Half of Richmond’s scooter providers have left town this year. What does that mean for micromobility in the city?

Earlier this month Richmond’s first licensed micromobility provider terminated its service, abandoning dozens of scooters around town. Alongside Helbiz, which ended operations in January, Bolt has now landed on the lengthening list of companies that seem to be turning scooters into ghosts in Richmond. Companies come and go, but what does the loss of hundreds of scooters mean for the future of micromobility in Virginia’s capital?

Dead Bolt

Bolt may have been the first provider to receive a permit from City Hall; however, the company never took full advantage of it, according to Dironna Clarke—the director of Richmond’s Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility (OETM). Although both Helbiz and Bolt paid for permits to allow up to 500 scooters, the former never had more than 200 scooters around town, while the latter averaged just 120 deployed devices after upgrading its street models.

A few hundred scooters combined stands in stark contrast to the 500 each that Bird and Lime currently operate in the River City. “The micromobility market is really volatile,” said Clarke. “This isn’t about Richmond not having a big enough market for scooters; this is more on the companies not having the devices to deploy.”

As soon as the news broke about Bolt’s departure, Clarke says her office was already receiving inquiries from other companies about how they could secure their own scooter permits. The two most serious bids to enter Richmond so far have come from Spin and Veo—the latter recently began dropping scooters around Alexandria and Arlington as part of a bigger push into Virginia.

With 23,000 scooter rides logged in June alone, predictions of the demise of micromobility in the capital seem premature. Given all the permit proceeds from scooters subsidize the operations of the city-owned RVA Bikeshare, the mayor’s administration has a strong incentive to ensure as many scooters as possible remain on Richmond’s roads.

Reform your ride

Instead of seeing micromobility companies as competitors to RVA Bikeshare, Clarke’s office views scooters as a compliment to city efforts to boost the mobility of residents, especially those with lower incomes or who reside south of the James River. That’s why OETM offers huge discounts on scooter usage for those enrolled in public programs like SNAP, EBT, or Pell Grants.

If it passes, a new ordinance set to come before City Council next month should also shake up the scooter market in Richmond via two big changes.

Under the existing ordinance, all scooters must cease operations at 9 pm, an arbitrary cutoff time which strands countless would-be riders unnecessarily. Next month Clarke and her team will ask Council to extend the hours of operations to 1 am in exchange for companies paying a 25% higher permit fee to correspond with the increase in additional service hours.

Beyond the extra revenue, Clarke is hoping the change will deliver enhanced mobility for Richmond residents and visitors alike: “A lot of people are opening the scooter apps at 9:30 pm but can’t access a ride home because we currently force scooters to shut off at 9 pm,” she said. “We think extending the hours will improve last mile connectivity for folks who ride the bus too.”

The second big change would require scooter companies to maintain at least 20% of their fleet south of the James River—a whole side of the city that has been embarrassingly disconnected from downtown for decades. Ahead of the official August 30 announcement of the proposed ordinance, scooter companies are already falling into compliance with the rule.

OETM has already identified 40 priority nodes for scooters near bike lanes, grocery stores, parks, and near dense housing on Southside, encouraging companies to deploy 200 scooters in Manchester and beyond. Via the Richmond Connects transportation planning process, Clarke’s office hopes to compile a list of recommended bike lane expansions and sidewalk improvements on Southside which will undergird their efforts to bring more micromobility south of the river.

“While we know the scooter companies want to place them in Carytown, on Brown’s Island, and around downtown, we’ve been working to ensure that scooter companies deploy 20% of their fleet to Southside’s disadvantaged communities where mobility is a need,” said Clarke.

Even though Richmond has landed on the top of a list that claims that scooters are an inequitable nuisance, they have the chance to set the standard for how scooters and micromobility can be a force for good and not a vision of death.