should be
19 regulating on scooter share. And that might make sense to
20 let the cities test it out, as they are in a lot of other
21 States for the first year. And if you guys want to come
22 back and regulate scooter share more heavily, it might make
23 sense after Philadelphia has tried it out and come up with
24 their own rules and figure out what works and doesn't work.
25 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: And I'll assume 113
1 Lime over-complies as well with Utah. So then if that were
2 the case, then there should be no objection if we include
3 those insurance limits in the Pennsylvania law.
4 MS. SHAPIRO: And I will admit honestly that I
5 haven't talked to our insurance team, so I can't speak
6 confidently one way or the other, but I'm happy to get back
7 to you.
8 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: And then I'll
9 assume that if my scenario with the rented scooter hits a
10 pedestrian, broken arm, that the policy and the claim would
11 be against the policies that would be in place by the
12 rental companies?
13 MR. KOPKO: That would then have to be kind of,
14 you know, determined on a fault-level basis, right, because
15 it would create a big moral hazard issue if anyone who
16 decides to do something irresponsible in a car or scooter
17 has zero liability for it. So, you know, there are some -
18 you know, if you get in a car and drive drunk, I don't
19 think your insurance company would be happy to pick up that
20 time. So there are some issues in terms of individual
21 responsibility versus corporate responsibility, but
22 absolutely -
23 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Actually do. I
24 mean, I'm not an insurance expert, but if I drive my car
25 drunk, then my insurance company is going to have a bad 114
1 day.
2 MR. KOPKO: Yes, but you're also going to be on
3 the hook for a lot of risk as well.
4 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: All right. And,
5 Mr. Chairman, Representative Innamorato had two really
6 quick questions. I heard a reference to 30 employees. Is
7 that the reference to the number of mechanics or the
8 juicers? Can you give us some parameters on number of
9 employees that would generally be employed?
10 MS. SHAPIRO: Yes. So it is not juicers. It is
11 the operations management for the city, right, the people
12 who organize the picking up and dropping off and the
13 managers. Then there are mechanics and there are people
14 who also do the pickup and drop off of the scooters and the
15 sort of lowest skilled of the work.
16 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: So if Philadelphia
17 were to go down this path, what would be the number of
18 full-time employees -
19 MS. SHAPIRO: Yes, so -
20 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: -- generally,
21 roughly?
22 MS. SHAPIRO: So, like I said, between 20 and 30
23 employees.
24 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: All right. And
25 then her second question was related to consumer data and 115
1 what sort of protections exist for the data. Can you -
2 MR. KOPKO: So, typically, cities are figuring
3 out amongst each other how they're going to handle data.
4 L.A. has taken leadership on what they call the mobility
5 data specification, which is just a standard API format for
6 which they are requesting data to and from the rideshare
7 operators. We have license agreements and we have
8 statements in most of our agreements that state that this
9 type of information should be considered personally
10 identifiable information and should be handled with X, Y, Z
11 privacy restrictions.
12 So it seems like there are standards evolving at
13 the city level, but again, those would be the things that
14 you would sort of have to be adding into. We're talking
15 about insurance, then data, then all of a sudden you're
16 talking about, you know, comprehensively regulating a whole
17 new industry as opposed to letting the cities kind of take
18 the first stab at it.
19 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Fair enough. Thank
20 you.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. I'm
22 sorry, Representative Rothman, you had a question or
23 comment, whatever.
24 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Just a comment. I want
25 to thank you. I know you're two of the several companies 116
1 that provide scooters, and it seems to me that this is a
2 market-driven industry that you've invested the money to
3 provide what really is a version of public transportation
4 without any taxpayer investment, and so I want to thank you
5 for that and the other companies.
6 And thank you, Dr. Ryerson, for being here and
7 your enthusiastic support of e-scooters. And I just want
8 to thank you and -
9 MR. KOPKO: Thank you.
10 DR. RYERSON: Thank you.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: -- the businesses
12 for being here.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Yes, thank you very
14 much.
15 Our next testifiers, you're probably wondering
16 whether or not we were ever going to get to you, but we're
17 here. We have Geoffrey Knight, Planning Director for the
18 city of Harrisburg; Wayne Martin from the city of
19 Harrisburg; Scott Petri, an old compatriot of ours, served
20 in the Legislature till three years ago, Scott? What was
21 it? How long have you been at the Parking Authority?
22 MR. PETRI: Less.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Less? Is it only a
24 year that you've been gone? Geez, it seems longer than
25 that. 117
1 Dan Mulvenna -
2 MALE SPEAKER: Julie, if you could pull that one
3 around.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: What's that? And
5 Julie Shade, the Manager of Community Development and
6 Events at Harristown Enterprises, Inc. Have we got
7 everybody? Have I introduced everybody?
8 Who's going to kick this off?
9 MALE SPEAKER: Why don't we go in the order -
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Wayne, go
11 ahead.
12 MR. MARTIN: I certainly can, Mr. Chairman.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you.
14 MR. MARTIN: I guess it's good afternoon now.
15 Wayne Martin -
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Lean close to the
17 mic if you would, please.
18 MR. MARTIN: Sorry. Wayne Martin, City Engineer,
19 city of Harrisburg. My responsibilities include right-of-
20 way management, the sidewalks that we've been discussing
21 and also the streets, traffic planning, traffic safety, and
22 design. I also serve on the city's Vision Zero Task Force,
23 which is the safety initiative of the city to eliminate
24 injuries and deaths, traffic-related fatalities by 2030.
25 I guess the question for our city and other 118
1 cities in the Commonwealth is do e-scooters have the
2 potential to advance the city's transportation goals? And
3 we believe the answer is yes. The city of Harrisburg has
4 three strategic transportation goals. The first is to
5 rehabilitate the city's transportation network to safely
6 accommodate all modes of transportation. The second is to
7 utilize a data-driven approach to establish priorities for
8 transportation projects that address the following
9 categories: safety, asset management, mobility, including
10 ADA, American with Disabilities Act, and land-use growth
11 management. And the third is to amend city planning and
12 engineering ordinances, regulations, policies, and
13 procedures to foster a livable, sustainable, and
14 economically vibrant community.
15 Safety for all users, the first goal, and this
16 was talked about at length, but I will highlight a few
17 points that I made here in my written testimony.
18 Harrisburg, like most cities in the United States, has
19 historically approached transportation system in
20 traditional auto-centric ways. Within the past five years
21 alone, we've had 19 deaths and 105 reported injuries occur
22 in vehicle crashes in our city. However, these devastating
23 events have served as a wake-up call for city residents and
24 city leadership. Death and injury on city streets are
25 unacceptable and require immediate change to street design 119
1 and operations within the city.
2 During the development of our year one action
3 plan, it became apparent that speed management is a
4 critical component of safety of our transportation network.
5 It's important to understand that an urban transportation
6 network functions differently than a rural or suburban
7 transportation network that are traditionally dominated by
8 automobiles. To manage speed, we focus on the speed
9 differential. Humans walk at about 3 to 4 miles per hour.
10 The average bicycle is traveling in the 6- to 25-mile-an-
11 hour range. E-scooters will travel in the 6 to 15-mile-an-
12 hour range, and ideally, vehicles in urban environments
13 will travel between 15 and 3 0 miles an hour. That's the
14 ideal system which we can attain that goal of zero.
15 If vehicle speeds are in the 35 to 50 miles an
16 hour in an urban environment, two things happen. The
17 drivers will lose eye contact with other road users and the
18 potential for fatality increases exponentially. The risk
19 of a fatality for an adult pedestrian or cyclist or
20 e-scooter operator hit by a vehicle traveling at 20 miles
21 an hour is 10 percent. If the vehicle is traveling at 40
22 miles an hour, the risk of death is 55 percent, and for
23 individuals over 70 years old, that risk of death is up to
24 7 0 percent.
25 Can e-scooters help manage this speed 120
1 differential? Again, we believe the answer is yes.
2 E-scooters have the potential to move people and shift
3 reliance on automobiles in an efficient, potentially less-
4 polluting travel option. One example close to home here in
5 the city, the Federal Courthouse is currently under
6 construction, and one of the questions that has been asked
7 by GSA, by the city is the current employees, which I
8 believe is 30 percent was the number given to us by GSA, 30
9 percent of employees use transit. They arrive at the
10 Amtrak station and currently walk to the Federal
11 Courthouse. Will they continue to travel via Amtrak and
12 walked to the Federal Courthouse when it's, you know, an
13 additional half-mile away. We believe that e-scooters
14 present one alternative to that last-mile commute.
15 In addition to having potentially less
16 automobiles on the road, as mentioned previously, there are
17 safety in numbers when it comes to bicycles and e-scooters
18 as automobile drivers become more accustomed to these road
19 users and alter their driving behavior by driving slower
20 perhaps.
21 Our second goal, the data-driven approach, you've
22 heard testimony about the e-scooter vendors tracking
23 information that can be utilized to prioritize our
24 transportation projects. They can also potentially provide
25 funding, which was mentioned, to build out bikeway 121
1 networks, and users will prefer, according to the studies
2 that I've read -- more like surveys, not studies, public
3 surveys -- users will prefer bike lanes as the preferred
4 road type as opposed to sharing lanes with vehicles or on
5 sidewalks.
6 And the city's third goal, ordinance and policy,
7 the enumeration of police powers in the bill we think is
8 appropriate. It shifts that authority to PennDOT and local
9 authorities to regulate the use of e-scooters. The city of
10 Harrisburg would intend to do it through contractual
11 relations with vendors. You know, I don't think anybody
12 wants to see 100 e-scooters spread out on the beautiful
13 steps of our Capitol that you mentioned, Chairman
14 Hennessey, in the beginning of the testimony here, so
15 obviously the city would need specific authority to
16 continue to manage our public right-of-way, as we do today.
17 Another consideration is the 15-mile-an-hour
18 speed limit, you know, might be too high for Riverfront
19 Park, for example where we have a lot of pedestrian
20 activity. The ability to geocode and, you know, maybe dial
21 back that speed, which can be done through -- our
22 understanding would be through the technology available
23 through the e-scooters through the governing systems and
24 the geo-fencing. That is something that the city would
25 want the opportunity to regulate. 122
1 It's also important to note that there's a few
2 bills I think in front of the House, House Bill 792 which
3 proposes to remove the language from the vehicle code and
4 allow to park in protected bike lanes. I think that's an
5 important consideration as, you know, financially strapped
6 municipalities try to wrestle and accommodate all
7 transportation users.
8 So thank you for this opportunity to testify.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. Geoff?
10 MR. KNIGHT: Yes, good afternoon. My name is
11 Geoffrey Knight. I'm the Planning Director with the city
12 of Harrisburg.
13 At this point in the testimony there's not really
14 any ground that hasn't been covered, so what I'd like to do
15 is just provide a little bit of background and context to a
16 couple of the other statements that were made up here this
17 morning and this afternoon.
18 To the chart that showed the growth of e-scooter
19 rise, one of the things that a lot of the companies that
20 have offered shared either bikes and scooters is that we're
21 seeing is that they're moving out of the dockless bicycle
22 industry and moving kind of in the dockless scooter
23 industry while that's existing alongside of the docked
24 bicycles. And so really what dockless scooters, e-scooters
25 do is they are starting to sift themselves out and fill in 123
1 the gaps that are existing in the current infrastructure,
2 transportation infrastructure, whether that's first mile,
3 last mile, just going out for a trip, a spin around up and
4 down the park or whatever. So we are really seeing that
5 the industry is evolving pretty quickly, and so
6 acknowledging, defining, and regulating this industry is
7 important for the State and for cities like Harrisburg to
8 begin to get a grasp on this as this industry does mature
9 and evolve.
10 The addition of e-scooters to our transportation
11 network will only increase the constituency that's asking
12 for a more diverse infrastructure within our streets. As
13 our modal infrastructure kind of diversifies, we'll need to
14 see that reflected in the physical infrastructure that we
15 have on the streets. And, as Wayne noted, allowing things
16 like park and protected bike lanes will begin to get
17 scooters off sidewalks, which is one of the places they
18 only feel comfortable operating right now. So as we're
19 looking at different changes to State regulations, keeping
20 in mind that the planning bureau of the city of Harrisburg
21 really sees bicycles and e-scooters operating alongside of
22 each other and being a similar constituency.
23 With regards to some of the discussion on
24 helmets, I would note that the city of Seattle, Washington,
25 had a bike-share system for a while, and I think they were 124
1 the only large city that required helmets in operation of
2 the bike share, and that requirement has been blamed for
3 the downfall of that system because, first of all, who's
4 carrying a helmet with them around every day? You may want
5 to get on a bike on a whim or on an e-scooter on a whim.
6 And the second option is rolling out the
7 logistics in case these companies are responsible for that.
8 Are they going to have a machine to distribute those
9 things? Would you wear a helmet that somebody else had
10 just worn, or is it going to be something like an
11 inflatable helmet or one that's made out of cardboard or
12 something like that? But the logistics of regulating and
13 enforcing and kind of rolling those things out are very
14 difficult and generally tend to discourage the use of these
15 things, which I think is something this bill is kind of not
16 trying to do.
17 And finally, I just want to note that I actually
18 went down to Washington, D.C., this past weekend
19 specifically so I could try out a couple of these scooters
20 and I actually rode them from Cleveland Park down
21 Connecticut through Dupont to the Georgetown waterfront and
22 backup to kind of test these out in the wild and see what
23 it was like operating in a manner that was consistent with
24 legislation that's in here, being on the streets, stopping
25 at stoplights, things of that nature. And I actually found 125
1 that the other road users out there, particularly
2 motorists, were actually very accommodating of myself and
3 the many other scooters that were out there.
4 So I do think that this industry and this
5 technology can be safely incorporated into the
6 transportation infrastructure not only of the State but
7 also our cities. Thank you.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you. Your
9 work is cut out for you because this industry is coming at
10 us fast and furious. I think, you know, we all have to
11 step up and get things done.
12 Scott, nice to see you again.
13 MR. PETRI: Nice to see you, Chairman, and thank
14 you for hanging in there.
15 I would like to make three general observations,
16 three or four, and then, if you don't mind, turn it over
17 for more formal testimony from my colleague, who's done
18 some extensive research. So let me start with I think this
19 is a really important issue for you to tackle, and there
20 are some important considerations. We all know, having me
21 previously in the Legislature and you currently, the
22 deference to local options, and I think that is a really
23 important aspect of Pennsylvania, the recognition that
24 geographically we're very distinct.
25 But I would say to that it is important to decide 126
1 how much detail should be in the State law, and I'll tell
2 you what my thoughts are in a moment, particularly because
3 we have other mobility issues, technologies that have hit
4 us, and from our vantage point at least we may have missed
5 the mark on some of those, and now we have to go back and
6 try to re-examine those. This benchmark is going to set
7 that benchmark going backward and forward for new
8 mobilities, so I would encourage you, you have to get it
9 right without any predisposed notion of exactly what is
10 right.
11 The next point I would make is that, as the
12 Philadelphia Parking Authority -- and I guess I should
13 introduce myself. I'm the Executive Director of the
14 Philadelphia Parking Authority since January 2 of last
15 year. We don't have any jurisdiction. We don't regulate
16 the sidewalks, and we don't regulate bicycle paths. So we
17 really don't have a stake in the game. But as one of the
18 partners in Philadelphia, we thought it was important that
19 we come here as a transportation partner and talk about our
20 observations and experience because what we do do is
21 enforce some traffic matters, parking relations, and of
22 course the curb.
23 The third point I would make -- and in doing some
24 Internet research, I stumbled on an article which then
25 pointed me towards a study, and it's the Remix Micro- 127
1 Mobility Policy Survey, and it is in our packet. It is a
2 phenomenal survey and advice to legislators. That's how I
3 viewed it on what are best practices, where you'd hit the
4 mark, where you wouldn't have the mark, and what you should
5 really be thinking about with regard to new mobilities.
6 And they include and define best practices regarding fees,
7 data-sharing, enforcement, parking, infrastructure, cost
8 recovery, safety, and service areas. And I think after
9 you're done, it'll make it easier for you to decide what
10 should be in the State-enabling law and what should be left
11 for local municipalities.
12 Most important is that you define properly in
13 State law in my opinion certain requirements that you need,
14 particularly in the area of the format and the sharing of
15 data. You've heard from two providers that indicate that
16 by agreement -- and I didn't hear all the time, I heard
17 some of the time or most of the time might've been the
18 comment -- provide data. That data-sharing is becoming
19 more and more of a principle. You also heard the L.A.
20 example, and that's certainly what oTIS, which is the
21 Mayor's Office on Transportation and Infrastructure, is
22 insisting on on all modalities, this L.A. procedure because
23 it's going to enable them to carve that data into one data
24 source and share it among the other transportation partners
25 such as SEPTA and the like. 128
1 But I would urge you to include a data
2 requirement and a standard so that municipalities can talk
3 to each other with the same information. Do not make
4 municipalities individually fight to get that data because
5 too often in the area of TNCs we've seen some of the sister
6 companies repeatedly demonstrate their propensity to argue
7 that almost all data is subject to either privacy or
8 proprietary in nature. And so if you use TNCs as an
9 example, I'd be very cautious about not requiring data and
10 making municipalities fight to obtain data.
11 The last thing I would indicate is that State law
12 should set minimum standards and best practices, and you
13 would allow the municipalities to require such additional
14 requirements as they may deem appropriate.
15 So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Dan,
16 who has a few comments and surveys and studies that you
17 really haven't yet heard about.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you,
19 Scott.
20 Dan?
21 MR. MULVENNA: My name is Dan Mulvenna, and on
22 behalf of the Philadelphia Parking Authority, I am pleased
23 to present this testimony to Chairman Tim Hennessey and
24 Chairman Mike Carroll and any other honorable Members of
25 this Committee. 129
1 The Philadelphia -
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: And please get as
3 close as you can to the mic, not so much for our benefit
4 but people watching on PCN might not be able to hear you.
5 MR. MULVENNA: Yes. So the Philadelphia Parking
6 Authority's mission is to provide for safe and continuous
7 traffic flow in the right-of-way. One of the guiding
8 principles of that mission is utilizing innovation and
9 technology to improve the quality of life for the traveling
10 public.
11 Like other major cities, Philadelphia is faced
12 with a growing and all-too-common issue of traffic
13 congestion. Unlike most cities, however, Philadelphia has
14 the smallest roadways and sidewalks. Traffic congestion is
15 damaging to both public safety and economic growth. With
16 the advent of the online marketplace, population growth in
17 Center City and transportation network companies,
18 congestion is only going to worsen in Philadelphia and
19 other cities.
20 In an attempt to mitigate the effects of this
21 problem, a new industry has risen around dockless mobility
22 scooters and dockless bike shares. It's micro-mobility.
23 It's why we're here today. In municipalities that have
24 authorized this mobility, response from the public has been
25 mostly positive, especially among underserved communities 130
1 and minorities. For example, a recent report from Denver
2 found limited availability to be the biggest complaint.
3 There weren't enough scooters for people there.
4 With more jobs added to the local economy,
5 reduced congestion during peak hours, and the promise of a
6 more environmentally friendly mode of transportation, the
7 micro-mobility industry appears to be here to stay.
8 As transportation partners in the city of
9 Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Parking Authority is proud
10 to be a part of this conversation. With that being said,
11 we are neutral at best in this matter but only if the
12 enabling law by the legislator gives the local
13 municipalities the discretion they deem appropriate.
14 The PPA is also concerned with the impact to
15 public transportation. SEPTA is a key transportation
16 partner in our region, and an independent study should be
17 undertaken to ensure that there will not be a negative
18 impact on ridership. There are many residents in
19 Philadelphia who depend on public transit, and we should
20 make sure that those who are unable to use dockless
21 scooters and dockless bikes will not be negatively
22 impacted. When weighing your decision on permitting micro
23 mobility devices, we strongly urge that you consider the
24 economic impact on public transportation utility companies
25 such as SEPTA. 131
1 A micro-mobility program begins with regulation
2 and enforcement, which leads to the question of how these
3 devices will be regulated and enforced. And the answer to
4 that question is different for each municipality, but all
5 can benefit from a few guidelines. Defining where, when,
6 and how these vehicles will be allowed to distribute,
7 travel, and park is an issue each municipality approaches
8 differently. Some allow for vehicles to be parked in
9 what's called the furniture zone, and that's the area where
10 trees or parking kiosks, trash cans, newsstands are. And
11 then others are creating on-street parking corrals, a
12 corded, gated-off area where you can park these dockless
13 vehicles in the streets. But first, to do that,
14 municipalities need to reserve the right to where, when,
15 and how these vehicles will be distributed.
16 And then with regulation also comes enforcement.
17 And as regulators of TNCs, as Scott mentioned, we urge you
18 to require that operators are responsible for the
19 violations of users. It would be impractical to chase down
20 every user, considering how many of these devices may be on
21 the streets.
22 And also we recommend that municipalities reserve
23 the right to impound these vehicles if there is abuse. In
24 one instant, Arizona State University impounded over 800
25 scooters in one month because of abuses. 132
1 When it comes to data on safety and injuries,
2 it's currently scarce. There isn't a lot. Someone
3 mentioned earlier in their testimony the CDC is working on
4 a study, so until something like that comes out, we can't
5 really make decisions on that. But what we can do is
6 require that operators keep their vehicles in operational
7 order and from operating on sidewalks. That's a huge
8 safety issue, the sidewalk issue, as other people
9 mentioned. Additionally, public safety would benefit from
10 having regular maintenance schedules and data provided by
11 companies surrounding maintenance.
12 How municipalities fund a regulatory program
13 should center on fees tied to the operators, and fee
14 structures in different municipalities differ greatly among
15 them. Finding the right fee structure ensures the proper
16 funding to make a micro-mobility program viable. Some fee
17 types currently seen in municipalities are annual fees,
18 permit fees, per-trip fees, and per-device fees.
19 Permit fees should be balanced, though, so as not
20 to exclude smaller companies and limit public access due to
21 high prices. For this very reason, some municipalities
22 have actually already lost operators because fees were too
23 high. Fees are best used when they are tied into
24 maintaining regulation and infrastructure improvement, also
25 technology fees, too. 133
1 We urge the Legislature to allow municipalities
2 to receive device, per-trip, and annual fees. Doing so
3 will allow municipalities to scale its enforcement and
4 infrastructure cost to the size of fleets.
5 Municipalities have also used fees as a way of
6 capping fleet sizes. Almost all municipalities have fleet
7 caps with a range of 500 to 10,000-plus. To arbitrarily
8 set a cap on these devices could also ruin a program, as in
9 Denver. There just weren't enough scooters.
10 Municipalities would be best served by setting performance
11 caps to allow for flexible fleet sizes. But also they
12 should reserve the right to limit fleet sizes at any time
13 or location.
14 Allowing for flexibility to meet consumer demand
15 and special events would create a more dynamic system where
16 the public would be better served. Finding the right fleet
17 size will prove challenging but can be better determined by
18 having access to data provided by operators.
19 Now more than ever municipalities can determine
20 the where, when, and how of micro-mobility devices by
21 having access to data from operators. Data is the key to a
22 micro-mobility program. With a data access plan in place,
23 municipalities will be able to determine fleet sizes,
24 device location, commuter trip specifics, and vehicle
25 usage. 134
1 There are now a few companies partnering with
2 municipalities to provide the necessary platform needed for
3 a data access plan, companies such as Remix -- they
4 provided the report that we have in our packet -- and
5 Passport use tools such as a general bike fare, fee
6 specification, and micro-mobility data specification to
7 help municipalities tailor their programs.
8 Philadelphia, through the Office of
9 Transportation, Innovation, and Sustainability, that's
10 oTIS, is acquiring a data platform, which is an open API
11 similar to the one Los Angeles uses for all of their
12 transportation providers. An API gives municipalities the
13 ability to interact with the GBSF, a general bike fare
14 specific fee or a mobility data specification.
15 Conversely, municipalities would be best served
16 by having access to both real-time and historical data
17 while requiring privacy and anonymity for riders. Access
18 to data rounds out a successful micro-mobility plan for
19 municipalities. A conversation with regulators from Denver
20 and a review of their pilot report showed their initial
21 inadequacies stem from an insufficient data access program.
22 They didn't have access to data early on, so they just kind
23 of made the decisions they needed to make. And they were
24 an early adopter, so they just were kind of taken quickly
25 by this. 135
1 Early on, municipalities failed to effectively
2 confront TNCs such as Lyft and Uber. This mini-revolution
3 caused by TNCs was the first major shift transportation had
4 seen in decades and has opened the doors for more to come,
5 as we see today. With the experience gained from the shift
6 TNCs cause, municipalities can and should able to react.
7 For your consideration, we're providing you with a report
8 from Remix and also we're providing you with a report from
9 Denver. That's their pilot program report.
10 Ultimately, if the Commonwealth allows for micro
11 mobility, a program should be through a pilot controlled at
12 the municipal level and require the industry to comply with
13 the following suggestions: safety regulations established
14 by the municipalities; fees such as a per-trip fee, per-
15 device fee, and a technology fee; operators should be
16 required to provide data in an open platform; operators
17 should comply with drop-off zones and areas where pickups
18 and drop-offs are prohibited; cities should reserve the
19 right to right-size the size of fleets, require equity as
20 to where the devices are deployed; and operators should be
21 responsible for all violations to ease enforcement.
22 Thank you for your time.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Daniel.
24 And a comment I'd make to you in terms of the
25 municipalities governing everything is that we've got 2,567 136
1 municipalities in Pennsylvania alone, and most of them
2 probably are ill-equipped to try to think this through and
3 try to figure out what kind of limits to put on different
4 aspects of the operations, so I think they'll be looking to
5 us for a template and sort of like we are looking to NCSL
6 and CSG and those kind of groups to share information and
7 let us know what we've got to do and what belongs in
8 statute, what belongs in regulation, what belongs left to
9 the local level.
10 MR. PETRI: Mr. Chairman, that's why God gave you
11 wide shoulders because you can handle it. I know that.
12 And let me say one thing that I did miss that I
13 want to stress because we talked about it. At least as far
14 as we are concerned, the Philadelphia Parking Authority and
15 me personally having an apartment in Old City, allowing
16 these devices on sidewalks is a very, very, very bad idea.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Somehow I knew what
18 you were going to say there.
19 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: Yes. One quick
20 question if I can, Dan. I just heard your litany of things
21 that you want us to give the cities and the municipalities
22 the ability to dictate. I didn't hear in that list any
23 reference to liability, insurance limits, and such.
24 MR. MULVENNA: Right -
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Was that 137
1 specifically excluded?
2 MR. MULVENNA: It wasn't specifically excluded.
3 MR. PETRI: No, it was not. We were going off
4 the study and I think to have a minimum insurance
5 requirement certainly most providers are already going to
6 accommodate that anyway, so they should have no objection.
7 Now, I think insurance is obviously a key.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. Thank you
9 very much. Derek Whitesel -- Julie Shade, Manager of
10 Community Development and Events at Harristown Enterprises.
11 MS. SHADE: I am going to defer to Derek because
12 I have no voice. He's -
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: You have a voice
14 for this Committee, but -
15 MS. SHADE: He is my voice and a colleague.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: That's fine. Thank
17 you.
18 Derek, how do you say your last name?
19 MR. WHITESEL: Whitesel.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Whitesel.
21 MR. WHITESEL: White like the color and then
22 s-e-l.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay.
24 MR. WHITESEL: Yes. Yes. So my name is Derek
25 Whitesel. I appreciate your time today. I'm the Executive 138
1 Director of a nonprofit called the Harrisburg Young
2 Professionals and also speaking on behalf of Julie and
3 Harristown Enterprises.
4 I'm pleased to be here with you today to
5 represent the private-sector support of the legalization of
6 these electric low-speed scooters in Pennsylvania, as well
7 as specifically here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
8 A scooter represents an effective first-mile,
9 last-mile option for the public transit commuters, as well
10 as a short-distance travel alternative connecting people to
11 their destinations throughout the regions. Harrisburg's
12 bike-share program has actually proven to be extremely
13 successful during its first two years of operation. The
14 addition of electric low-speed scooters would give the
15 community another transportation alternative in our
16 communities' toolboxes, providing the regions with a travel
17 alternative other than a single-occupant vehicle. This
18 option gives consumers an extended reach whereas a distance
19 may be deemed too far to walk, too sweaty to bike, or too
20 far from public transit. The scooter offers a fast and
21 easy way to access the destination.
22 Scooters can also enhance city residential living
23 throughout Pennsylvania. They can help decrease city
24 dwellers' dependence on cars, providing mobility over a
25 larger area. In addition, cottage businesses that have 139
1 evolved in other areas where these scooters have become a
2 staple have provided an economic boom to those communities.
3 Individuals and organizations have stepped up to the charge
4 to clean, to repair, and to relocate the scooters, offering
5 small business income opportunity where it had not
6 previously existed.
7 We respectfully request your positive
8 consideration of this bill, allowing the implementation of
9 low-speed scooters' usage throughout Pennsylvania. I
10 appreciate your time.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Thank you, Derek.
12 I appreciate that. And, you know, you say you request our
13 positive consideration of the bill. I don't think we have
14 any choice. We have to. This is coming at us. The
15 question is how we do it and whether we do it correctly.
16 So I thank all of our testifiers. Thank you very
17 much for being here. All of our testifiers today have
18 given us a whole plethora of information to try to sift
19 through.
20 Julie, thank you for your Bette Davis imitation,
21 that gravelly voice. Sorry, recover quickly.
22 I should also mention we've received written
23 testimony from James Fox, the Assistant General Manager of
24 Systems Safety at SEPTA; Michael Carroll, not this Michael
25 Carroll -- Michael Carroll from the city of Philadelphia. 140
1 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: His testimony will
2 be especially compelling, I'm sure.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: From the city of
4 Pittsburgh, we've heard from Mayor Bill Peduto from the
5 Clean Air Council of Pennsylvania; Ted Leonard, as I
6 mentioned earlier, from the Pennsylvania AAA Foundation;
7 and we've heard from a group called Spin Scooter. So our
8 time is going to be occupied by a lot of additional reading
9 in addition to what we've heard today but probably not as
10 much as Wayne and Geoffrey have to spend their time trying
11 to figure out how to manage what's coming at us at
12 lightning speed.
13 So with no further testifiers and having gone far
14 beyond what we thought was going to be the limit, thank you
15 for hanging in there. I know it's an infringement on your
16 time to be here, and we appreciate it. Thank you very
17 much.
18 Mike, do you have anything else?
19 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN CARROLL: No.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HENNESSEY: Okay. With that,
21 we are adjourned.
22
23 (The hearing concluded at 12:57 p.m.)
24 141
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Transcription Services
10