Would Downey residents use scooters? One councilman wants to find out.

DOWNEY — After implementing a bike rental program earlier this year, the city may be considering bringing in scooters as well.

Councilman Alex Saab brought up the idea of a scooter share program during his personal comments at Tuesday’s meeting, asking city staff to look into the possibility of a trial run such a program and bring it back to council.

Saab says that he had ridden rentable scooters recently in Downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach, and was curious as to how a similar program would work in Downey.

Councilman Alex Saab uses a scooter in Washington, D.C. Photo by Mario Guerra

Specifically, Saab suggested a 60 to 90-day pilot program in the downtown area.

“I just think that we’ve tried to be a little more on the cutting edge…,” said Saab after the meeting. “There’s opportunities for [the scooter company] to control the speed, even the location where they go.”

“If the residents respond to it, then maybe we can grant a permit, and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work.”

Councilman Sean Ashton raised a concern during his comments, however, saying that it seemed to him that many of the bikes from the Zagster program implemented in January had disappeared, and that the rental rack in downtown is often seen empty.

After the meeting, Ashton said that it was a possibility that only the downtown station was empty, but he added that the bikes didn’t seem “well used” in his personal opinion.

“Part of the problem is the way it’s set up,” said Ashton. “When you look at the scooter programs that are in other cities, the reason why they’re successful is because they don’t have to be docked somewhere; you can just get on and then get off and leave it there. That works for the people, but not necessarily for the cities because now you’ve got scooters all over the place, and that was a concern that we had when we were looking at this program.”

“Here we have a bike that’s in the downtown area, at the space center, and I think over at the Greenline station; you have to take them to one of those places and that’s restrictive if you’re not going to the space center, downtown, or the Greenline.”

Saab likewise said that the bike program may not have been as successful as they had originally hoped. While the city is “not giving up on the bikes,” he suggesting that bikes are often times outshined once scooters are introduced.

“I’ve been doing the research, and it seems like in many communities when scooters come in, people tend to use those and replace the bikes,” said Saab. “[The bike program] hasn’t been as successful as we wanted. The scooter obviously is a little less intensive on people, so I think people may embrace it more. I may be wrong, but I think it’s worth it.”