SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- After months of controversy, a shared service for e-scooters was finally legalized to offer convenience to riders in the U.S. city of San Francisco.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced Thursday it will issue permits to two small startups to rent their electric scooters, the first legal permission since a scooter-regulating law went into effect in June.
The SFMTA said it will grant in October the permits to the two scooter service operators, Scoot and Skip, to participate in a one-year, electric-powered scooter share pilot program.
"Scoot and Skip put forth the strongest applications" for the program, said SFMTA, which made its selection from 12 companies that bid for the coveted permits.
The agency said the two winners' applications demonstrated "not only a commitment to meet the terms of the permit, but a high level of capability to operate a safe, equitable and accountable scooter share service."
Other companies that competed for permits include several more financially powerful ride-hailing firms such as Uber, Lyft, Bird and Lime.
Dockless electric scooters have been in controversy in the past few months after three bike-sharing companies launched the service of the dockless, rentable e-scooters in San Francisco in March.
The three firms, Bird, Lime and Spin, said their service aimed to provide a solution to the "last-mile" transportation problem in the city that has been grappling with worsening traffic congestion and pollution.
But some city officials said they had received public complaints about thousands of permit-less e-scooters blocking storefronts, riding on sidewalks illegally and endangering the safety of pedestrians.
In April, San Francisco passed a law limiting the number of rentable, dockless scooters, which came into effect on June 4.
The new law bans scooter companies from running their services in the city without a permit, and limits the combined total of scooters in the city to 1,250 in the first six months.
If that number works, SFMTA might allow Scoot and Skip to increase the number of scooters to 2,500 in the future.
San Francisco-based Skip, founded in 2017, operated pilot programs of rentable e-scooters in Portland and Washington, D.C., while Scoot, also based in San Francisco, has been operating full-sized scooters in the city for years.
