MERIDIAN, Idaho — Starting in August, people who live in Meridian will see those electric scooters on the streets again.
City leaders held a town hall meeting Wednesday to discuss the e-scooters and the comprehensive plan for Meridian. The town hall comes after Meridian pulled Lime e-scooters off the streets last fall when the city received complaints from residents.
“There were some lessons learned from the previous deployment,” said Caleb Hood, Meridian's planning division manager.
Now the city is getting ready to try again, but this time with Bird scooters.
“This time we actually have an informational page that will be going up on the city website later this week to educate and do some outreach with the public on the correct way to operate these scooters,” Hood said.
During the first week of August, Bird will deploy between 100 and 150 e-scooters in Meridian.
“We've crafted a new ordinance and rules of how to ride on the street, on the sidewalk and the different parameters," Hood said. "Before it was a sort of free-for-all, there weren't a lot of rules.”
With the city's permission, the company may choose to deploy up to 500 e-scooters over a period.
Meridian has an exclusive contract with Bird through 2019.
Meridian’s town hall also gave city leaders an opportunity to share the first draft of its comprehensive plan.
“The comprehensive plan is a visioning document that guides growth and development in our community over the next couple of decades,” Hood said.
That plan contains policies about how, when and where the city should develop different land uses. It also addresses issues like transportation and parks and recreation, along with emergency services.
“So, it really is a comprehensive plan of everything needed in our community to be a livable community, to have a good quality of life, to be a place where people want to live, work, raise a family and recreate,” Hood said.
Meridian residents will have until August 5 to share their thoughts on the plan.
“We've really put a lot of thought into how this can work in our community going forward,” Hood said.