New provider rolling out mobility devices in city
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on May 16, 2024.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com With warmer weather in full swing many residents have started to wonder when they will be able to enjoy what Lethbridge has to offer while riding e-scooters and e-bikes once again.Residents who have come to rely on, or simply enjoy, the occasional ride across the city via e-scooter or e-bike can again expect to be able to do so starting Friday as Bird Canada brings their sky-blue devices to Lethbridge.
Pat Graham, general manager of Bird Canada, told The Herald during a phone interview Wednesday that they were recently granted an exclusive permit for 300 e-scooters and 200 e-bikes that will begin to arrive in Lethbridge Friday with a soft launch.
“We’ll start a little bit smaller and then slowly increase that number depending on how the reaction is and the demand in the city, but that is what our permit with the city allows us to have,” said Graham.
He said within the first two weeks of arriving into Lethbridge they expect to have close to the full amount of devices in the city for riders to enjoy.
When asked about the arrival of the e-scooters and e-bikes happening without much warning, he explained they are planning on making official announcements soon, but the priority was to offer their devices to Lethbridge residents as soon as possible after finding out they were able to do so.
“We’re trying to launch as soon as possible. We’ve been working as hard as we can to get our vehicles, our staff trained up and get everything sorted for Friday and the media announcements will come later,” said Graham.
Graham added that Lethbridge is a place where they have been wanting to expand to for a while and they are very happy to be able to do so now.
“We were incredibly excited to be in the city of Lethbridge. I think people will be really happy with the product that we put out,” said Graham.
In terms of their product, Graham said they will be bringing their most up-to-date vehicles to the city of Lethbridge, which provides features like state of the art breaking system, an intelligent computer within the scooter, sidewalk riding detection, Google’s VPS parking verification that could pin point the location of the scooter down to the centimetre among many other features.
“We’re in over 12 different municipalities in Alberta with the largest operator both in Canada and Alberta. Our bikes and scooters will be available for rent by downloading the Bird Rides app. You can scan the QR code and then begin to ride,” said Graham. 3
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