Dallas City Transportation Department’s 2020 decision to remove rental electric #scooters was the right thing to do. But just two years later, the city suddenly decided to bring the scooters back. What makes anyone think that it would work better a second time around?

Scooters are incredibly dangerous not only for their riders, but for other citizens as well. Their arrival in Dallas in 2018 was supposed to be "an equitable, affordable, and reliable transit system," in the words of a Bird spokesman. The agreement was that the companies would pick up all of their vehicles from the streets each night, perform any necessary maintenance, and return them to their docking stations in the morning. As most people remember, that is not exactly what happened.

The scooters can travel up to 15 MPH, and people can use them to make a quick getaway while committing petty crimes such as purse snatching. The city couldn’t stop riders from breaking traffic laws and taking the electric vehicles into areas where they were not allowed. One rider was captured on a car's dashcam puttering away down the left lane of the Stemmons freeway. People seldom docked them in their charging stations correctly, and they were discarded in heaps across the city. 

The original intention of letting rideshare scooters operate in the city was to boost affordable transportation, but oftentimes they were not being used for transportation to the bus station or neighborhood store as intended. Many riders used them to zip around town at night and disturb people who were trying to sleep. Police in other locations have also reported incidents where criminals used scooters to make a quick getaway. 

There were also large groups of young people who rode around the city to get better views of illegal street races late at night. David Blewett, who was at the time a councilmember in charge of the Central Business District and the Deep Ellum outskirts, said in 2020 that “what I saw was younger people on scooters going from intersection to intersection pre-positioning and waiting for the street racers to show up.”  This behavior was risky for especially the underage, as scooters can cause serious injuries.

As a result of the many safety issues, the city banned renting scooters. They should remain banned permanently.