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Four years ago shared electric scooters made a rocky debut in San Antonio, drawing so many complaints they were given their own designation on the city’s 311 helpline.

After many policy changes, technological advancements and a massive reduction in fleet size, City Council approved new contracts this month to keep e-scooters around for at least another three years. Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8) pulled the item for discussion and cast the lone no vote, saying none of his constituents want these electric vehicles in their neighborhoods.

Right now the majority of e-scooters are located downtown. City ordinance doesn’t restrict their use in other parts of the city, but vendors are allowed to set their own service range.

The city’s new contracts comes as voters in Paris, France, overwhelmingly supported a ban on shared e-scooters earlier this year, citing complaints about reckless driving and the vehicles being left on sidewalks. Other cities are also looking critically at electric transportation devices as a large number of e-scooters continually end up tossed in bodies of water.

San Antonio’s agreement allows two vendors to each deploy 1,000 e-scooters for two years beginning Oct. 1, with the option to renew for a third year if they choose.

The number of devices on the street will remain the same since the city first limited e-scooter numbers in 2020. Before that, seven companies held a total of 16,000 permits at the height of the e-scooter’s rollout.

Bird, one of the city’s current vendors, will continue renting upright models. Razor, which currently rents upright and seated e-scooters, is being swapped out with California-based Veo, which offers a seated model designed for greater comfort and longer rides.

The average e-scooter ride is roughly a mile, according to data provided by the city. Veo says the average ride on their Cosmo seated e-scooter is double that due to its design.

“A lot of the seated devices in the micromobility world look like a typical stand-up scooter with a bike seat bolted to it. This is not that,” Veo’s Policy and Partnerships Manager Nicholas Efron said of the company’s Cosmo model.

“Because this vehicle is built from the ground up to be a seated option … it really helps open up micromobility to a wider range of users,” Efron said. That includes riders of varying ages and people with accessibility impairments who might be reluctant to ride a stand-up scooter.

Veo recently hired a local operations manager and secured warehouse space in San Antonio, according to Efron. It will launch 500 seated e-scooters Oct. 1, and another 500 upright models later this year.

Razor is expected to wind down operation in San Antonio over the next month, according to the city ordinance.

Aside from cutting down on the number of e-scooters, San Antonio made the River Walk and other areas with high foot traffic off-limits to them in 2020. E-scooters are expected to operate on the street and in bike lanes only. Riding on sidewalks is prohibited by city ordinance.

The city’s Center City Development & Operations (CCDO) department also employs two staff members to resolve issues like e-scooters that are left on ADA ramps.

CCDO Assistant Director John Stevens said the city makes roughly enough money from a revenue sharing agreement with the vendors to cover scooter-related expenses, including the CCDO staff members and one off-duty police officer to enforce the rules.

This year the contract proposals the city received included new technology that could help with problems like ensuring e-scooters are parked in a reasonable location, Stevens said.

All of Veo’s scooters will verbally alert riders as they approach restricted areas, like sidewalks, the Alamo and the River Walk.

Enhanced geofencing can detect the location of moving e-scooters using GPS-based technology and will throttle down devices when they’re being used near heavy foot traffic, Stevens said. This feature can also keep them from approaching the San Antonio River, where a fair share of scooters have ended up.

“There will always be some issues and conflicts and things that need to get reported and corrected, but the high level scooter drama … we don’t hear that anymore,” Stevens said.

Andrea Drusch writes about local government for the San Antonio Report. She's covered politics in Washington, D.C., and Texas for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, National Journal and Politico. More by Andrea Drusch