Tag: scooters

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In brief: VSP whites out, Queen of Virginia sues, Hoos win World Cup, and more…

A reporter suing Virginia State Police for a copy of its August 12 operations plan got 132 blank pages. staff photo

State police redact—heavily

Natalie Jacobsen, a reporter who has written for C-VILLE, has been trying to get the Virginia State Police to release its August 12, 2017, operations plan for almost two years under the Freedom of Information Act. She seemed close May 22, when a Charlottesville judge ordered the state police to produce the plan. However, what Jacobsen received is a document with 132 blank pages, and she’s going back to court.

According to the motion her attorneys with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed July 9, the entire report was redacted except for portions previously published in the Governor’s Task Force and the Heaphy reports.

State police “were required to release all portions” of the operations plan, including non-public parts that are not subject to the tactical plans exclusion in FOIA, says the court filing. Jacobsen also objects to the state agency citing other FOIA exemptions for first time, and says with the
blank pages, she’d have to guess at which exemptions police are applying to particular information.

She wants the court to order state police to immediately release portions of the 177-page plan that were improperly redacted. A hearing date has not been set.

Quote of the week

“We want Charlottesville to be known as a community that has learned important lessons from our long and complex racial history, from the Summer of Hate, that we are resilient, and that we have set a course for a better future for all of our residents.” —City Manager Tarron Richardson on ditching TJ’s birthday

In brief

Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania got sued by a game maker who took issue with Platania’s assessment of Queen of Virginia’s legality. staff photo

Prosecutor sued

The company that makes the Queen of Virginia game filed a lawsuit against Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who banned the machines in the city in June and said enforcement would begin August 5 for those who had not removed the games, according to the Daily Progress. According to a post on SafeBettingSites.com, the manufacturer contends the machines are “skill games,” while Platania says they violate Virginia’s law against illegal gambling. 

World Cup Hoos

Three former UVA soccer players—Becky Sauerbrunn, Morgan Brian, and Emily Sonnett—were on the winning U.S. national women’s soccer team in Lyon July 7, and UVA women’s soccer head coach Steve Swanson served as an assistant coach.

Sanctuary fine

ICE is threatening to impose a $214,000 fine on Guatemalan refugee Maria Chavalan Sut, who has lived in Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church since October while she fights deportation, the DP reports. The Reverend Isaac Collins says “The purpose of it is to intimidate Maria and to put pressure on her.”

Can’t shut up

Crying Nazi Chris Cantwell allegedly threatened one of the lawyers suing him for damages stemming from August 2017. Attorney Roberta Kaplan asked a federal judge to order Cantwell to stop making “unlawful threats” on social media, such as this on Telegram: “When this stupid [anti-Semitic slur] whore loses this fraudulent lawsuit, we’re going to have a lot of fucking fun with her.”

State Senator Bryce Reeves points out that one of his Senate colleagues is “openly gay” at an NRA gathering. file photo

Sexual orientation noted

At an NRA conference in Fredericksburg in June, state Senator Bryce Reeves, who represents eastern Albemarle, said the agenda of the only “openly gay senator,” Adam Ebbin, is “infanticide” and gun bills, and that Dems want a “$20, $25” minimum wage, the Washington Post reports. Ebbin disputes Reeves’ characterization of his legislative goals, and says he’s “offended,” “hurt,” and “shocked” Reeves would invoke his sexual orientation.

Warmbiers want ship

The parents of UVA student Otto Warmbier have filed a claim for a North Korean cargo ship as payment on the $500 million judgment they received in the death of their son following his imprisonment in North Korea. 

Mall shooting

A shot was fired into the Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar around 11:30pm July 5. Police found a bullet hole in the window, but no one was injured. Tayveyon Laric Brown, 18, was arrected and charged with attempted malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied dwelling, discharging a firearm in the city, discharging a firearm in a street or place of public business and reckless handling of a firearm.  

Caretaker crime

Danielle Messineo, of Madison, was sentenced July 3 to 10-and-a-half years active incarceration for forging checks and stealing money from a quadraplegic relative. She was convicted of three counts of grand larceny and three counts of forgery. Her sentence exceeded the two-and-a-half years sentencing guidelines because of the victim’s vulnerability and her position of trust as a caretaker, said the judge.

Scoot on!

Electric scooters will remain another six months, but hint to riders: Stop riding them on the sidewalk and blocking pedestrian traffic.

Lime and Bird electric scooters have made over 115,000 rides and sent 32 people to the emergency room in the six months since they came to town in December. Those were a few of the details City Council learned at its June 17 meeting, where council members voted to extend the pilot scooter program—before Bird took a summer hiatus.

Charlottesville residents will now have until at least December 2019 to rent ’em and ride ’em. For a starting fare of $1 and 15 cents a minute, riders can zip around in bike lanes and streets anywhere in the city—except the Downtown Mall, a designated no-go zone. City Council also voted to expand the scooter fleet from 200 to 300.

City staff identified several concerns with the program: users riding on sidewalks, leaving scooters willy-nilly around town, and not wearing helmets. Both Lime and Bird require participants to sign a virtual agreement to wear one but, with no concrete way to enforce this rule, residents are opting to go helmet-less.

But at 700 rides a day and growing, safety concerns don’t seem to deter potential riders.

In the meantime, the committee will continue to collect data on the pilot program, and City Council will reconvene in December to decide the permanent fate of the scooter sensation.

Correction July 16: The original scooter story should have indicated the nearly 700,000 gallons Lime says it’s saved are since the company was founded, not here in Charlottesville.

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Living News

Tripped up: Mixed reviews for Charlottesville’s scooter experiment

Electric scooters: handy transit alternative or public nuisance? Photo: Eze Amos

They appeared overnight the first Monday in December of 2018, long-necked robots on wheels, lurking in neat rows of three or four on street corners all over town.

Within a few days, the motorized scooters, which don’t have designated docking stations, were everywhere, and wherever.

Now, about five months in to the City of Charlottesville’s electric scooter pilot program with two different companies (Lime and Bird), opinions about the zippy modes of transportation are mixed.

For some, the scooters provide a little perplexing levity. Poet Raven Mack says that they’re always popping up at the bottom of a hill near his Hogwaller home. “[There’s] a steady supply of two to 12 that ebbs and flows, some of which have laid knocked over in the bushes for weeks at a time,” he says. “My children and I joke that they just live there, and breed, and the [kid scooters] run off to have their own lives somewhere else in town.”

The Instagram account @wheresmyscooter is devoted to locally-shot pictures of scooters “where they don’t belong”: discarded on train tracks, broken into pieces on dimly lit sidewalks, stuffed in trash cans.

But others have found the Birds and Limes a handy new means of transport. Ross Schiller, a teacher who also works at a restaurant on the Downtown Mall, recently forgot his glasses in his car before working a restaurant shift. He used a scooter to get to his car—which he has to park pretty far from the mall—and back to the restaurant in just a few minutes, without breaking a sweat or missing a moment of his serving shift.

Once you download the Lime or Bird app, you can use it to locate a nearby scooter. Scan the QR code to “unlock” it for $1, and ride for 15 cents a minute. When you’ve arrived at your destination, use the app to “lock” the scooter and leave it for the next rider.

At night, the scooters are collected and recharged, then put back out in the morning.

A few miles scooter ride costs a few dollars, so it’s cheaper than taking a Lyft or an Uber, and it’s faster than walking. There’s little to no wait time, not to mention more flexibility, so scooting can be more convenient than taking a bus.

While it’s unclear how many people are using the scooters (Lime says it won’t have numbers until the scooters have been in town for a year, and Bird didn’t respond to a request for info), it seems that almost everyone has an opinion.

“I find them a great alternative to public transportation, especially when you don’t want to or can’t drive,” says Ike Anderson, membership coordinator and dance instructor at the Music Resource Center, who says he rides Lime scooters often.

But the account administrator of @wheresmyscooter, who asked to remain anonymous, is opposed to the scooters for a number of reasons, namely that “they allow those with more disposable income to have access to yet another transit service that is inherently exclusionary.”

“We should all be supporting more robust publicly funded transit that serves working-class people and for those without access to transit of their own,” the administrator says. And indeed, scooter usage begins with a smart phone which, let’s face it, is still a luxury item.

Alan Goffinski, director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, says he understands folks’ concerns about the scooters but welcomes any alternative to a car. “To those who are concerned with them littering the landscape, I say, ‘What about cars’? We devote half the land in any given city to parking space,” he says.

Others are alarmed by personal safety issues, such as people riding scooters on the sidewalks and the Downtown Mall (which isn’t actually allowed), texting while scooting, scooting without a helmet, or scooting while drunk. And increasingly, people are voicing concern over scooters obstructing sidewalks for those who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids to get around.

Docking stations or designated scooter parking areas might help, and a city-wide survey, which collected a couple thousand responses and closed May 1, may suggest more solutions. The pilot program ends July 31, so city councilors must decide before then whether the scooters stay or get the boot. But for now, the jury’s still out.

Scooter tutor

The city has a web page dedicated to scooter regulations and safety suggestions, but we’re left wondering if riders are actually aware of the rules. Here are the basics:

  • Scooters must be ridden on streets, not on sidewalks or trails (or the Downtown Mall), and riders have to abide by the same laws as motor vehicle drivers in terms of posted traffic regulations, signs, and signals.
  • When parking your scooter, do not block travel lanes, driveways, fire hydrants, walkways, sidewalk curb ramps, pedestrian call buttons, bus stops, or entrances to buildings (including ramp and walkway railings and ADA door push buttons).
  • For crying out loud, don’t text and scoot, or drink and scoot. And wear a helmet—that’s a must if you’re under 14, and a should for everyone else.

Categories
News

In brief: Farmington fracas, scooter-ville, white supremacists’ lawsuit and more

Fox News' Tucker Carlson wanted to beat a man whom he alleges called his 19-year-old daughter a "whore" at Farmington Country Club. Gage Skidmore

Farmington feud

Farmington Country Club revoked Juan Manuel Granados’ membership following his spat with Tucker Carlson, who has admitted that his son threw wine in Granados’ face. Granados, represented by celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, is now threatening legal action. It won’t be the first time: Granados reportedly successfully sued the Roanoke Athletic Club for revoking a family membership from him, his partner, and his daughter because it didn’t recognize gay couples with children as a family.

Quote of the week

“It took enormous self-control not to beat this man with a chair, which is what I wanted to do.”—Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a statement on an encounter with a man who allegedly called his daughter a “whore” at Farmington Country Club in October

Knock ’em all down

The two statues that grace West Main Street are of westward-looking explorers, men of the frontier. The Meriwether Lewis and William Clark sculpture at the Ridge-McIntire intersection features Albemarle-native Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who served as guide during the 1803-1806 expedition up the Missouri River to the Pacific. Another piece from the hands of Charles Keck, it was dedicated in 1921 and has been the source of controversy due to its depiction of Sacajawea crouching behind the men. A plaque commemorating her contributions was added to the monument in 2009. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto
Rammelkamp Foto

In case you haven’t had enough statue drama, Mayor Nikuyah Walker is now advocating for the removal of the Lewis and Clark monument on West Main Street. It shows the two explorers standing pompously over a cowering Sacagawea, though they actually have the Shoshone woman to thank for showing them the way. A plaque commemorating Sacagawea’s role was added about a decade ago after a previous effort to have the statue removed.

Haters want protection, too

Jason Kessler and white supremacist groups Identity Evropa, National Socialist Movement, and Traditionalist Worker Party are suing the city, former city police chief Al Thomas, and Virginia State Police Sergeant Becky Crannis-Curl for allegedly violating their First and Fourteenth amendment rights by failing to protect them during the first Unite the Right rally.

Human remains found on parkway

The John Warner Parkway trail was closed November 8 after human remains were found. The identity of the body, which is with the medical examiner’s office, is unknown.

Ready or not, here they come

Getty Images

City Council unanimously approved a “dockless mobility” pilot program last week, meaning people on electric scooters will soon be zooming around town. But similar programs haven’t worked out well for surrounding cities.

“Electronic scooters introduce a mode of transportation that address what many refer to as the ‘first mile’ and ‘last mile’ problem,” says Vice-Mayor Heather Hill, for short trips that don’t merit driving, but are beyond a short walk.

Scooter drivers will download an app onto their smartphones and unlock the two-wheeler by scanning its code with their phones. Most companies charge a $1 unlocking fee, and an additional 20 cents per minute, according to the proposal.

The city hasn’t announced which brand it’s contracting with yet, but popular scooter company Bird has already set up shop in Richmond and Harrisonburg.

In the former, the city’s Department of Public Works almost immediately impounded as many scooters as it could because they encroached on the public right of way, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. And in the latter, a student has started a petition to get them banned.

“As the ride-sharing company dumped hundreds of scooters in various locations across our city, they left us to decide where we leave them,” writes petitioner Nathan Childs. “The decent thing to think is, ‘Oh, a bike rack will do just fine,’ or ‘I definitely shouldn’t leave this in the middle of the sidewalk.’ However, these scooters have brought out the worst in us.”

Scooters are required to follow certain parking restrictions, but “they can be knocked over, moved, or just incorrectly parked,” according to the proposal presented to City Council.

Adds Childs, “I have stumbled over several littered Birds, dodged countless oblivious riders, and moved too many scooters out of the way. If anything, we don’t deserve Bird scooters because of how we treat property that anyone can use but for which no one is responsible.”

Says Hill about the new fleet of approximately 200 scooters coming to town this month, “What remains to be seen is if there is a strong enough need in a city of Charlottesville’s size, and the impact dockless scooters and bikes have on the quality of life along our city streets.”

By the numbers

Room for improvement

Nationwide, voter turnout in the 2018 election was the highest in a midterm election in half a century, according to the Associated Press. In Charlottesville and Albemarle, participation shot up by more than 20 points compared to the 2014 midterms. But that still lags behind turnout in a presidential election. In the end, more than 30 percent of voters didn’t cast a ballot for who is going to represent them in Congress.

Charlottesville turnout

  • 2018 midterms 67%
  • 2016 presidential election 78%
  • 2014 midterms 41%

Albemarle

  • 2018 midterms 68%
  • 2016 presidential election 74%
  • 2014 midterms 46%