Electric scooter company hoping to run a pilot project in Oliver

Scooter company eyes town

Photo: Sparrow Scooters

The Town of Oliver is looking at becoming a pilot city for an electric scooter company after Sparrow Scooters pitched to bring in their products to town council on Monday.

Josh Boileau, the regional general manager for Sparrow Scooters, lives in Oliver and explained that the partnership includes getting the local businesses to have scooters on-site, with designated parking areas.

"Customers that rent their scooters are only able to park in certain locations. So we partner up with hotels or other local businesses that say yes, we'd like to have a parking partnership here. It will drive customers into those local businesses or somebody like the host hotel where there's already customers there," he said.

One of Sparrow’s trial programs ran in the fall of 2021 at Spirit Ridge Resort in Osoyoos, which Boileau said was received with great interest. The company looks at introducing the scooters into smaller communities, rather than big cities.

The company provides and maintains parking racks for scooters at business partner locations. Along with integrated GPS, Bluetooth, phone chargers, and swappable batteries, Sparrow can update their geofencing (GPS technology) at any time to set slow riding zones and no-ride zones.

"Overall, personally, I like the idea. I think Oliver is the appropriate size of community for a project like that," Coun. Aimee Grace said.

Boileau added that scooter projects in other cities have proved promising in helping reduce emissions. The City of Kelowna found the following during their e-scooter pilot program:

• 33 per cent of scooter trips replaced cars
• 148,500 km of riding was completed, eliminating 29 metric tonnes of CO2 as compared to driving cars
• 0.025 per cent injury rate (51 injuries, 203,000 rides taken)

"I think with something like this being that it's new and obviously just being piloted and not in many small communities, there will most likely be some kinks to be worked out. So things that perhaps we are not thinking of right at this moment that we might think of four weeks or six weeks down the road or a month into the beginning stages of the project. But I think in general, it sounds very interesting and pretty accepting," Oliver Coun. Petra Veintimilla said.

"I liked the sounds of this company without really knowing anything about any of the others specifically for what was mentioned about pickup and drop-off locations. So if they're at the hotel or the tourism centre, maybe beside Town Hall, wherever those places are, that keeps the streets cleaned and you don't see the bikes on every corner."

"I'm here to work with the community, I'm not just here to drop off scooters and say thank you very much and make a dollar," Boileau said.

Council directed staff to submit a letter of intent to the province to become part of one of the pilot cities.