Dockless electric scooter regs come up before the Urban Transportation Commission this afternoon.
The Austin Transportation Department will wrap up its tour of board and commissions with proposed modifications to the bicycle ordinance to include micro-mobility devices. The Department’s Jason Redfern says one of the many things this proposed ordinance would do, “We’re creating the ability for the city’s traffic engineer to create micro-mobility dismount zones or slowdown zones.”
Redfern says the micro-mobility devices are being incorporated into the existing bicycle ordinances depending on where they are. “The engineer will determine if we should have scooters or micro-mobility devices mixed in with pedestrians or should we designate it as a pedestrian-only zone.
The final regs would be presented to City Council at its meeting a week from Thursday. Council will take up safe operation, fees, franchise creation standards and how to regulate in right of ways. Redfern says “We’re excited to get this out in front of City Council so that we can hold users responsible; and we think that that’s one of the missing components to this ordinance and to this program.”
