For the next three years, Spin and Veo will be the only electric scooter rental companies allowed on Tallahassee streets. The city is drafting arrangements with the vendors to move from a pilot to a full-fledged micro-mobility program. During the recently completed pilot program, each company could only offer 200 devices. Now that's been bumped up to 750.
"So, the next steps [are] we will send the contract to the vendors, we'll work through that process, and then the vendors will be able to launch their larger program," Julie Christesen says. She's Principal Planner for the Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department.
Christesen says the contracts could potentially extend an additional two years. No other scooter-sharing companies will be allowed to operate in the city until the contracts are over.
Veo Regional Manager Andrew Miles says the company usually has about 150 - 200 scooters in Tallahassee. Now he says the plan is to introduce more scooters gradually. He also says Veo may launch some of its sit-down scooters in the city.
"I'd probably say it'd be the beginning of the year before we have a set fleet of those on the ground," Miles says.
Earlier in the pilot program, scooter-sharing company Wheels had sit-down electric scooters that played music. Miles says Veo's sit-down scooters won't be able to blast tunes.
Spin South Regional General Manager Nabil Syed says the company currently operates a fleet of about 200 electric scooters in Tallahassee. He says Spin is determining how many more vehicles to add now that the cap is 750.
"We're currently going through an analysis process to understand what we believe is the best fleet size to bring to the market at the onset, and then what we do is quickly adapt," Syed says.
Spin will either add or take away scooters depending on the demand for them. Syed says, for now, the company plans to stick with standup electric scooters.
