Oakland Residents Say Moped Rideshare Business Brings New Problems to the City

A new mode of clean transportation is getting the attention
of people who live in Oakland who are already dealing with parking problems.

A moped ride-share business has joined the bike-share and
scooter programs and it may be creating more problems than its fixing.  Not only that, the mopeds have racked up
almost $13,000 in parking fines.

Neighbors around Lake Merritt have taken note of the new mopeds
around the city and have seen a thousand of them on the streets since the
second week of January.

“What I’ve noticed is that they’re just strewn across the
sidewalk,” said Oakland resident Kriselle Caparas.

According to city parking data obtained by NBC Bay Area, revel
mopeds racked up 178 parking tickets in the first three weeks of service, 123
in street cleaning zones and another 32 in red zones.

Caparas said her neighborhood lost a lot of parking to
rideshare cars and scooters, and the mopeds make it even worse.

“I live in a very congested place.  Everyone just parks here for rideshare,
because it’s free meters at a certain point,” she said.

On its mobile app and website, Revel tells users to abide by
local parking rules. In a written statement, the company’s founder said, “Riders
can only park in legal spaces within the designated service area, including in
Residential Parking Permit (RPP) zones and at metered parking spaces. Riders
are responsible for any parking tickets incurred within 24 hours of ending
their ride.”

A spokesman for the city’s department of transportation said
there were parking issues with a car rideshare program that started about two
years ago, but those problems cleared up after people became more familiar with
using the vehicles. They’re hoping for similar improvements with the moped parking.

“At least with the bikes, there’s a place to park those,”
said Caparas. “There’s designated spaces, but the other scooters, those get
thrown everywhere too.”

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Source: NBC Bay Area