Date: October 5, 2018
Time: 9:00am – 10:00am
Group Members Present: Annie, Jake, Evan
Location: TTM Office
Beth is the director of traffic and transportation management, and she oversees transit related operations. General services of TTM include the campus area bus service, on demand para-transit service, charter bus service, vehicle rentals, university fleet services, traffic management for events and construction impact, crosswalk analysis, and university management of the parking lease.
John Shrader also joined the interview for the last 15 minutes. John is a field logistics coordinator/technical repair specialist for TTM.
Interview Notes:
- Ohio State has a service agreement with Lime. OSU wanted some control over how many scooters were being placed around campus. Ohio State is in the process of signing a service agreement with Bird
- Beth had never rode a bird or lime. She was concerned with the safety of the scooters in general, and the prior incidents that have happened around campus.
- The scooters are averaging 18 rides per scooter per day. In other words: PROFIT.
- She believes there should be a preferred parking area for lime and bird scooters on campus. This could be an incentive based system, where if you dock in this area you get riding credits.
- For game days they have been doing mandatory parking areas for lime and bird scooters. They have to be parked on the tennis courts outside of the stadium.
- Bad scooter behavior/safety is being reported to them. The buses around campus are equipped with 10 cameras, so they can obtain video of an incident/ bad driving.
- They have looked into hiring a traffic engineering firm to see what it would take to have protected bike lanes on campus.
- She believes this is a great option for the first mile/last mile problem. TTM is finding a lot of scooters parked at bus stops.
- These scooters have a weak point in the deck. The deck can easily snap if you jump off a curb.
- John has dashboard data for the lime scooters. He is willing to send some of the data over to our team for analysis on lime rides.
- Their biggest problem: the scooters are easy to ride, and the operators are not thinking in a safe manner while riding them. People do not have the correct mindset while riding these scooters. This is not the scooter’s fault.
- Bird can make a scooter go less fast by using GPS mapping. If they do not want you riding in an area, they can make the scooters go slower.
Main Takeaways: These scooters are a great solution to the first mile/last mile problem. There is an area of improvement in regards to parking these scooters. This could possibly be done using an incentive based system. There is also a mechanical problem with the deck of the scooters. But, the main concern is the safety of the pedestrians. How can we further explore this area of safety?