COLUMBUS, Ohio — If you've driven around downtown Columbus over the past couple years, you've definitely seen motorized scooters zooming around. Those scooters are causing safety concerns in several parks in the city.
Dee Debenport lives near Schiller Park and visits daily.
“Schiller Park is many of our neighbors’ front yards and our backyard and literally it's sometimes the only green space people have to enjoy,” said Debenport, who is also the block watch coordinator for several surrounding neighborhoods.
Debenport says she’s seen issues with scooters since last summer.
“[They] started terrorizing some elderly people who were playing tennis and some of the people were even knocked over and I kept getting different reports of instances of people being, the best word I can say is, terrorized,” said Debenport.
The City of Columbus says they're working to fix the problem. The Department of Public Service says Columbus police along with others have expressed safety concerns about scooter usage in Franklin, Goodale, and Schiller Parks. So the city says they’re turning to geofencing.
So how does geofencing work? Scooters that go inside of a certain boundary will become inoperable.
Currently, the city says High Street from Goodale Boulevard to 5th Avenue in the Short North Arts District along with the Scioto Mile are already geofenced.
Some neighbors, like Debenport, are excited for their local park to be included in that list.
“It's the crown jewel of the Southside,” she said.
As for when this will happen, the Department of Public Service says they do not have an exact timeframe from the different scooter companies about when this will happen. 10TV will keep asking the Department of Public Service for updates.