WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL)—It’s been one year since the Wichita Falls G.O.A.T. Scooters were introduced in downtown, but the question on many city councilors’ minds is, do we need more of them?
Councilors heard from Director of Transportation, John Burrus who said the scooters have been a big hit downtown, leaving city leaders with the thought of expanding the area in which the scooters are operational.
You’ve seen them in Dallas, Austin, and pretty much any large city throughout the nation, but in a town of roughly 100-thousand residents, would scooters work in a smaller town?
“Overall the outlook for scooter operations in Wichita Falls is generally positive,” Burrus said.
WF G.O.A.T. Scooters were brought into town a year ago, and so far Burrus said they’ve had minimal complaints throughout the entire year.
“We’ve had three formal complaints much of those have to do with scooter users not obeying the traffic laws downtown and such we also had one injury but to my understanding that injury was due to operator error,” Burrus said.
Burrus said other concerns are underage riders operating the scooters, which prompted the idea of the possibility of scanning your I.D. In order to ride one.
“We’ll look at the technology there to see if that can be done, other things we’re going to look at is helmet regulations for underage users,” Burrus said.
Although there are some slight negatives to these scooters, Burrus said the positive still outweighs the bad, so much in fact councilors entertained the idea of bringing more scooters to highly trafficked areas in town.
“A national company has talked to MSU and while MSU is favorable about bringing scooters on their campus, they want to coordinate with the City of Wichita Falls to make sure they’re doing it within the rules defined by our city ordinance,” Burrus said.
Sheppard Air Force Base was also mentioned as a possible location.
Burrus said in the next few months they’ll be creating a plan to present to councilors addressing any concerns, then move forward from there.
