Was downtown Bradenton ready for Bird scooters? Rental program quietly comes to an end
After several attempts to kickstart the program, the city of Bradenton is walking away from a scooter partnership with Bird.
Bradenton leaders voted last week to approve a mutual agreement ending the exclusive contract with the scooter company. In July, Bird became the city’s scooter rental operator, offering as many as 200 pay-as-you-go vehicles for use along the Riverwalk and designated areas downtown.
City leaders celebrated the launch and applauded Bird for offering alternate transportation aimed at reducing the number of cars on Bradenton’s congested streets.
But the partnership fell victim to “mixed feelings” and technological hiccups, City Administrator Rob Perry said in an interview with the Bradenton Herald.
“We’re trying to take a pause and reassess how best the micromobility program would work. Each [city] is different,” Perry said. “I think we experienced mixed feelings here in Bradenton about their acceptance and approval.”
In a statement provided to the Bradenton Herald Monday, Bird said the company remains hopeful it can provide services in Bradenton again at a later date.
“We work hard to partner with local regulators and leaders, like those in Bradenton, to design a shared micromobility program that best fits the needs of the community,” the company said in the statement. “After extensive discussions with local leaders, we mutually agreed that this wasn’t the right time for a shared e-scooter program in Bradenton.”
Following Bird’s Bradenton debut, city officials quickly became aware of residents using the scooters improperly or operating the scooters outside of the permitted areas, an issue that Bird said it could fix if given more time to tweak the GPS software.
After several complaints from residents and a number of conversations with Bird, Mayor Gene Brown asked the company to put a hold on the scooter program. Bird removed the electric vehicles ahead of Hurricane Ian and the scooters never returned to the streets.
“I’ve been a proponent, but different things didn’t work out as I anticipated,” Brown said.
In a statement provided to the Bradenton Herald in November, a representative for the company said Bird was aware of the issues and was hard at work “tweaking the boundaries of the operating zone and adjusting speed limits.” In recent months, city officials and Bird had conversations about installing signage and how many parking corrals should exist in the service area.
Before choosing Bird as the sole provider of scooter rentals, Bradenton hired a consultant to share the best practices for integrating scooter rentals in the city. At the time, the consultant suggested picking a company that provides parking corrals for the vehicles and uses location technology to limit where they could operate.
In the short time that Bird operated scooter rentals in Bradenton, parking corrals never arrived and the company continued fine-tuning its software to keep scooters inside the allowed areas.
“The contractor did everything they could to make this project work,” Perry said. “Sometimes technology is just technology.”
Before arriving in Bradenton last summer, Bird boasted scooter rental programs in more than 300 cities across the globe, including Atlanta, Tampa and Washington, D.C.
City leaders have not committed to choosing another rental scooter operator. Brown and Perry said they would be interested in exploring other forms of transportation, such as a fleet of electric bicycles.
This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 3:58 PM.
