The big picture
Austin has grappled with micromobility regulations for years since the devices first hit city streets in the late 2010s. After some scooter operators exited the Austin market in 2023, only two—Bird and Lime—remain; the city has capped their fleet sizes and introduced several new rules like lowered speed limits, and required staging areas to keep the vehicles from cluttering public spaces.
Since those changes went into effect last spring, the Transportation and Public Works Department has reported a drop-off in the number of micromobility trips taken in Austin and a reduction in the amount of service requests submitted for issues like improper parking. Continuing community engagement this spring will lead up to several more rule revisions by TPW Director Richard Mendoza this summer.
By the numbers
More than 2,100 e-scooters or e-bikes were taken off the streets between the periods of April 2023-March 2024 and April 2024-March 2025, a nearly one-third reduction. Downtown, where most scooter activity is concentrated, just over 1,806 vehicle were removed for a 44% decrease in that area.
Nearly 125,000 fewer scooter trips were taken in the year after the city’s regulatory update compared to the prior year. In downtown alone, more than 220,000 fewer trips—an 11% decrease—were tracked.
Scooter trips per vehicle per day citywide rose from 1.21 to 1.36, a more than 12% increase. Downtown trips per vehicle per day jumped even more, from 1.1 to 1.79—an increase of almost two-thirds. Council member Zo Qadri, who represents downtown, said he was "relieved" to see Austin's changes didn't cut down on scooter use during an April 17 briefing to City Council.
“I think one of the goals with this reduction that we did in April [2024] was hopefully we would see those numbers increase, and we did," Michael Kimbro, TPW's shared mobility services program manager, told council.
Customer service requests related to improper scooter parking also fell off, from over 12,000 logged in the year before the change to just under 4,000 over the past year. The higher numbers from 2023-24 were partially inflated thanks to more enforcement during that time, although the transportation department is pleased with the decline and expects that trend to continue, Kimbro said.
Zooming in
Leading into this spring's review, hundreds of Austinites participated in a survey about e-scooter use in town and their responses pointed to some scooter riders being unsure of where to park their devices after a ride. More than half said they weren’t aware of new “parking boxes”—marked spaces on the ground where devices can be left—and about three-fourths said they’d never used those spaces.
“Maybe we just don’t have a good density, we’re not promoting them well enough or maybe lack of visibility. But I think there’s work we could do there to get people to utilize them,” Kimbro said. “The vendors also have technology that we can utilize to help direct people to these, which I think we’ll be leveraging more this year than we have in the past.”
Kimbro also said physical parking corrals, or scooter parking areas separated with physical barriers, could be implemented more widely starting in late 2025 or 2026.
The transportation department is now looking to improve how Austin collects information about scooter crashes and collisions. Challenges with gathering that data from various sources has made it difficult to track those trends, Kimbro said, although the city's Vision Zero crash reduction program is now compiling police and medical services records to update reporting on that issue. TPW is also creating templates for scooter operators to log incidents in a standardized way.
What's next
New micromobility rules are expected to be finalized and released for public review in early May, and the city will accept feedback on the proposals through early June. Final consideration and adoption would follow in early July, according to TPW.
