E-scooters taking off in the South Okanagan

E-scooters coming to town

Photo: Sparrow Scooters photo

The green and black Sparrow Scooters seen around Oliver and Penticton are now coming to Osoyoos, set to officially open later this week.

The e-scooter company is entirely app based, and allows you to go to any “nest” around town, rent a scooter, and return it to any other nest in town. A location based model that is entirely app based is a mixture of other town’s models offering the e-scooter service, says Josh Boileau, Regional General Manager of Sparrow Scooters.

Once someone rents a scooter from a nest, you can pause your ride anywhere, so if you want to go in and grab a bite to eat or do something else, you can pause your ride outside of any store, no one can take that scooter, then when you are finished you can resume your ride and keep going until you are back into a nest.

Other cities have their own shared e-scooter services, but oftentimes they fall into two types of models.

One model uses an app and lets you drop the scooters anywhere around town, this model exists in Kelowna and Vernon. “A lot of cities don’t like that because they just get littered around the road, thrown into sidewalks, some people put them outside of their house, and some people feel awkward picking up a scooter like that because they feel like it’s someone’s personal scooter.

“The other model is like a lot of the bike rental stores where you go into the location, talk to somebody, rent it, and then take it back to that same location at the end of your rental,” Boileau continued.

“We are kind of a mixture between the two, where we have locations around town, and you can pick it up and drop it off at any of them.”

He explains that this makes a better model in multiple ways. First of all it makes it easier for people to access because they know where the scooters are going to be, instead of hoping there will be some “on this or that corner”.

Not only is it better for the user, but Boileau explained that “it also makes our job a lot easier in order to be able to find them, make sure the batteries are charged and everything is in good working order, we don’t need to stop on every corner to try and locate them.”

Boileau, who lives in Oliver, wants people to know that they are “here for more than just tourists and business; we are here for the community.”

They have organized community events like scavenger hunts in Oliver and soon in Osoyoos to “encourage people to get out and have fun and explore the town a little bit.”

These hunts are done through a third party app called Action Bound. “It gives you a description of a location and once you get to that location you will have a multiple choice question come up, and it’s very simple just like where are you? When you get the correct answer it will give you points, once you accumulate a certain amount of points and finish the hunt, you are awarded with sparrow bucks.”

Sparrow is also sponsoring an event in Oliver on Sunday June 18 at the Oliver Community Park for people to come by, try out the scooters, and Boileau will be there to answer questions and concerns people may have with the scooter service.

The event will also raise money for a local charity, and every dollar you donate will get people a dollar of sparrow bucks. They are going to have a food truck, games, a big community kickball game, prizes, a silent auction, and giveaways as well “we are just trying to get as many local businesses involved as possible and make it a big community summer kick off.”

The event will take place at Oliver Community Park baseball diamond number one from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Sunday June 18.