Uber wants to expand its shared electric scooter program across the states, including Tampa as the city reopened its bid process for vendors.
"We are expanding across the country in both bikes and scooters," Kasra Moshkani, director and general manager at Uber, said during the Synapse Summit at Amalie Arena on Jan. 23.
He gave the example of how Uber recently purchased startup JUMP, which offers bike and scooter sharing services in over 15 cities throughout the country.
Uber also invested in Lime, an e-scooter company.
The city of Tampa has been interested in launching a shared e-scooter dockless pilot program, which has attracted a lot of attention. However, city leaders decided to reissue the request for applications to modify the indemnification language in the earlier application.
Uber has not yet submitted a new application, but JUMP did submit a prior application before the request was reissued.
These are the current vendors to date that have submitted an application since the request has been reissued:
- Bolt Mobility in Miami Beach
- Frank Underwood Law in Tampa
- Greenberg Traurig in Tampa
- Roll Labs Inc. in New York, NY
- RSA Consulting Group LLC in Brandon
- VeoRideMobility in Chicago
The city is still seeking applications to select up to three operators to provide motorized scooter sharing services in designated areas as part of a Shared Motorized Scooter Pilot Program.
There's a pre-bid conference on Jan. 29 at the Tampa City Council Chambers for interested parties. All applications are due by Feb. 11.
The program is expected to launch in April and last for 12 months.
Operators will be responsible for sharing revenue and operational data, communicating with the city, addressing public complaints, and resolving any operational issues that may arise, according to the RFP.
The city will evaluate the firms based on its experiences, project team, equipment, operational plan and safety. Each operator will deploy an initial fleet of up to a 600 motorized scooter vehicles that will initially be deployed near transit stations, commercial areas and denser residential areas.
The areas are:
- Downtown: 100 total motorized scooters
- West of downtown area: 100 total motorized scooters
- North of downtown area: 100 total motorized scooters
- East of downtown area: 100 total motorized scooters
- Expansion area: 200 total motorized scooters
Those areas will also have scooter parking corrals.
The city specifically states that the scooters will not be allowed on The Tampa Riverwalk, the Bayshore Boulevard sidewalk and 7th Avenue and on any private property.
At the end of the period, the city may select one vendor to serve the entire area.
