Beep beep. The robins are singing, we’ve (hopefully) seen our last snowflake, and the electric scooters have emerged from their winter hibernation. We’re reviewing some safety tips + regulations for scooting around LOU this season.
Like many cities across the country, Louisville saw the arrival of dockless electric scooters in 2018. The rapid rollout saw metro governments nationwide scrambling to pass rules and regulations for the new technology.
Here are a few of Derby City’s rules and recommendations:
- Stick to the road and stay in the bike lane where available. Scooters aren’t permitted on sidewalks.
- Yield to pedestrians and give the right of way to bicycles in the bike lane.
- Wear a helmet.
Electric scooter companies operating in Louisville, like Bird and Lime, have a few rules too. They’re restricted to nine contiguous zones, roughly inside the boundaries of I-264 but with extensions to the south and the west.
There are also three restricted zones where scooters are prohibited: The University of Louisville, Waterfront Park, and The Kentucky School for the Blind on Frankfort Avenue.
Any company with 150 vehicles or less is free to operate anywhere inside the designated zones. Companies with larger fleetsare required to deploy a percentage of their scooters in zones 1, 8, and 9 to ensure no neighborhoods are over or under-served.
These companies also report their usage data to the Metro Public Works Department quarterly. Here’s a snap shot of LOU’s scooter scene in 2023:
- 425,966: The number of miles Louisvillians traveled by dockless scooter.
- Saturday, April 22: The busiest scooter day , with around 3,600 trips. (That was Thunder Over Louisville).
- 1,000: The average number of scooters found on Louisville’s streets on any given day.
Most find-and-ride scooters cost $1 to start and about $0.50 per minute afterwards. The scooters travel at about 5 miles per hour, so the average cost for a mile long trip is around 6 bucks.