The scooters are back, starting May 24. The city is hoping its new regulations will prevent the scene you see above.

Since banning the mode of micro-mobility under the guise of “public safety” in September 2020, Dallas city staffers have been at work figuring out why and how these devices became seen by so many as nuisance objects rather than micro-mobility boons.

There will be only three permitted operators: Bird and Lime are back along with the Denver-based newcomer Superpedestrian. They will be allowed to bring 500 apiece at first, and the city will evaluate performance every three months. They could be allowed another 250 each time, with a cap at 1,250. That means no more than 3,750 rental scooters in Dallas; that’s likely a fraction of how many were here during peak Scootermania.

During the first draft, the operators had the power. The city had no real structure for scooter registration, meaning new companies entered the market whenever they wanted and weren’t limited to a maximum they dropped on the street. Not that the city could track how many there were; Dallas couldn’t even get the operators to play along with a curfew. Too, some were unwilling to share ridership data that the city wanted to help inform policy.

That power vanished when Dallas banned scooters. It brought the vendors back to the table.

All three have promised to use geofencing that will stop the scooters if they’re being driven on a sidewalk. The maximum speed will be 20 mph, but that will drop to 10 mph in denser, pedestrian zones like Bishop Arts and Deep Ellum. They won’t be able to operate between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. All of this is controlled through geofencing.

Only 25 percent of an operator’s fleet will be allowed in what the city terms the “Central Dallas Deployment Zone,” which includes all of downtown and Deep Ellum as well as portions of Uptown, the Cedars, and Old East Dallas. The operators must deploy 15 percent of their fleet in “Equity Opportunity Zones,” most of which are located in Oak Cliff, southeast Dallas, and parts of North Dallas like Vickery Meadow. During the first take, the scooters mostly stayed near more affluent parts of town.

Residents are now encouraged to report violations—sidewalk or roadway obstruction, a device in the Trinity River, whatever—via 311, and operators have between two and four hours to respond.

The city has contracted with a data vendor that will process all this information to make sure the operators are working within their boundaries and promptly responding to issues.

There are things the operators cannot control. The reason so many folks took the two-wheelers on sidewalks is just how unsafe it feels to cruise alongside cars whose drivers may not respect anyone not in a vehicle. Dallas will need to invest in infrastructure that better serves different ways to get around.

But first, Dallas is welcoming scooters back to the streets. (And, hopefully, literally on the streets.)