Houston’s new ordinance prohibiting the nighttime rental and use of electric scooters, electric skateboards and similarly powered devices has already reduced late-night riding downtown, officials told the City Council’s Quality of Life Committee on Monday.
The ban on the use of micromobility devices between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. was adopted on Nov. 19 after Mayor John Whitmire described late-night scooter activity as one of Houston’s top security threats, citing chaotic riding, large crowds and frequent injuries downtown.
“We literally saw almost overnight a decrease in activity,” said Maria Irshad, deputy director of the city’s Administration & Regulatory Affairs Department. “We think the ordinance has made some good progress on efforts to clear the public right of way.”
City officials said they pursued the curfew in part because of rising safety and cost data: 536 EMS calls for scooter incidents downtown since January 2021, 78% of them between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., and a projected $1 million in combined EMS and HPD scooter-response costs this year.
Since the curfew took effect, Houston Fire Department medics have responded to five scooter-related calls citywide, all outside the curfew window and only one in downtown, Irshad said. During the same period last year, EMS responded to 11 such incidents, 10 of them downtown.
A Houston Police Department representative described downtown as a “ghost town” after 8 p.m.
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Some council members said the problems described by HPD — large groups of riders, sidewalk speeding, late-night injuries — were concentrated downtown and did not justify a curfew stretching across neighborhoods that have not seen similar issues.
Irshad said that limiting the policy to downtown would likely push scooter activity into surrounding areas, creating the same problem elsewhere. The city, she said, wanted to avoid “spillover” and give HPD a clearer enforcement framework.
District I Council Member Joaquin Martinez, who represents parts of downtown, defended the city’s approach, noting that other cities, including Austin, Dallas and Atlanta, also regulate or restrict nighttime scooter use. Austin limits operating hours for scooter rentals; Dallas uses a permit-based system that requires operators to share real-time GPS data, enforce geofencing and maintain defined parking zones; and Atlanta has an e-scooter curfew between 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.
“This is not anti-micromobility,” Martinez said, saying the goal is to stop dangerous late-night riding, not prevent residents from commuting. He added that the curfew is a first step and that the city intends to build a more sophisticated, long-term program that includes geofencing, speed governors, age verification and designated riding areas.
See here for the background. First, I’m old enough to remember when downtown at night being described as “a ghost town” was considered a bad thing, both in terms of Houston as a city where there are things to do at night and also in terms of crime, which was quite prevalent in those days. Second, what those other cities are doing sounds to me like they’re taking a more nuanced approach to the issue than we are. Combined with the promise that this more broad-based ordinance we passed was just a first cut and that the real solutions are being devised, I’m thinking maybe this could have waited a bit longer and given more of a chance to be fully cooked first.
And finally, one week’s worth of data should be viewed with some skepticism. I’m with Campos here: Get back to me in six months, then we’ll see how this is going.
Downtown scooter mayhem was among the #1 top security threats to the City of Houston according to DINO Whitmire ? I’d be interested to see a list of all the other top security threats. Any chance he or his Admin can provide a list of same ? What else was on it – dedicated bike lanes, rainbow crosswalks, and way too many trees lining Montrose streets ?