Asbury Park residents skip car rides in favor of e-scooters

Oct 16, 2024

ASBURY PARK - After its first summer season, the city's new e-scooter vendor says that around 70% of riders surveyed said they were able to decrease their car travel by zipping through the city streets on their scooters.

The city was left stranded after its previous electric-powered scooter vendor, Superpedestrian, which served the city since 2021 with its Link scooters, shut down all its scooter operations in the United States last year for financial reasons.

However, Asbury Park riders have been rolling again since May after the city found a partner right in time for the summer to bring 250 seated and standing scooters to Asbury Park under a three-year contract.

Veo, based out of Santa Monica, California, has contracts in New Jersey with Asbury Park, Newark and Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

"There is demand for this, the community needs it, we are filling a transportation void in some respect or helping a community meet its transportation goals," said Joe Bott, senior policy and partnerships manager and policy counsel for Veo.

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Both parties seem to be happy so far.

"We didn't really stumble into this by accident. We looked at this market, we saw there was an exit from a previous provider … we saw a natural fit for us," Bott said. "I think it has been complimentary so far and we developed a great relationship in the limited time we've had this season."

Riders can locate scooters throughout the city using the free app VeoRide, and rides are $1 to unlock the scooter and 39 cents per minute for the duration of the trip. Upon completion of the trip, scooters must be parked in designated locations and confirmed by uploading a photo within the app.

Over the summer there were 57,067 total trips with an average distance of 1.289 miles that took seven minutes per trip on average with 690,699 minutes of total riding time, according to the data from Veo that encompasses all trips between June 1 and Aug. 31.

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By the end of the summer there were 14,150 active program accounts within Asbury Park that average 2.18 trips per scooter per day. The people of Asbury favored sitting down for their rides, as 63% of trips taken were on the seated scooters, compared with 37% of trips taken on standing scooters.

Last year with Superpedestrian, from March 21 through Aug. 31, 2023, there were 58,575 total trips. The average trip lasted 6.3 minutes for 1.15 miles for an average of 3.3 trips per scooter per day, according to James Bonanno, Asbury Park's transportation director.

"The e-scooters will be available all year long including through the winter," Bonnano said. "Veo’s contract is very similar to that of Superpedestrian in that they are permitted to operate in the city provided they pay the city 20 cents per scooter trip that is taken."

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The city only permits one e-scooter share program to operate in the city at a time. Once the contracted term expires, the city will have the option to extend or renew with Veo or look for a new scooter provider.

"We are excited that we have a number of years to look forward to and build off of," Bonnano said.

Scooters are available for use 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Scooters are not permitted on the sidewalk or Boardwalk. Riders must obey traffic rules, including riding with traffic and stopping for stop signs and red lights.

Charles Daye is the metro reporter for Asbury Park and Neptune, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: [email protected]