Prominent Scooter Startups Locked Out of San Francisco
- Scoot and Skip are chosen over Uber, Lyft, Bird and Lime
- Pilot program will put 1,250 scooters on streets in October
People ride shared electric scooters in San Francisco on April 13.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergSan Francisco chose startups Scoot Networks and Skip from the pool of 12 companies hoping to participate in the city’s scooter-sharing pilot program, bypassing Bird Rides Inc. and Lime, the two better-known operators most responsible for the trend of the electric vehicles buzzing along nation’s streets and sidewalks. Those companies had more luck, though, in Santa Monica, California, which also announced the parameters of its own scooter program on Thursday.
In San Francisco, both Scoot and Skip will be authorized to put as many as 625 scooters on the road for six months starting Oct. 15, the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency said Thursday in a statement. The agency may let the companies put out as many as 2,500 scooters after the first six months of the one-year test, it said.