Case Date:

5/16/2022

Grass clippings! Hazard! The southbound lane of Woodlawn along Bryan Park has grass clippings all over the right 1/3 or 1/4 of it. The park got mowed and a city employee left grass in the road. This is a danger to all the cyclists, motorcyclists, and scooter riders. Can we get that mower operator a leaf blower? This happens routinely around the park and on Sheridan and Southdowns in the multi use paths. Very careless and dangerous for the city to leave debris in the road.

Case Date:

5/20/2022

Scooter in the street 6:30pm 05/19

Case Date:

8/19/2022

Bird Scooter was dumped in front yard by mailbox

Case Date:

9/3/2022

The Lime scooter is lying in the gulch that runs between our yard and Sheridan. The scooter has been there at least two days, and before that was standing alongside the road. (I've just deleted the photo, because my submission to you seems stuck and isn't getting through. Come out to see for yourself!)

Case Date:

9/6/2022

Good Morning, I received the following email message from Frances Elizabeth Sheets <fsheets@iu.edu> dated Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 12:11 PM To: "martipa@bloomington.in.gov" <martipa@bloomington.in.gov> "To whom it may concern, Let me get right down to business: 7th street is an absolute fucking nightmare. I grew up in Bloomington, and now live close to downtown as I am a student at IU. This means that I navigate 7th street every single day. Let me tell you - this is not an easy task. I recognize and appreciate the effort that the city has put into the new bike lane running from campus to the B-line. As someone who rides a bike/electric scooter to get around, this bike lane is great. However, the bike lane coupled with the removal of stop signs between Indiana and Walnut has caused more problems than it has solved. Problem number 1: Absolutely no one knows when it is their turn to go. Specifically, when crossing 7th on Grant and Dunn, cars rarely (in my experience) yield to cyclists. This means that I have been inches away from being hit by a car multiple times while using the bike lane. There is no signage instructing cars to yield to those in the bike lane or vice versa. This is an immediate safety issue to me, and one that is relatively unavoidable as 7th street is the road I have to use to get to work, class, and back home every day. Since there is no bike lane on 10th street, using it as an alternate route is not a safer option. Problem number 2: Flow of traffic. Because there are no stop signs on 7th the flow of traffic is constantly a struggle. About half of all drivers stop and attempt to let pedestrians/cyclists/other cars either cross or turn. However, this often only happens in one lane, which means cars are regularly slowing, stopping, and then having to speed back up again because lines of traffic in one direction form very quickly. I experienced this literally five minutes before sitting down to write this email: there was a line of traffic waiting to turn from Grant, multiple cars slowing down traffic attempting to yield to those at the Grant stop sign, and myself and other pedestrians/cyclists trying to cross the road. Again, this is a blatant safety issue. Problem number 3: Visibility. This is more of a potential problem. Young trees have been planted along the median between the bike lane and the road. When these trees reach maturity, they will drastically lower visibility between the bike lane and the road, making the problems mentioned above even more dangerous. Since the stop signs were removed around six months ago, I have witnessed AT LEAST six car crashes on 7th between Grant and Dunn alone. I have also witnessed more drivers than I can count accidentally turning into the bike lane instead of onto the road. Pedestrians also walk in the bike lane frequently, and there was even a city-sponsored run/walk where participants were blocking the entire bike lane in front of the IMU. As someone who has both driven and biked along 7th, the removal of stop signs has not helped at all. If anything, it makes people drive unreasonably fast or unreasonably slow. Everyone I have talked to about this issue has agreed with me, so I know I am not alone in my frustration. Please, PLEASE at the very least put more signage in this area. It is quite dangerous, and as a resident of the city, the new design makes me question whether or not those in charge of city planning have actually ever driven downtown. I apologize if my tone comes off as aggressive, but in the past week alone I have almost been hit by four cars when using the bike lane!!" Thanks, Pat Martin

Case Date:

9/6/2022

The Lime scooter I wrote you about days ago is still in the ditch along the edge of our property along South Sheridan. All told, the scooter has been there for about a week, first standing along the side of the road, and then lying in the ditch. Please come take this away.

Case Date:

9/8/2022

Bird scooter was left in the middle of the sidewalk by someone. While walking past it, my shin scraped against it leaving a large cut on my skin.

Case Date:

9/13/2022

Greetings. I'm aware that the Lime scooters have a barcode with a unique identifier on them. This is akin to a VIN that vehicles have and which Parking Enforcement uses to issues tickets. I imagine the other shared-use motorized scooter company's have unique identifiers on them as well, because how else would the companies keep track of their products? Why then does the City not work with those, essentially, Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN), to issue citations to then send to the companies? I know the business license states the companies are to require their users to photograph the scooter when done and parked. What is the point of that? Why is this photographic evidence not being used by the scooter companies to then pass down the enforcement to the user since they are supposed to have received proof of them parking correctly? Can someone please speak to this subject matter? I have been confused about the City's stance on why it is so difficult to enforce the rules around parking the scooters. Thank you for your time.

Case Date:

9/19/2022

In regards to resolved uReport# 181500: Reply from City: Up until recently, we've been relying on the scooter companies to enforce their users behaviors with illegally parking of the scooters. We have two positions that we are currently hiring for that are funded with fees from the scooter companies that will focus on moving into a system where fines will be issued for improper parking. My reply with two (2) questions: I do not understand Adam Wason's reply in light of what was stated by City Attorney, Mike Rourker, in 2019 (please see below for quote). Additionally, I worked from March 2019 until October 2021 as the main point-of-contact (POC) working with the entities licensed by the City for providing the service and product of motorized scooters, and neither was I informed of any efforts to ticket the companies nor the users of the scooters. Can someone please explain to me what the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for holding the licensed entities accountable for the stipulations in the ordinance governing use and management of the scooters was prior to the recent creation and hiring of a new staff position? Also, why were no violations issued and no fines collected in over three years? Thank you for your time. "At its July 31, 2019 meeting, city attorney Mike Rouker told the city council that scooter companies would be fined if their users violated the parking restrictions. Rouker put it this way: “So just to be clear, at the same time, that Bird or Lime or another scooter company may be taking those additional steps against their own users, the city, if this is an issue, will be fining them every single time we see a parking issue.” Rouker continued, “I suppose if the company wants to move very slowly and pay lots and lots of fines to the city, until we’re fed up enough that we either revoke their license or geo-fence an area, that’s a business decision. But I don’t know if it’s a sound business decision.” For an improperly parked scooter, the fine called for in the city’s ordinance runs $30. The fee connected to impoundment is $100, plus $10 per day storage, and another $150 for disposal. As it turns out, the only payments the scooter companies have had to make to the city of Bloomington are the $10,000 annual licensing fees and the 15 cents a ride. The three companies now operating in Bloomington are Lime, Veo, and Bird." Source: https://bsquarebulletin.com/2021/11/22/electric-scooter-parking-violations-zero-citations-in-over-2-years-since-local-bloomington-law-was-passed/ Additional source: https://otter.ai/s/56nnFv2HQX2elRJ40z1X8A?snpt=true

Case Date:

9/21/2022

Ever since the city created the bike lane on east seventh street between Walnut and the University the street has become a drag strip. Stop signs were taken away and people are traveling at excessive speeds. The condition has become exacerbated by an increase flow of bike traffic at various times of day. A person traveling north on Lincoln to safely cross must now watch the high speed vehicle traffic, the pedestrian traffic as well as the bike traffic. Visually it is a very difficult task to take in all of the information at the same time and the problem is that it is difficult to take in the bike lane when you are looking across the street at the pedestrian and high speed traffic. Bikers heading east come over the hill from Walnut and accelerate into the intersection. The curbs are extremely high and one cannot enter seventh street from Grant heading west without turning into the oncoming traffic lane or hitting the curb and damaging tires. On Monday I approached Seventh and Lincoln from the south around five o’clock pm. There was so much activity I missed a biker traveling west. I missed the person because there was simply too much to watch. Yesterday I made the decision to stop crossing Seventh St altogether because it was just too dangerous. I took a route that brought me from the west into the intersection. The city has now placed crosswalks without any warning signs of change all around the university and now pedestrians are no longer waiting for traffic to clear before attempting to cross and are now entering the crosswalks into the traffic flowing east and west with the expectation that it will stop, effectively a stop without a stop time. As I approached from the west to turn north onto Lincoln the east and westbound traffic had completely stopped for the cross walkers. Five persons on scooters zoomed into the intersection from south Lincoln and crossed through the stopped traffic. A six scooter, a straggler followed, suit entering right at the point when it had appeared to have cleared. These people should have been governed like the rest of cross traffic but instead acted effectively as pedestrians. Obviously no one was looking for them and they were traveling at a speed closer to a car than a pedestrian or biker. A dangerous situation has now been worsened by an intervention. We have spoken to the police officers in the neighborhood and obviously they cannot conceivably be there to do the work that traffic sign regulation had accomplished effectively for years. I can no longer move directly in my neighborhood because it is simply too dangerous. I am going out of my way to avoid the dangers and still cannot do that safely because of the chaos. We are going to see a scooter death or a bicyclist death if something is not done to prevent it. At least the City will be on notice when the lawsuit follows.