Vendors say no e - Gansu CCATV Co.,Ltd

Since shared e-scooters launched in Regina at the end of June, rumours have swirled about some plunked into Wascana Lake.

Despite at least one photo showing orange units sitting in shallow water nestled next to rocks, Neuron’s head of corporate affairs, Isaac Ransom, said reports of submerged scooters are still unconfirmed.

“It’s not to say it wasn’t in there, it’s not to say that one of our employees didn’t go to retrieve the scooter and it worked fine afterward, but I don’t have any information other than the e-scooter is no longer in the water, if it was ever in the water,” Ransom said.

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Employees checked out the location after receiving reports and found no e-scooters in the water, Ransom said.

Fishing out dunked e-scooters for repair is something Neuron has dealt with in other cities, but Ransom said it is rare.

As for claims about scooters being abandoned in Regina, Ransom said this was an optics issue that takes some adjusting.

“I think for a lot of people, when scooters arrive in the city, they believe they are abandoned,” Ransom said of units sitting near a sidewalk or at the end of a driveway.

“While these e-scooters may appear to be abandoned, they are in fact parked properly and just waiting for the next person to come along and start their trip.”

Riders must park their e-scooters in designated parking areas in the downtown core, Wascana Centre, and the Warehouse District, but the rest of the city falls under a “free floating model,” meaning e-scooters can be parked outside of parking areas.

Neuron’s competitor, Bird Canada has not been experiencing any misuse, according to Austin Spademan, senior account manager. He credits this to the local team that cleans up the scooters and move them throughout the day.

“People are generally following the rules that we’ve set out,” he said.

“It’s almost scary to say it’s been really good and we’re seeing the appropriate behaviour from our riders.”

The e-scooters have now been zipping around Regina for over a month, and both vendors remain pleased with the launch so far.

“We’re seeing a really good trend so far in terms of ridership and people using them in various parts of the city, particularly in the Warehouse District, downtown and Wascana Park,” Ransom said.

Spademan said Bird continues to see “really high ridership every single day,” with the scooter fleet covering more than 1,000 kilometres several days a week.

He said many riders are using e-scooters for regular commutes.

“Clearly people are not just taking this for a joyride, because they’re picking it up and dropping it off in a completely different area of the city,” he said.

“What they could be doing — of course we’ll need to do another layer of analysis at the end of the pilot — is taking a trip that could have been a car trip, and that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.”

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