San Jose is looking for a new e-scooter partner after negotiations with the exclusive vendor fell through.
Scooter users were surprised to see an announcement in the Spin app last week, saying it would end services on Aug. 27 in San Jose. City officials said they declined to renew the company’s permit because Spin never deployed the required minimum of 500 scooters. But a Spin representative said the city didn’t address rampant vandalism.
Colin Heyne, spokesperson for the transportation department, said Spin had a one-year contract with the option to extend it another year. The permit allowed Spin to deploy up to 1,000 scooters citywide, but city data shows the company only deployed about an average of 240. Heyne deferred questions about why Spin couldn’t reach its minimum requirement to the company.
“We hoped that giving a permit to a sole operator would make San Jose a more enticing market,” Heyne told San José Spotlight.
Shiraz Rosenthal, a government partner manager for Spin, said the company lost more than 400 scooters to theft or vandalism in the first half of 2025, a “significant portion” of the company’s fleet. She said they tried to work with city officials to renew the contract, but San Jose required Spin to pay a permit fee for the maximum 1,000 scooters, which wasn’t financially feasible.
“While we’re of course disappointed that it came to this, it was an honor to provide the community’s residents and visitors with access to eco-friendly, alternative transportation options,” Rosenthal told San José Spotlight.
Micromobility devices, such as e-bikes, skateboards and scooters, were controversial when they first began popping up, but companies working alongside local governments and regulators have made them more consistently accessible. While Spin’s e-scooters have disappeared from San Jose, the city is still part of the Lyft Bay Wheels program, which provides rentable e-bikes at dozens of stations.
Heyne said Spin asked for a lower scooter number for the additional year extension, but the city rejected the request because it ran counter to the micromobility program’s goals to provide accessible and effective transportation services.
City data shows people used the scooters one to two times every day. The highest number of scooters available in one month was November 2024, when 499 scooters could be found throughout San Jose.
Spin scooters can still be rented in partnering cities nationwide, the closest being San Francisco.
Monica Mallon, transit advocate and San José Spotlight columnist, said she used the scooters a few times a month and wanted to use one last weekend before she saw the announcement in the app. The scooters weren’t available in Mallon’s neighborhood, so she could only use them when traveling through more highly trafficked areas, such as downtown.
Mallon said she’s seen more people use bikes and scooters on public transit to reach their final destination. She said renting a shared scooter can be more accessible than buying one, because the rider doesn’t need to worry about maintenance or theft.
Cities across Santa Clara County have been looking to provide “last-mile” connections, to help residents travel shorter distances from transit hubs or homes. Santa Clara and Cupertino jointly contract with an on-demand microtransit ride-share service, Silicon Valley Hopper, which Sunnyvale plans to sign up with soon.
This type of connection would be less of a problem if existing public transit was more frequent or had a larger coverage area, Mallon said.
“I think just actually running more transit services is better because it’s something that everyone can use,” she told San José Spotlight. “Obviously, that’s a lot more difficult than partnering with a company that already has the product … but personally, if we did have the time, energy and funding, I would rather see it spent on public transit.”
Carter Lavin, co-founder of the Transbay Coalition transit advocacy group, said shared scooters and other micromobility solutions play an important role in the region’s transportation network, as they can build upon bus and train systems.
“At the end of the day, you need transportation solutions for all ages, all abilities, all bodies and some people are much more comfortable on a scooter than they are behind the wheel of a car,” Lavin told San José Spotlight.
Lavin said the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which connects the Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies, could coordinate with city and county governments to create micromobility solutions that work across jurisdictional borders. He said many travelers would want to bring their scooters or bikes between cities or counties, but are stopped by private-public contractual boundaries.
San Jose is looking for another e-scooter micromobility partner, with program requirements on the city’s website. Applications close Sept. 12, and Heyne said they want to start the new program Oct. 1.
Lavin said it’s unfortunate people won’t have access to the e-scooters in the interim, as it cuts into their access to transportation, similar to the impacts faced by riders during the VTA strike earlier this year.
“San Jose has been expanding the protected bike lane network, there’s so much possibility for micromobility and scooters to do really well,” he told San José Spotlight. “It’s a flat city, it’s got good weather, it’s really ripe for this stuff. It just needs the scooters.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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