Acknowledging that both docked and dockless bike-sharing have had their share of ups and downs, St. Paul has turned its sights on electric scooters and electric assist-bicycles.

The city has put out a vendor request in hopes of permitting thousands of them.

According to application materials, the city intends to permit up to 1,000 e-bikes this year, operated by a maximum of two vendors. Vendors can submit applications throughout the year until two have been selected. In addition, the city intends to permit up to 2,000 e-scooters, operated by a maximum of four vendors.

The catch? Vendors have to be able to spread their hardware citywide, even in low-income, high-minority “areas of concentrated poverty” where paid “sharing” services have been slower to catch on.

Bird and Lime both introduced their e-scooters to the capital city a year ago, but both services were heavily concentrated in and around downtown St. Paul. For St. Paul, e-bikes represent a new frontier.

“The city’s goal is to have e-bicycle sharing available across the entire geography of St. Paul and e-bicycles available within a short walk of all St. Paul residences, workplaces, and destinations,” according to the applications materials. The request goes on to note that docked bicycle sharing systems were first introduced to St. Paul in 2011, and dockless shared bicycles were introduced in August of last year. Neither one has stuck around.

Nice Ride, which was acquired by Motivate and then Lyft, has removed its 50 docked biking stations from most corners of St. Paul except for the University of Minnesota campus. Lime Bike — which introduced dockless bikes to St. Paul last year — recently informed the city it would not complete the second year of its two-year contract.

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For e-scooters, the city’s request states that on a daily basis, vendors “must ensure that scooters are distributed throughout the city in a manner that increases transportation equity.” It specifies that a minimum of 30 percent of the fleet must be distributed throughout “areas of concentrated poverty” where half or more of the residents are people of color.

In addition, each vendor can place no more than 150 of their scooters downtown.