Ada County Highway District Impounds New E-Scooters

Depending on who you ask, the arrival of Lime's new e-scooters in Meridian is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or something that's as aggravating as locusts.

In case you've been living under a rock, California based Lime introduced 200 new e-scooters in the City of Meridian last Thursday without much fanfare.  Needless to say, people were pretty confused about what they were, where they came from and how to safely use them.

Our listeners expressed a lot of concerns about the new scooters on Facebook over the weekend. The biggest concerns you left in our comments included users being well under the required age of 18, users not wearing helmets, people them riding them out of the service area into Boise and their appearance on street corners looking trashy.  We understand that last one, but the bigger concern about the scooters being left on street corners is actually one rooted in safety.  According to the Idaho Press, the Ada County Highway District impounded 13 of the scooters that were found to be obstructing walkways or ADA ramps.

The idea behind the scooters is fun and potentially useful, but the launch could've gone a heck of a lot smoother and that's why Lime originally scaled back the number of scooters in service from 200 to 100. According to KTVB, the City of Meridian has asked Lime to remove them from the streets completely until everyone can get their heads together and roll the scooters out in a way that educates the public about how to properly and safely use them without endangering themselves or pedestrians.

Our studios are in Boise, so we haven't been able to make it out to Meridian to see whether or not that happened with our own eyes, but the Lime app is still showing more than two dozen scooters available for pick-up.  Most of those are lined up along Locust Grove.

Meridian City Council does have a meeting planned at City Hall where they'll discuss bike/scooter share programs like Lime but they will NOT be taking public testimony from community members who choose to attend. If you're curious to at least be a fly on the wall after what's been a pretty wild few days of e-scooters in the Treasure Valley, the meeting starts at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, October 2.

Until then a couple things to remember:

• The scooters are only supposed to be left on city-owned properties like City Hall and parks.
• Electric scooters in use are NOT permitted on sidewalks.  If you're riding one, do so on the street.