ATLANTA — Members of the public showed up to a Monday night town hall meeting on what's become a lightning rod for debate in Atlanta: e-scooters and what to do about them.
For weeks, the City of Atlanta has been grappling with how to handle the portable dockless devices that allow riders to zip around town, but have also been involved in traffic accidents, including fatal ones.
City leaders have cracked down on where riders can use the scooters, effectively banning them from the sidewalks. The city council has also passed legislation that officially stops the issuing of new permits to other e-scooter companies looking to expand into Atlanta.
Monday's meeting was also the first public one since Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms rolled out an overnight curfew for the devices in the city, until a more permanent solution could be enacted. But the message from residents who spoke during the town hall was clear: it's not the scooters that are the problem. It's Atlanta's car-loving roads.
Members of the public griped that Atlanta's current roads are not friendly toward any other mode of transportation other than cars - not bikes, not pedestrians, and certainly not e-scooters.
Bike groups have persistently pressured city leaders to take action to protect cyclists, including changing to layouts of streets to accommodate bikes and reducing the speed limits. Monday's speakers pointed to cities like Boston and Seattle who reduced the speed limits of some streets from 35 to 25 mph as an easy measure to put in place.
During the meeting, City Planning Commissioner Tim Keane acknowledged the e-scooters' popularity as a way of getting around, noting that there have been almost 3 million dockless scooter trips logged since February. He also admitted that Atlanta streets are designed for high-speed cars, and that is a major part of problem.
"Atlanta streets are phenomenally - 100 percent almost - are designed for high-speed cars," Keane said. "So, we have this is just, you know, and I feel like people in Atlanta - we're used to [cars], so we think we always must have this, and that's not the case. We can changer our streets and it will make it safer for everyone, scudding car drivers, if there is better space for others and it will help from a traffic standpoint and a safety standpoint if we change our streets."
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According to data provided at the meeting, Atlanta has had 44 traffic-related deaths in 2019. Twelve of those involved pedestrians, and three involved the e-scooters.
But the scooters have also lead to a spike in injuries - 190 from August 2018 to August 2019. They've also become a nuisance in their own right, leaving sidewalks clutters with fallen devices and dangerous driving. Since June 2019, Atlanta Police said they've issued 17 tickets in one zone for misusing a scooter, including being on the phone while using a scooter, and failure to yield to a pedestrians. They've also issued roughly 350 warnings for the same things.
"Irresponsible - in the sidewalks in the streets it's not a carnival ride," said one speaker.
Councilmember Felecia Moore hinted at that, saying the common denominator in the bad behavior - whether it be wayward pedestrians or reckless scooters - is people.
"The common denominator to all of this is people. Every one of those roads have a person involved, and I don't think we'd be necessarily be having this conversation about scooters if the people who use the scooters understood you can't just jump off of them in the middle of the sidewalk ... and leave it," Moore said. "But because people don't always do what they're supposed to do that's what we're in for. So I think this is a behavioral issue with people."
"I think we need to find a happy medium that's for all of them," Moore said.
Keisha Lance Bottoms was not present at Monday's meeting and the next steps for the devices is unclear. So, whether Atlanta is any closer to a solution is still an unanswered question.
Hope Ford contributed to this report.