We’re two months into our micro-mobility pilot program with Charlotte, Detroit and Omaha and have been working closely with city leaders to determine goals, share information and learnings and begin building a new framework for scooter management.

Working with our team, the city of Charlotte determined their key priorities for this project:

• Make scooters more available for citizens to travel the first and last mile to connect with public transit
• Reduce the number of scooters crowding the curb in uptown Charlotte by increasing utilization
• Prevent scooters from being parked in some city parks and other prohibited areas

Once the goals were clearly laid out, the Passport, Charlotte and Lime teams set out to create parking zones throughout the city that tie directly to these outcomes. The approach is fairly straight-forward: make scooter parking cheaper in areas where you want scooters to be distributed and more expensive in areas where you don’t want scooters parked for a long time. With this strategy in mind, the city drew a map with four zones, outlining the parking price for scooter companies.

Now that the map is drawn, we’ll begin to review scooter parking data and test out pricing models, based on the zone and length of time a vehicle is stopped. Our early outlines provide a 30 minute grace period where parking is free, no matter the zone. From there, we are developing prices in a low, medium and high range that increase the longer a vehicle is parked. We expect to revise map and pricing over the course of the pilot as all three parties work towards accomplishing the city’s goals.

Charging for scooter parking is a new framework for cities and scooter providers, but provides many benefits that a traditional cap and fee model does not. Scooter companies will have more control over the size of their fleets, but have incentives to make sure vehicles are parked at specific locations. In Charlotte, that would mean fewer scooters parked for long periods of time in the uptown area and more scooters available near transit stops. This approach also puts more control in the hands of the city to leverage scooters to its advantage and better serve its citizens.

If you’re interested in following along with the pilot, please sign up for our email newsletter.  Stay tuned for updates on Detroit and Omaha in the coming weeks.