GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Bird Scooters have swooped into Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and city officials are not too happy about their abrupt landing.
The scooter company came to both cities without permission. First they came to Greensboro, and then Winston-Salem over Labor Day weekend.
The City of Greensboro has been working on a new city ordinance in response to their arrival. Right now the scooters are not street legal, and not allowed downtown in the business district at all. You are allowed to ride them on the sidewalk outside of the downtown area.
And it seems like city officials are forcing Bird out of Greensboro based on this message Bird users got:
WFMY News 2 is working to confirm this information.
Winston-Salem is having the same dilemma. Bird Scooters showed up on their doorstep without warning, and now they have to backpedal to figure out safety regulations.
"When they come in and they don’t ask for permission, they ask for forgiveness, it changed the tone of the conversation," Winston-Salem City councilman Jeff MacIntosh said. "You’re then no longer in negotiations about what should be, you’re telling them what they can and can't do."
MacIntosh says the City Manager and Assistant City Manager plan to meet with officials from Bird on Thursday for the first time. The City Council meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. will address the scooter dilemma as well.
"These are new vehicles, electric scooters, they have not been around more than a year and haven’t become a phenomena until the past couple months so there was not a lot of time to prepare for it and we were trying to prepare for it and they beat us to the punch," MacIntosh said.
Both Greensboro and Winston-Salem city officials say safety is a number one concern when it comes to these scooters, that can go up to 15 mph.
As of right now - in Winston-Salem you are only allowed to ride the scooters on the street. It is illegal to ride any motorized vehicle on a sidewalk in Winston-Salem, downtown or anywhere in the city.
More regulations and negotiations are expected to come after Monday night.