(Seguin) — Technology may some day allow there to be autonomous cars on the road with you, or a more robust internet service for your car, or new shared transportation networks — that could include things like public use bikes or scooters. But for any of those things to work, there has to be a network in place to provide the infrastructure or backbone necessary for those services.
Those networks are commonly called small cell nodes, which are mini radio frequency (RF) towers that help to provide a more stable network that can be used for a variety of services.
The city of Seguin recently took steps to make sure that it was ready to handle the demands for the creation of these networks, or for large bike or scooter sharing services.
City Attorney Andy Quittner says some cities that haven’t planned for these types of services, and have sometimes been overrun by this work. Quittner says the new ordinance will provide a way for the city to manage and monitor the use of public right-of-way for these services.
“This covers a few other things that have kind of been on my plate knowing that they’ll reach us at some point particularly transportation networks scooters and bikes and things that are kind of shared, rode and that and if don’t have something in place, particularly the scooter people – they are really good about you wake up one morning and there are 2,000 of them everywhere, in the corners, in the middle of the streets, on the sidewalks where you don’t want them and they become a problem so we’ve had some right-of-way licensing for food trucks and some things but this kind of brings it together. It’s an entire ordinance that requires, hey if you want to use our right-of-way to make money or for commercial operations, then you need to come see about a permit or a license,” said Quittner.
Quittner discussed the expectations for the shared transportation networks for bikes and scooters, or other devices like that. But he says it also addresses the small cell nodes.
Scooters like these could some day be available for rent in the city of Seguin.
Quittner says there are some limits as to what costs the city can effectively recover companies that are looking to build out these networks in the city.
“We don’t have a lot of yes or no on that. The state took that away from us so though they graciously allowed us $250 a year matching it up with a cost of living for a fee for every node which is probably less than what the property that they use is worth and that’s actually under litigation. A number of cities have gotten together and sued to say that the law is unconstitutional because it’s our property and the state can’t tell us you know how to handle or what our property is worth,” said Quittner.
Being prepared for the expanded use of this technology and the services that often come with it, is something that’s important to the city’s future.
Seguin City Manager Steve Parker says there are already companies looking at bringing the shared scooter service to the city. Those services have been popular in other cities across the nation, but they have also been a bit of a nuisance in some places when the scooters and/or bikes are littered across the community and not recovered in a timely manner.
“We have had inquiries from scooter share people her in the last month or two so we know that’s coming. We would like to have a discussion with the council maybe a visioning after the first of the year to talk about what you see as your vision of allowing either bike shared or scooters in the city. It does create some economic things, but it also creates some liability things and pretty dangerous, so we want to make sure the council is fully aware of those types of things before we just do that. This will give us some protection to make sure that they don’t just come and drop them off as they’ve done in other cities,” said Parker.
This is not a new issue for the city of Seguin, and it’s been something that it’s looked at for years. But this represents the first ordinance that fully addresses the city’s requirements for such services. It includes license and franchise fees for use of the city’s public right-of-way, and also provides some penalties that would allow the city some enforcement mechanisms if the ordinance is violated by a company that sets up one of these services.
