Redwood City Launches E-Scooter Program

REDWOOD CITY, CA — Redwood City is getting into the micromobility business.

The Peninsula city last week announced the launch of an e-scooter partnership with Bird, a Santa Monica-based micromobility company.

Redwood City will offer free rides to healthcare workers and emergency personnel, discounted pricing to low-income residents, Pell grant recipients and some nonprofit and community groups, city officials said.

Redwood City has secured around 250 e-scooters for the program, according to Climate Online, which was first to report the partnership.

“We welcome Bird to Redwood City and look forward to offering community members a new, eco-friendly and fun way to get around,” City Manager Melissa Stevenson Diaz said in a statement.

“Whether shopping and dining Downtown or just taking a ride to the Library or a park, residents and visitors will now have a new way to get there.”

E-scooters bring the promise of greater transportation equity and convenience, especially to those navigating congested urban areas.

Data suggests e-scooter riding also brings safety risks.

There were nearly 40,000 e-scooter-related injuries between 2014 and 2018, of which nearly a third involved head injuries, more than double the rate associated with bicycle injuries, according to a 2020 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study.

Poor road conditions in urban areas make the use of e-scooters more dangerous, according to Johnathon Ehsani, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’ Health Policy and Management school.

“I’ve ridden a scooter and it is absolutely terrifying,” Ehsani said in a news release.

“They’re located all around the city [Washington, D.C.] where I live and yet there’s very little in the way of roadway accommodations for them. [Our] roadway systems need to be designed in such a way that accommodates the needs of every single user in a way that tolerates some margin of error.”