Mo-peds, more problems: City issuing reminders of parking, driving rules for popular scooters

By TIMOTHY ALEX AKIMOFF of the Missoulian

Christian Cryder bought a 2005 cherry red Stella scooter to save a little money and produce a little less carbon monoxide.

“It gets 78 miles per gallon,” said Cryder, a pastor at All Souls Missoula. “It costs me something like 7 or 8 cents a day.”

But that was until the city began cracking down on scooter drivers who parked their cost-effective modes of transportation on the sidewalk.

“It costs me more to park the thing than it costs me to drive it,” Cryder said Monday.

Parking is just one of many issues drivers and law enforcement officers are struggling to adjust to as hot-selling scooters become more prevalent on city streets.

As scooters become more prevalent on the streets of Missoula, law enforcement officers are struggling with the drivers sometimes failing to obey the rules of the road. Photo by MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian

The size of a scooter and whether it is classified as a bicycle has caused some confusion among Missoula's scooter riders.

“If it has an engine size of 49 ccs or less, a max speed of 35 miles per hour and pedals, it's classified as a bicycle in the state of Montana,” Bradley Seaman, a sales representative at Scooterville, said.

And that means anything bigger than 49 ccs is classified as a motorcycle, and you must have a Montana motorcycle endorsement to drive it.

Because the smaller mo-peds are classified as bicycles and can follow all the same rules as bicycles, drivers often park them on city sidewalks.

But the city's policy on parking is pretty clear.

“I can tell you that any motorized vehicle, even if they have pedals, cannot park on the sidewalk,” said Cynthia Daniell, of the Missoula Parking Commission.

And even though there hasn't been a widespread parking problem with scooters, Daniell calls the city's approach an educational campaign.

“When they get a ticket, we just explain the ordinance to them,” Daniell said. “I don't get a whole lot of complaints about scooters, and we don't write a lot of tickets for scooters.”

But there has been enough of an issue for parking attendants to start warning people.

“It wasn't until about a month ago that things started to change,” Cryder said. “I was parking on sidewalks until I started hearing friends with scooters tell me that parking meter ladies were giving them the heads-up that they couldn't park on sidewalks anymore.”

For Cryder, whose church has a focus on building a strong community in downtown Missoula with a bent toward sustainable living practices and civic responsibility, driving a scooter around town seemed like a good way to promote a lighter footprint.

“It seems if you want to promote people riding scooters it should be easier to park them,” Cryder said. “In an ideal world, there would be free scooter parking spaces that would create a huge incentive for people to ride these things.”

Other issues that have cropped up with increased scooter sales have to do with obeying the rules of the road.

“There's a whole rule book for motorcycles that you have to learn,” Cryder said. “And some of it is really similar to riding a bike.”

Defensive driving seems to be the key.

“It's not so much a rule as how you do it,” Cryder said about riding a scooter around without getting into dangerous situations. “You have to remember that you don't have the acceleration of a motorcycle, you can't get out of the way.”

Phil Smith, the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city of Missoula, sees it as a public safety issue.

“We don't want there to be a lot of conflicts with pedestrians on sidewalks,” Smith said. “It's not a big problem yet, but the potential for safety issues increases as more scooters are sold.”

And while it is no single agency's responsibility to educate scooter riders, workers at Scooterville posted warnings about parking on sidewalks in their showroom.

“We were informed by city police that you're allowed to be in the bike lane to make sure you're not holding up traffic,” Seaman said.

While it may take some time to iron out parking and driving issues for scooter riders in Missoula, the bottom line is that the city says absolutely no motorized vehicles on sidewalks.

“I just really want the word out,” Smith said. “So that when people buy (a scooter) there isn't a big conflict to be developed over ‘Why can't I park it on the sidewalk?' ”