CSU Monterey Bay brings electric scooters back to campus – with improvements.

CSU Monterey Bay’s alternative transportation experiment with Lime electric scooters ended last June after disagreements with neighboring cities and logistical hiccups. But campus administrators, intent on transitioning to a pedestrian campus, are giving it another go with a Bay Area company called Spin, which claims a presence in 62 cities and on 20 campuses.

CSUMB spokesperson Noah Rappahahn reports that there are about 100 Spin scooters on campus, under a 3-year contract. They are comparable to Lime scooters, with distinctions.

Their range is restricted by a “geofence,” a satellite positioning system that restricts riders to a defined area. In the case of CSUMB, that area is the campus itself, the east housing neighborhood, and Inter-Garrison Road between the two.

If riders travel outside of that geofence, a voice recording warns “You are out of the geofence,” and the power shuts off. The rider has to manually get the scooter back inside the geofence to engage the battery again.

That means riders can’t use the scooters to go to nearby Target, Marina Cinemas or the Montage Wellness Center – much less the cities of Seaside or Marina. But that also eliminates the far and random dispersion of the scooters that occured with Lime.

Spin scooters also don’t end the ride meter from charging ($0.25 per minute) until the rider parks in designated parking areas. And in areas with high pedestrian traffic, the max speed lowers from 16 mph to about 9 mph. Riders must agree to a liability waiver.

“The feedback on campus has been mostly positive,” Rappahahn says. “The scooters offer a great solution to be able to get from one side of campus to the other.”