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SAN JOSE — San Jose State students who are running late to class can no longer rely on electric scooters to zip across campus.
The San Jose State University Police Department announced Monday a new policy banning the use of electric and motorized scooters, effective immediately. Electric and motorized skateboards and bicycles are also banned.
“Self propelled” scooters and skateboards are allowed. People can still ride bicycles on campus but must adhere to the 5 mph speed limit.
“The reasons for the new regulations are vast but as you can imagine, we have (had) collisions, trips and falls, and blocking of fire exits,” San Jose State university police said in a statement posted online. “This is a small list of reasons why SJSU has set these new regulations.”
On Monday, the university confiscated 81 motorized scooters, said university Vice President of Administration and Finance Charlie Faas, adding that Lime and Bird will have to pay to get them back.
The policy was inspired in part by the 100 or so calls university police have received about the scooters over the past six to nine months, Faas said.
“This needs to be as much as possible a walking campus,” he said. “We have 90 acres. We have 40,000 people inhabiting those 90 acres. That’s the smallest footprint in the California State University system and the highest ratio of people to acres.”
Faas said the policy is also a response to riders leaving the scooters on walkways and in front of doors.
“It’s hard to get around and get into buildings that people need to get into and have a right to get into,” he said.
In a statement, Lime spokesman Joe Arellano said the company has “messaging embedded in our app that alerts riders. We have also created ‘geofenced’ areas in our system that create no parking and no service zones on campus, and preferred parking zones where riders should park on campus.
“Lime is also planning a pop-up event alongside the campus police department next week to hand out helmets and make students aware of the new scooter dismount policy and the preferred parking areas on campus.”
Bird, another electric scooter company, “has been working closely with university officials and proactively communicating to our riders about this new policy. We have implemented no-ride and no-parking zones on campus, and have provided information about the ban to all Bird riders on and near campus,” the company said in an email.
University police said students who are caught using the motorized modes of transportation will be given warnings to start, followed by citations.
“We know that this is will be a steep learning curve so we will be gradually ramping up our enforcement,” university police said in a statement posted to Twitter. “There will be signage around that should be pretty easy to understand.”
Monday morning there were a handful of the Lime (black with green trim) and Bird (black with white trim) scooters parked across the San Jose State campus, and dozens more resting on surrounding streets. At least three students were seen riding the motorized scooters through the heart of campus.
Senior Chioma Lewis, 21, a journalism major at SJSU, was one of several students spotted on campus Monday with a kick scooter. Lewis said while she primarily relies on a kick scooter to get around on campus, she has used motorized ones as well.
The kick scooter “gets me where I need to go and I don’t have to pay for it,” Lewis said. “But the motorized ones really get you from point A to point B in under a minute. And it’s very cheap.”
“And it’s also fun. I think that’s a big thing for students. It’s fun to ride it.”
Lewis said she wasn’t surprised by the university’s decision to ban motorized scooters. She said scooters have been parked in the middle of walkways, stacked on top of one another and found sitting in garbage cans.
“And when people are walking, you have other people zooming in and out” on the motorized scooters, Lewis added.
William Boggini, a junior speech pathology major, was riding a white Razor kick scooter Monday and was aware of the campus ban on motorized scooters. Boggini said he opposes the ban, saying motorized scooters are easy to ride and a convenient way to get to class.
“I think that [the scooters] makes it a lot more convenient to get to class, especially if you’re in a rush to get somewhere,” Boggini said. “They’re pretty quick and easy to ride. But now with the new ban, you’re not allowed to technically have them on campus
“I think it’s really kind of inconvenient because, especially for people living off campus, if they ride a scooter, once they get onto campus, they basically have to park it and walk the rest of the way.”
Faas hasn’t ridden a motorized scooter, saying he prefers to walk where he needs to go. But he is fan of the technology.
“I love the thought process,” he said. “What we’re looking to do is get people to use them as they were meant to be used, use them responsibly.”
The university police department said Lime, one of the companies that operates motorized scooters in San Jose, “has already implemented a warning that will sound on your mobile device to alert you that you are in violation if you are on SJSU.”
The university said it is working with Bird, another operator of motorized scooters, to implement a similar warning system.
Last year, the pay-as-you-go motorized scooters began appearing in and around downtown San Jose almost overnight.
In December, the San Jose City Council passed an ordinance aimed at regulating the motorized scooters operating on city streets. Companies that operate motorized scooters in San Jose now must get a permit, pay an annual permit application fee of $2,500 and submit another $124 per device each year to operate.
Faas noted that the university went through something similar with bicycles years ago.
“They figured out the bike thing,” he said. “Now they’ll figure out the scooter thing.”