Michael Keating loves cities. But getting around them can be a pain.
All the usual options - cars, buses, bikes, taxis and walking - have their drawbacks, especially in dense urban areas such as San Francisco.
So Keating and a small group of like-minded entrepreneurs have created one possible solution: a company that lets people rent electric scooters on the fly.
Scoot Networks launches Wednesday in San Francisco, with 60 scooters available at four stations in the city's SoMa neighborhood. Backed by $775,000 from angel investors, the startup plans to add scooters and stations until it blankets the city.
Call it the Zipcar of electric scooters.
"I was trying to think of what could be both fast and cheap," said Keating, the company's chief executive officer. An urban planner by training, he appreciated the wave of innovation sweeping the transit world, with commuters joining car-sharing services and checking bus arrival times on their phones. But all the new options seemed lacking in one way or another.
"None of them seemed to have the speed, the affordability and the sustainability all in one package," Keating said.
His answer came from a summer spent in China, where electric scooters swarm the streets. The bikes are cheap, reliable, inexpensive to recharge and can be parked pretty much anywhere.
"You never have to circle for parking," Keating said. "They're just the perfect little city vehicle."
Founded last fall, Scoot Networks operates as a membership service. Customers sign up on the company's website, scootnetworks.com, creating an account with their driver's license and credit card information. They then set up an appointment with a Scoot representative who meets with them face-to-face and makes sure that they know how to ride a scooter. To reserve a scooter, customers check the Scoot Networks app on their smartphones. The app will tell them which scooters are available at nearby stations and show them how much battery charge each of them has left.
The customer chooses a scooter and plugs his or her phone into the scooter's dash, which has a docking port where the speedometer should be. From that point forward, the phone acts as the dashboard, showing speed, battery charge and a map of the scooter's location. Two helmets - one large, one small - sit in a box on the back of the scooter, accessed with a key stored under the seat. Only after the scooter has been reserved can someone open the seat or turn on the scooter.
Signing up for the service costs $10. After that, customers pay a $5 monthly fee. Checking out a scooter for an hour costs another $5. Or for $10, you can rent the scooter for a full day or a full night. Basic third-party liability insurance is included in the membership fees.
The four stations set up to date are located at the SoMa Caltrain station, South Park, Luscious Garage at Ninth and Bryant streets, and the public parking garage at Fifth and Mission streets.
Scoot Networks aims to give people a way to run quick errands around town. For now, customers have to return scooters to the station where they were rented. But soon, the company hopes to have enough vehicles that customers can do one-way trips, grabbing a scooter in one location and dropping it at another.
Most of the people who participated in Scoot's beta test this summer used the scooters at night, hitting the gym or the grocery store on the way home.
"What I've used Scoot for is filling in this gap between walking and public transit," said Scott Brown. He typically walks the 2.5 miles from his home in the Mission District to his job as vice president of a software engineering firm near the Caltrain station. But if he and his wife have evening plans, or he needs to get someplace with poor Muni access, he grabs a scooter.
"It was really easy, and I say that as someone who'd never ridden a scooter before in his life," said Brown, 39.
Shivani Savdharia frequently has to run errands during the day. She is the operations manager for the Hub Bay Area, a social entrepreneurs collective located in the San Francisco Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission streets. Scoot is one of the Hub's members.
"It's easy for me to hop on a scooter for one hour to pick things up," said Savdharia, 30. Like other beta testers, however, she typically takes the scooter home at night.
"In a city so congested, I take public transit everywhere, and having Scoot made me feel less dependent on something," she said. "Plus, it's the sheer joy of having all your senses awakened. You have to be alert."
David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: dbaker@sfchronicle.com
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/S-F-startup-offers-scooter-rentals-3895387.php#ixzz27bEWS5Hy
