Let’s Take a Quick Look at Hoboken After 24 Hours of e-Scooters…

UPDATED: 2:24 p.m.

In case you’ve been under a rock, Hoboken rolled out its e-scooter pilot program yesterday. If you ARE in fact under a rock, you may be one of the many who seem terrified by this new means of conveyance, and are hiding under said rock until people figure out how to use these things…

According to Hoboken Police Chief Kenneth Ferrante, the Hoboken Police Department has fielded “close to 1,000” complaints, comments and questions (Chief has clarified, 2:46 p.m.) about the scooters in the last 24 hours. As twitter and other social media platforms are not constantly monitored, Ferrante has asked that those with genuine complaints about specific violations and concerns please email Traffic@HobokenPD.org.

UPDATE: Hoboken PD have now put out direct contact for the scooter companies to share any comments/concerns with those companies directly.

The HPD is working w/ escooter companies to address concerns. We ask that you also share your complaint(s) w/ the companies to assist them in tracking issues.
For Lime (stand up green escooter) support@li.me
For OJO (seated blue escooter) Jchandler@p3gm.com

— Hoboken Police (@HobokenPD) May 21, 2019

pic.twitter.com/wxQadvpG1K

— Hoboken Police (@HobokenPD) May 21, 2019

Councilman Michael DeFusco has commented that he’s disappointed with the way the City launched the program—a program for which he had been an early and steady advocate.

As an early advocate of bringing eScooters to #Hoboken, I was disappointed with the way the City rolled out the program yesterday. The mayor failed to follow the Council’s recommendation and properly educate riders, as a result there were hundreds of safety violations yesterday. pic.twitter.com/siie6Tl9wQ

— Councilman Mike DeFusco (@mike_defusco) May 21, 2019

Reports of collisions, near collisions and discarded scooters cluttering sidewalks were flowing across all social media platforms. Meanwhile others were enjoying the scooters:

Had an absolute blast riding @LimeBike around Hoboken today!!

Try one out without paying the unlock fee! https://t.co/e4txY1kI9t pic.twitter.com/K8MhvaHwVm

— Totally Hoboken (@TotallyHoboken) May 21, 2019

Rules for using the scooters (must be 18+, only one person per scooter, NO RIDING ON SIDEWALKS, and more…) have been posted on the City’s website. The City will also be hosting a number of Hoboken Safety Education Events held over the next few weeks, aimed at acclimating potential riders to the scooters.

hMAG has heard from Transportation Director Ryan Sharp, who sent along these statistics that recap the first day of the program.

“In summary, there were total of 2,500+ trips and 1,700+ unique riders, and this is only in 11 hours without an AM rush hour period. Ojo added approximately 175 trips yesterday. For some context, I believe that this is about double the ridership of JerseyBike’s all-time record ridership day,” said Sharp, who was headed to a meeting with the scooter service providers later this morning. “We’ll need to see what the data looks like as things normalize, but this is a pretty good indication that the e-scooters are extremely popular. I know there were a lot of complaints as well, which we will address in our meeting this morning, but it’s important to have context on the ridership going into that discussion.”

Tweet of the Day:

The mammals were curious about the strange object that appeared overnight. It did not appear to respond to normal greetings. Eventually they backed away, with a profound sense of doubt, of their own place in the hierarchy.#Hoboken #Scooters pic.twitter.com/L8Oi57Wy1e

— The Ale House (@thealehouse1034) May 20, 2019

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