The PDF[0] outlining SFMTA's evaluation criteria for each company application is interesting. A lot of them were rated pretty poorly, even Lime & Bird (especially) which both had a large presence before the shutdown.
Can’t help but think that spite factored in significantly in the decision. There’s a row that conflates “applicant’s history in complying with city regulations” with “applicant’s experience in operating and maintaining shared mobility systems”. Bird, Lime, and Spin all got “poor” for this row, even though they obviously have experience operating and maintaining such a system.
Bird, Lime, and Spin were only operating for a short time (at least in SF, not sure how long they were operating in other cities). Versus Scoot which has been operating in SF since 2012 (I know nothing about Skip; I assume they've been operating elsewhere).
This also isn't just "length of time operating", the same row covers "applicant's history" and "history of their users", and Bird/Lime/Spin all have a very poor history here:
> From April 11 to May 23 alone, San Francisco’s 311 Customer Service Center received nearly 1,900 complaints regarding scooters. Complaints ranged from scooters blocking sidewalk access to unsafe riding in the public right-of-way. San Francisco Public Works had to impound more than 500 scooters that were blocking sidewalks or otherwise improperly parked.
Bird/Lime/Spin have a very poor history only because they’re the only ones with any history at all. They just happened to be around when the controversy started. It seems unfair to penalize them for that, and give them zero credit for previous experience. Scoot’s been around, yes, but with a very different service.
Operating a scooter service was not illegal at the time. It was only made illegal as a retaliatory response. SFMTA and the supervisors would have liked those companies to proactively ask for permission, hence the retaliation. Skip is the only company (AFAIK) that made it a point to ask for permission first – and they’re getting rewarded for it – but I’m pretty sure they only did that with the benefit of hindsight. They were late to the game, saw the backlash against the early players, and saw that as their opportunity.
This is not true. AIUI the SFMTA told these companies that they were working on regulations governing these scooters and that they couldn't deploy them yet. Then one of the companies (I forget who) jumped the gun and deployed them anyway, so the others rushed out to deploy them too.
I don't know if this was strictly illegal, but it was certainly flaunting explicit instructions from the SFMTA.