Majority Leader Ryan on Progress of River Dredging
Ride Share Bike & Scooter Companies Have Not Kept Their Word
Abandoned scooters in the Providence River waiting for removal. (Courtesy of GoLocalProvidence)
Providence, RI (December 23, 2019)...Recently, numerous news outlets have reported that the dredging of the Providence and Woonasquatucket Rivers, a project which was to be finalized by Christmas, will go over budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars and will continue into January. The huge volume of trash and toxins being pulled from the rivers has caused costs to rise and scheduling delays. Amongst the piles of clothes and plastic, crews have also extracted over a dozen electric scooters and bicycles.
This serves as another reminder that these businesses skirted their contractual obligations to maintain the devices in their fleets. It is not the job of the City, State, or the Coastal Resources Management Council to contain and decommission these devices from our precious waterways. These companies, like any other companies who want to do business in the City of Providence, are expected to uphold their end of the bargain. The electric scooter and bicycle companies did not do that before leaving town and now the taxpayers are, quite literally, stuck cleaning up their mess.