More Birds Flocking to Town

By David W. Myers

Managing Editor

Love them or hate them, more Birds are arriving in Culver City.

By a unanimous 5-0 vote, the Culver Council has agreed to allow Bird, the motorized-scooter firm that lets one paying customer to pick-up an electronic scooter and then drop it somewhere else, to expand its local fleet from its current 50 or so to about 200.

The Council also took steps to authorize a second company. Lime-S, to add yet another 200 to the motor-scooter pool.

"This is our chance to really change the [transit] game," said Culver Mayor Thomas Small.

Mayor Small noted that Culver officials have worked hard to decrease traffic congestion in the City, but that those improvements just aren't keeping up with Culver's rapid economic growth and expanding employment base.

To be sure, the rental scooters are a huge convenience for many Culverites, They can use a credit card to automatically pick one up, and then leave it wherever they wish.

The next user can then pick the scooter up and drive it elsewhere.

The problem, some Culver business-owners and residents complain, is that the scooters can be left anywhere because there's no designated spot to leave them or to pick them up.

Some homeowners have complained that the scooters have simply been dumped in their yard, while some business-owners say that the abandoned scooters have been left on their storefront-forcing potential customers to step-over the disembodied bikes and blocking those in wheelchairs from entering.

Vice-Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells acknowledged those concerns and voiced most of the Council's agreement that temporary scooter parking spaces, perhaps outlined by chalk or paint, be created throughout the City's five-mile-square border.

The new scooter ordinance, approved by the City Council, already bans them from being parked or left in certain areas but some of its language is unclear.