The smash dockless scooter rental startup, Bird, is expanding beyond its Southern California nest with a new rollout in San Francisco, San Jose, Calif. and Washington, DC, the company said today.
And as his company makes its migration across the country, Bird chief executive Travis VanderZanden is determined not to make the same mistakes that bedeviled his former bosses at Uber.
As part of the rollout, Bird is offering to remit $1 daily for each of its scooters deployed in every city in which it’s operating. That’s all part of an outreach effort that Bird is framing as a commitment to “Save Our Sidewalks.”
The initiative, which Bird is encouraging other scooter-sharing services like LimeBike, Mobike, Ofo and Spin to join, includes a commitment to collect vehicles every night; reposition them to meet demand in the mornings; provide regular maintenance; and only add capacity when every vehicle in a fleet is used three times per day.
The dollar per day commitment is a nice attempt by Bird to get in front of tariffs or fees that may be imposed by local jurisdictions which could be far higher. For instance, cities would make far more money charging Bird a smaller fee per ride rather than per day.
Bird prices its rides at $1 to rent the scooter and 15 cents per minute traveled.
The company’s services are already available in Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Monica, Calif.
