An e-scooter share program has officially arrived in eastern Queens, the city’s Department of Transportation said Thursday.
The program covers approximately 20 square miles stretching from Flushing and Auburndale in the north to Rochdale Village and Springfield Gardens in the south, the DOT said in a news release.
The DOT said the network of e-scooters will serve around 600,000 residents.
“E-scooter share has arrived in eastern Queens and we are very excited to build upon the successful east Bronx pilot,” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “This expansion delivers a popular, safe, and environmentally sustainable mode of transportation to underserved neighborhoods in Queens.”
The service comes as part of an expansion, initially announced just over a year ago, of a pilot program that started in the East Bronx in August 2021. Since then, the DOT says 4.1 million e-scooter trips have been taken by riders using more than 163,000 unique accounts.
All three companies — Bird, Lime and Veo — taking part in the program charge $1 to unlock the scooters. Following that, Veo charges 39 cents per minute, while Lime and Bird charge 42 cents per minute.
New Yorkers who receive or qualify for local, state or federal assistance programs, such as SNAP and NYCHA, are eligible for a lower rate — with each company having its own discount program.
Each company is also required to provide wheelchair-accessible scooters for residents with ambulatory disabilities, the DOT said.
All three e-scooter companies will conduct daily outreach on the streets of the new communities for the first three weeks of the launch, according to the DOT.
The DOT said placements for scooter parking were selected with the assistance of public input and coordination with local officials as part of a community engagement effort the agency began last fall.