E-Scooters Not Returning To Wenatchee For Third Year

The City of Wenatchee will no longer be offering electric scooter service to its residents and visitors.

The Santa Monica, California-based e-Scooter company, Bird, served the Valley for the past two years but the City has decided not to renew its contract for service in 2024.

The City began a one-year pilot program with Bird in 2022 that garnered positive reviews from many of its 21,000 users, but City Administrator Laura Gloria says the company's service went downhill last year.

"The second year, unfortunately, did not go as well. They (Bird) didn't deploy as many scooters and the scooters were being left in a lot of areas where they were either uncharged or not picked up. So we received a lot of complaints from the community about basically the service."

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Gloria says it was that lack of proper service in 2023 that ultimately led to the City's decision not to renew with Bird for this year.

"We met with them in early February to discuss an extension and also brought them back again for discussions in March. So there have been several conversations between us to talk about addressing how they plan to manage the scooters locally with a better quality of service and we just did not get a good response on that."

Gloria says the City earned five cents per scooter rental through Bird during its first-year agreement, which amounted to roughly $1,000 in total revenues.

She adds the City hasn't yet taken up the issue of pursuing a different company to return e-Scooter service to the Wenatchee Valley.