VeoRide Electric Scooters Arriving on A-State's Campus
JONESBORO – Leadership of the Arkansas State University Student Government Association and Chancellor Kelly Damphousse announced the arrival of shared-use electric scooters to campus this week.
“We’ve heard from students across the campus how much they wanted a scooter service to get from residence halls to class, or from their cars in the commuter lots to class,” SGA president Erika Tuck said. “The SGA is looking forward to working with VeoRide to promote safe and responsible scooter use on campus.”
Partnering with A-State’s current dockless bike share vendor, VeoRide, the students welcomed the start of service on Monday, Sept. 23, with a media announcement.
The university announced that electric scooters would come onto campus for the fall in early August.
“There were several factors involved in the decision to allow VeoRide to begin service, but the top one was interest from our students to have scooters,” Damphousse said. “The performance of VeoRide over the past year to keep our dockless bicycle share in better shape showed we could count on them to do the same with scooters.”
At the media event, Damphousse also announced campus-wide scooter usage guidelines to promote responsible use of the micro-mobility devices.
“These guidelines apply to any scooter – whether it’s one of VeoRide's or a privately owned scooter,” Damphousse said. “For example, we have designated the high pedestrian traffic areas of campus as ‘low speed’ zones. Scooters should not be ridden on traditional width sidewalks. And most of all, pedestrians have the right of way at all times.”
On the A-State campus, a system of 10-foot wide multi-use paths are designated as the PAC (Pedestrian and Cyclist) Paths, and scooters should be used only on those paths with the width to handle mixed traffic.
“We want the scooter riders to show the same courtesy to pedestrians we expect of bike riders on campus,” Damphousse added. “That also means not ending rides leaving scooters blocking doorways, sidewalks or other disabled access areas.”
Through the use of a geofence, VeoRide’s scooters will not be able to operate above low power in the campus core. They will also shut off at the edge of campus, and cannot be parked in vehicle parking lots.
The university’s Student Conduct Office will work with VeoRide on cases of serious or repeat violators of the scooter policies. The guidelines can be found online at AState.edu/Scooter.
While the same VeoRide mobile app is used to rent either bicycles or scooters, the price structures are different. Unlike bicycles that are rented for blocks of time, scooters charge the user by the minute. This is consistent pricing for electric scooters across the industry.
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