Councilman Chris Hinds told his constituents at a town hall event Thursday that he’s in a tough spot.
“This isn’t comfortable for me to publicly shame a vendor, a city vendor,” he said to the audience of about two dozen.
The councilman was speaking about Veo, which runs the 9,000 rentable, pay-by-the-minute scooter, bike and trike fleet around Denver. Veo was awarded a contract to provide the service at the start of May.
“We have a vendor that I believe is not following the contract. … I’ve already reached out to our city attorney, and so we are reviewing the contract right now to make sure that the vendor is doing what it’s required to do,” Hinds said.
Veo pays the city $245 a year for each scooter or bike deployed in the city, totaling about $2.2 million.
The town hall spanned an hour and a half, and just about every topic about downtown transportation was raised, from the Colfax Bus Rapid Transit project to “roving gangs” of kids on dirt bikes.
But most of the people in attendance were there to ask questions of Veo. Namely, why its vehicles are able to be used on the sidewalk.
“I live downtown. I have a service animal right here with me, very small, and we’ve had several encounters where these things almost kill him or knock me over,” one attendee said. “If he gets hit, he’s gone.
“Who’s liable when I have a dead animal, broken leg? Who’s covering that?”
Hinds also said the company emailed him that it doesn’t respond to customer complaints because of the volume of complaints it receives. He said that issue combined with the use of scooters on the sidewalk constitute a breach of its contract.
Veo disputes that claim. Jeff Hoover, the company’s director of government partnerships, said that the company acknowledges receipt of all complaints and concerns that come through proper channels, but that it doesn’t follow up in instances where it’s not asked to do so.
“I can appreciate in certain circumstances that could be a genuine point of frustration … and also freely admit the email he’s quoting is overly broad on our part,” Hoover said.
The topic of riding on sidewalks amounts to a difference in interpretation, he added. Hoover said he reads the July 1 date in the contract as a deadline for having the equipment installed on devices that could slow down bikes on the sidewalk.
That has been done, he said. But the reason why it hasn’t been turned on is because the company is still refining the geofence that detects whether a device is on the sidewalk or in the street. Hoover fears that activating it prematurely might cause riders in the street to hit an improper geofence and see their vehicle abruptly slow, putting that person in danger.
He wouldn’t say when the feature would be activated.
“It’s a work in progress and it’s a bit of a moving target, and considering we’re talking about rider safety, I don’t want to commit to a date,” Hoover said.
Veo, after first saying a representative would attend the meeting, ultimately decided to not show up.
Hoover said the request to join the town hall was “admittedly a little last minute,” and he didn’t have enough time to coordinate with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure beforehand.
“We and DOTI are partners here, and just like any good, durable partnership, we want to make sure that we do not surprise DOTI with our actions and words,” Hoover said.
Veo’s absence was not well received at the event. Hinds deferred directly talking about the company until 45 minutes into the town hall, intermittently asking whether anyone from the company was in the audience.
When it became clear that no one was going to show, he put a picture of a Veo scooter in a chair next to him that read, “RESERVED FOR VEO.”
