Scooter Companies Try to Rally Riders Against Pending Ban

As the Metro Council prepares to take up a bill banning electric scooters on second reading tonight, scooter companies are urging their users to send form emails to council members expressing their opposition to the ban. 

Democracy in action. 

Mayor David Briley announced last month that he would be proposing a ban on the ubiquitous devices, with a possibility that "one or two" companies could return to Nashville under new regulations. Scooters have also become an issue in the at-large Metro Council race. Adam Dread, who made banning scooters his campaign's raison d'être and compared them to bath salts. 

Now the scooter companies are trying to rally their riders to ask council members to oppose the ban. Companies like Bird, Uber, Lyft and Lime already have multiple lobbyists registered to twist arms at the council. They're also asking users to flood council members' inboxes with pre-written messages opposing the ban. 

For example, Bird has emailed users telling them, "If you want to keep Bird in your neighborhood, please send a message to your Mayor and City Councilmembers today sharing your personal story of why you love Bird." They've kindly provided the personal story:

Please do not take shared e-scooters away from our community. I strongly support Bird and others being part of our community as I have come to rely on this affordable, environmentally friendly transportation option. 

Sometimes I don’t have access to a car, can’t afford to pay for a tank of gas or a rideshare car trip, and might not be in an area with any reliable public transportation. E-scooters have become one of the most affordable and available transportation options I trust to get me where I need to go — without contributing to traffic or worrying about finding a parking spot.  

I hope you will be a leader in supporting these important benefits that improve my life and those of our friends and neighbors here in Nashville.

Thank you for considering my voice.

Some users are adding their own voice to the messages, though. Councilmember Fabian Bedne,

, has shared some of the messages he's received on the topic. One of them is from a person who passed along Uber's form email, but added their own message seemingly arguing in favor of more strictly regulating scooters. 

%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://twitter.com/bedne/status/1145142509359837185" data-embed-element="aside">

The council will take up the scooter ban tonight for the second of three votes. 

The mayor says he will ask the Transportation Licensing Commission to issue a Request for Proposals within 90 days of the ban's passage, with the goal of considering "adding back one or two operators to provide a limited number of scooters if they are able to meet our requirements for safety and accessibility."