Senior policy counsel Nima Rahimi and senior policy communications manager Maria Buczkowski giving away helmets and safety information at Sunday Streets in SOMA.
Over the past few months, we’ve been deep in the San Francisco community, exploring how companies can best operate electric scooters in a respectful, collaborative, and useful manner. From SOMA to the Tenderloin to Western Addition, and everywhere in between, we’ve listened to concerns, perspectives, and many suggestions of diverse neighborhoods throughout the city.
We’ve learned so much, and that’s why we couldn’t be more excited — and grateful — for the opportunity to serve our hometown of San Francisco. We are appreciative of this process to bid for a permit, and respect the SFMTA’s thorough and thoughtful decision-making. Over the coming months we will be working with the City and community stakeholders to launch 1,000 scooters in San Francisco.
We look forward to honoring the commitments we feel are imperative to creating a strong partnership, including hiring locally, investing in the community, and ensuring our transportation services are equitably spread throughout the city.
We are reiterating an employment model in San Francisco that is the model for our workforce in the 63 cities where we operate. Our entire workforce in San Francisco — around 100 employees — will be comprised of W-2 employees. We believe a W-2 workforce ensures operational safety and reliability for the community, and provides career longevity through upward mobility in the company. Spin is the only e-scooter operator to choose this workforce model. Investing in our employees is a critical part of our duty as community members.
Spin has also taken a number of steps to cement our commitment to our workforce. Earlier this year, we signed a Labor Peace Agreement with Teamsters Local 665, demonstrating our respect for our San Francisco employees’ rights.
Additionally, strong relationships with local hiring groups is critical to finding the local talent necessary for running our operations on the ground. We’re proud to partner with OEWD’s First Source Program, and also joined the Mayor’s Opportunities for All program to provide internship opportunities to our most disadvantaged youth.
Finally, we are committed to making our transportation accessible to all. Spin’s Access program provides free 30-minute rides to those at or below the 200% poverty line, and we plan to provide a 50% discount to local college students. And we’re not just paying lip service to this program: we plan to go out into the community and sign folks up at existing events like Sunday Streets through our partnership with Livable Cities.
We have local community advisors from Districts 6, 9, 10, and 11 to help us organize neighborhood working groups and focus groups, and bring us to community events where we will sign folks up and take in critical feedback on our service. And with our entirely new operations model — including a role called Neighborhood Ambassadors — we’ll handle operations and community engagement daily in each respective neighborhood we provide service. Part of their role will be to help residents sign up for Spin Access.
We’re now a team of several hundred nationwide, and have seen our daily average trips increase 1000 percent. We have expanded to over 60 cities across the United States, with more on the way. Throughout it all, we remain steadfastly committed to real partnership, and the broader mission of enabling more sustainable, mobile, and joyful urban environments.
As a private company operating on public streets, we recognize the responsibility we have in San Francisco, and in all of our markets, to not only serve the mobility needs of residents, but to respond to the community. We can’t wait to get started!
