A flock of Birds is on its way to Colorado State University and Fort Collins. Bird has received the sole-provider contract to supply campus and the city of Fort Collins with electronic scooters during a one-year pilot program.

“CSU is very hopeful that e-scooters will provide affordable access to our campuses,” said Aaron Fodge, CSU’s alternative transportation manager. “E-scooters will be an excellent tool to help with first-mile access to transit serving CSU and will offer a great way for visitors to experience our beautiful campuses.”

Beginning on Oct. 23 – after an intensive university and community education initiative – 500 e-scooters will be in operation at CSU and throughout the city. Working together, both entities spent months researching e-scooter company policies; examining renting, riding, and parking logistics; and establishing rules that must be followed by riders. They also partnered on the contract to ensure that there is only one e-scooter company serving the city and university. Through the contract, CSU will receive $125,000 from Bird annually to be used for infrastructure improvements and safety education.

This strategy will eliminate competing company policies and oversight of the devices which has hampered control and riding behavior enforcement in other communities where various e-scooter companies quietly flooded streets with scooters with little or no community involvement.

During the two weeks before the e-scooters will arrive, CSU and the city of Fort Collins will educate the public about e-scooter rules of the road, including the differences in riding restrictions between university and city streets.

Although e-scooters are allowed on some city sidewalks, they are not allowed on campus sidewalks. Additionally, e-scooters may use bike trails on campus but are not allowed on city bike trails off campus.

All e-scooter riders must obey rules of the road and dismount zones, and privately-owned e-scooters must be registered with the CSU Police Department. E-scooters are not allowed in any campus buildings – including residence halls – for storage or charging, nor are they allowed on city buses, including Max buses and Around the Horn, unless they can be folded. There will be drop locations near transit stops for public e-scooter and privately-owned e-scooters on CSU campuses should be locked to a bike rack when not in use.

Using Bird e-scooters

To rent an e-scooter, the user will download the Bird phone app to view a map showing where scooters are available for rent. The user unlocks the e-scooter after entering a payment method on the app and agreeing that the user is 18 or older, will obey local laws, will ride safely and not under the influence and will park the e-scooter properly after each ride.

Although helmets are not required by Colorado law, CSU, city of Fort Collins, and the e-scooter company all strongly recommend that riders wear one. To encourage helmet use, Bird will give away more than 3,000 helmets during on-campus e-scooter events, and free helmets can also be ordered through the Bird app – the rider pays only for shipping the helmet.

The cost to rent a Bird e-scooter is $1 to start a ride with a per-minute fee. New CSU riders will get a discount toward their first ride by way of an in-app code for those with a csu.edu email domain. Bird will also offer a discount to CSU affiliates. In addition, Bird will incentivize good behavior by providing a discount based on how and where riders park Birds on campus. For CSU students, faculty, and staff, Bird will provide riders with 50 cents off of the start fee of their first ride.

Two programs offered by Bird make scooter rental inclusive and accessible. Bird Access is a program that offers free and heavily discounted rides to qualifying riders to ensure that no one is unable to get where they need to go due to financial reasons. In Fort Collins, Bird is offering a special access plan to low-income riders that provides the first 50 rides per month (30 minutes or less) free of charge. The Red, White, and Blue program enables active duty U.S. military service members and veterans to ride without the initial $1 base fee.