Seriously? At least 260 e-scooters (and counting) dumped in rivers near MSU - mlive.com

The Michigan Waterways Stewards says battery-powered Spin scooters have been ending up in the Red Cedar River at Michigan State University at an alarming rate. The group has removed almost 260 e-scooters from Lansing area rivers since late 2022, mostly on MSU's campus.Michigan Waterways Stewards

EAST LANSING, MI — Electric scooter dumping has reached absurd levels at Michigan State University, where a conservation group says the grab-and-go vehicles around campus are constantly ending up in the river.

The Michigan Waterways Stewards has removed almost 260 battery-powered scooters from Lansing area rivers over the past two years — with a “great majority” coming from the Red Cedar River that flows through campus in East Lansing.

Five scooters were retrieved last week alone.

“The greatest hot spot has been the Bogue Street bridge — we’ve found probably two thirds of all the scooters there,” said Mike Stout, founder of the Michigan Waterways Stewards.

“But all the bridges through campus have been problematic.”

Dumping of e-scooters — a trendy love-or-hate powered transportation device in urban areas — has become an escalating concern over the past year in East Lansing, where city leaders revoked the license of a struggling e-scooter company that university officials are maintaining ties with.

In 2021, Michigan State contracted with Spin, a former subsidiary of Ford Motor Co., to bring 600 e-scooters to campus as part of a micromobility trend that has placed similar pay-to-ride devices on other campuses and cities in Michigan and the U.S.

Vandals began tossing scooters in the river shortly after.

The exact total number of e-scooters lost to the Grand and Red Cedar rivers is hard to determine, but Stout says it may be closer to 350 when accounting for official retrievals.

Michigan Waterways Stewards formed in late 2022 and, that December, began pulling scooters and other debris from the Red Cedar River. Since then, the steward group has sought help from fishermen to pull scooters from the river using heavy-duty magnets thrown from bridges with a rope.

In the water, e-scooters pose an eco-hazard because they’re powered by lithium batteries, which pose a fire risk and contain toxic solvents and polymers that can harm wildlife.

Stout praised MSU for taking some steps to correct the situation, but characterized Spin’s response as underwhelming.

After lots of back-and-forth, Stout said the company told the group last year it had lost about 80, a number “much lower than what we had already retrieved.”

“There’s misinformation and misreporting from Spin,” he said.

As of August 15, Stout said the stewards have pulled 259 scooters from Lansing area rivers — some from the Grand River but most from the Red Cedar. The areawide total reaches about 340 when Spin’s reported retrieval is added, he said.

According to East Lansing license revocation hearing documents, “approximately 280″ Spin scooters have been removed from the Red Cedar River over the past three years.

“As far as we can tell, this is likely the worst rate of tossed and abandoned scooters to the river or waterways anywhere in the country,” Stout said.

In early March, the East Lansing City Council upheld the city’s 2023 revocation of a license allowing Spin to stage scooters around the city, saying chronically misparked scooters violated local ordinance.

Lime, a Spin competitor, still has scooters in East Lansing.

Michigan State University maintains its relationship with Spin, which was purchased by competitor Bird last year. Bird emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy this spring and operates Spin under a new parent entity called Third Lane Mobility.

The university renewed its Spin contract in March.

In response to MLive, MSU and Spin separately shared the same bulleted list, detailing nearly verbatim the actions being undertaken to mitigate campus scooter dumping.

Michigan State spokesman Mark Bullion and Spin spokesman Jimmy Gillman said via email that all bridges have been geofenced to prevent scooter parking and deployment areas have been moved away from the river. Daily “rebalancing sweeps” are conducted around the river and there’s “immediate dispatch” and retrieval if a scooter is left within 300 feet of the river.

Gillman said scooters offset campus carbon emissions and Bullion called them “an affordable, convenient way for our students, faculty and staff to get around campus quickly and efficiently” that helps reduce vehicles and bikes.

Magnet fishers have pulled e-scooters and other large debris from the Red Cedar River at MSU this year.Michigan Waterways Stewards

Such vandalism and littering are obviously illegal in Michigan — which recently stiffened its penalties for littering — but Stout said practical constraints on police resources limit the ability of law enforcement to respond to and investigate such dumping.

Other U.S. cities are dealing with similar large scale mobility device dumping. Chicago volunteers have been busy pulling Divvy rideshare bikes from Lake Michigan this summer.

In Washington, vandals are tossing scooters into the Spokane River. In Kansas, they are going into the Arkansas River. In New York, they are going into the Bronx River.

Stout noted that waterways littering goes beyond scooters. Magnet fishers have pulled out plenty of bicycles, shopping carts and other large debris.

He hopes increasing awareness helps cities and campuses coalesce around solutions.

Better scooter security mechanisms could help, he said.

One day as an experiment, Stout grabbed a Spin scooter without paying for it to see how easy it might be for a vandal to dump one. An alarm went off three times but stopped after that. None of the passersby paid the piercing sound any heed.

Imagine doing that at 2 a.m. when no one’s around, he said.

“I just wheeled it to the bridge and, if I’d wanted, could have tossed it over the side,” he said. “There needs to be some real deterrents, where you can’t just walk an un-leased bike or scooter and do what’s been happening.”

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Seriously? At least 260 e-scooters (and counting) dumped in rivers near MSU - mlive.com