Scooter Shenanigans: A Look at the Chaos of Illegal Parking in Bloomington

What Was Discussed During the City Council Meeting?

The meeting that I attended occurred on March 8th, at 6:30pm. It was a mix of both attendees in person and over Zoom. There were a total of seven councilmembers present, as well as four other guests attending in person. Over Zoom, there was one more councilmember, and another nineteen total people that were in attendance, several of those being students in this class. After a roll-call and an approval of minutes happened, there was a breakdown of the agenda for the meeting. The agenda began with a report on Location Changes for Utilities Department and Department of Public Works, a report on Scooter Parking/Enforcement Pilot Program, and it concluded with councilmember Sue Sgambelluri recommended the appointment of Doris Sims to the City of Bloomington Capital Improvements 501c3 board. After the recommendation, they asked the general public for any additional comments, looked over the future schedule for the council, and then the meeting was adjouned. I have never attended a city council meeting prior to this, and I believe that this was a great introduction to understanding how the city council works and the process of creating changes in local communities.

Utilities Location Change

The first thing brought up in this city council meeting was presented by Vic Kelson, and it was a report on the Location Changes for Utilities Department and Department of Public Works. This proposal discusses the need for the Utilities Department to move to a larger facility, claiming that they have outgrown their current one. One of the biggest issues that they are currently facing is that there is not enough roofed storage for all of their vehicles and equipment, so it is necessary to move to a larger facility to ensure that there are no damages to the equipment either from the weather or other factors while they are stored outside.

The proposed new location that the utilities department wants to move their facility to is the former Winston Thomas Wastewater Treatment Plant. The map to the right shows the current Utilities Service Center, and then where the facility would be moved to. They believe that the space that this facility provides will be sufficient in being able to properly store all of their important equipment.

Scooter Parking and Enforcement

The next item on the city council agenda was to discuss a report on the Scooter Parking/Enforcement Pilot Program. This report was once again led by Vic Kelson, but it was also assisted by Adam Wason, who is the Director of Public Works. The beginning of the presentation discussed the work of the temporary staff during October 2022 to December 2022. Throughout this time, they spent 25 hours each week documenting scooter parking violations. They broke down the violations by the location of the violation, the service of the scooter, and the type of violation. There was a total of 605 scooter violations that was tracked during this timeframe, and the graph to the left shows the breakdown of the violations by scooter services, with the three being Bird, Lime, and Veo.

Throughout and more so after the report was presented, it was met with a strong frustration by both the councilmembers and the general public. Some of the councilmembers were contemplating whether or not they should ban the scooters altogether, and were upset with both Kelson and Wason for bringing this report up as they deemed violations were not the problem at hand. After the continued disdain from the city council, there was a guest from the general public that came forward to provide evidence of the violations that he has to deal with daily. He showed photo evidence of his daily walk, and the photos showed a total of 35 scooter violations throughout his hour long walk. He then stated that there was not a strong enough effort to track scooter violations, because if he was able to see 35 during his walk, then there must be much more than 605 total violations over the span of several months. While watching this I was surprised to see the attitude from the council, as I was expecting a more levelheaded meeting to take place. They quickly got worked up over this, when I assumed that this report was solely to be informative while it was being presented to the council.

Smart City Technology Opportunities

In college towns all across the country, scooters have become exponentially popular in recent years. It has become a cheap and easy way for students to travel to different parts of campus or even around town. As discussed in the city council meeting that I attended, there is a worsening issue with users of these scooters not properly parking their scooters, creating a countless number of parking violations throughout Bloomington. Having properly parked scooters not only makes the ride-share system run smoother since the scooters are in the correct location, but it also prevents scooters from being parked on sidewalks or even on the street which will cause both car and pedestrian traffic.

A potential solution to this would be a smart parking management system. This would utilize both sensors and cameras in the scooter itself to be able to detect empty parking spaces for the scooters. The data that would then be collected from the sensors and cameras could be used to guide users to the nearest available parking spot. This would reduce the amount of time that is spent for a user to find a proper parking spot, and it would reduce the number of scooters that are parked illegally.

Another solution is to implement parking restrictions and to have fines coincide with these restrictions. These restrictions can be implemented to discourage users from parking their scooters in either crowded areas or on sidewalks, and then the users or the scooter company itself can be fined for committing parking violations, which would cause the users to more likely park in legal spaces. A city currently using a system like this is in Paris, France. In Paris, they require all scooters to be parked in designated parking spots, which are marked by painted symbols on the pavement. If scooters are in violation, the scooter companies have two hours to relocate these improperly parked scooters, or they will face a penalty. Whether it is the user or the company itself being fined, it will hold them accountable, which will lead to an increase of them ensuring that their scooters are parked in a proper location.