Chattanooga's bike share system added another option for two-wheeled transit in the city Thursday: electric scooters.
The city added 15 scooters to its bike docks, which are mainly around downtown, the North Shore and Southside. For now, the scooters are part of a pilot program.
They can be rented for a base fee of $1 plus 35 cents per minute, according to Bike Chattanooga. For riders with annual memberships to the bike share program, the rate is 25 cents per minute.
During the pilot period, the scooters are provided to the city for free, Chattanooga spokesperson Kevin Roig said in a text Thursday. They are part of the city's partnership with Canada-based bike share company PBSC, bought by rideshare company Lyft in 2022.
The scooters, manufactured by Segway, are equipped with headlights and brake lights, a speedometer and a phone dock with wireless charging. According to Bike Chattanooga, riders should be 16 or older and ride in the street or bike lanes, not on the sidewalk.
The scooters have to be picked up and docked at the city's bike stations — not left out anywhere like scooters rented by private companies like Lime or Bird.
"Now another popular mobility option is available, using our existing docked system to avoid cluttered sidewalks," Roig said.
In 2020, the Chattanooga City Council put an indefinite ban on dockless scooters, like Lime's and Bird's, after much debate over their safety. Both companies tried to bring their scooters to town starting in 2018.
'Pretty upset'
North Shore's Adventure Sports Innovation started offering rented electric scooters in 2020, owner Patrick Molloy said, with a brand dubbed "ChattaScooter."
(READ MORE: ChattaScooter expands downtown e-scooter network)
"The city said they didn't want the dockless scooters, so we created a small program with virtual docks," Molloy said by phone Thursday.
Now, 30 of Adventure Sports Innovation's scooters are available to rent at its River Street storefront and at stations outside the Holiday Inn downtown and Chattanoogan Hotel on Broad Street.
ChattaScooter's reach has been limited because the city prohibits its scooters from using public docks, parking spaces or sidewalks, Molloy said. He worries the city's scooter program, priced 5 cents lower per minute than his, may eventually put ChattaScooter out of business.
"I have to say I'm pretty upset they're coming in to compete with my program," Molloy said.
The demand for scooters isn't huge in Chattanooga, Molloy said, and changes a lot with the weather. About half of ChattaScooter's riders are tourists or visitors from outside the region, while the other half are local visitors and regulars who live close by, he said.
(READ MORE: Chattanooga is reducing traffic lanes and adding bike lanes to more city streets)
"Frankly, they did a lot of research back in 2020," Molloy said. "And their claim was that there wasn't enough demand and it would be a mess. So what made them change their mind about demand?"
Rides up
The city's program encourages riders (of bikes and scooters) to use helmets but doesn't provide them. Molloy said helmets are available for ChattaScooter's rides, either in its store or inside the hotels that host its other docking stations.
Chattanooga added 50 e-bikes to its fleet in July, bringing the total available across the city to 105. At that time, former city transportation consultant Bert Kuyrkendall told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that one of the drawbacks of a city-run system was the lack of scooters.
The city's system also leaves out its lowest-income neighborhoods, Kuyrkendall said previously. There are only two stations east of Central Avenue, though the city has a $1 million grant that will fund three new stations in the Avondale neighborhood, Ben Taylor, deputy administrator for the Chattanooga Division of Transportation, previously told the Times Free Press.
The number of rides taken has gone up 17% since last year, Roig said in a text.
Five of the city's 42 stations have electric charging.
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.