Love them or hate them, scooters have hit their maximum in San Francisco. At least until October.

On Saturday, San Francisco’s transportation agency began allowing four companies — Lime, Spin (owned by Ford), Jump (owned by Uber), and Scoot (owned by Bird) — to release 750 more scooters collectively to reach the city’s 4,000 limit.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is strictly controlling the once-rogue two-wheelers that took over the streets nearly two years ago. The goal is to provide a safe, equitable, and accessible form of public transportation, and the city granted permits only to companies that pledged to abide by the rules.

“We are excited to expand the range of sustainable transportation options in the city of San Francisco, including scooters, which provide a convenient, on-demand travel option for shorter trips and an alternative to driving,” agency spokeswoman Erica Kato said in an email.

San Francisco scooter riders took around 8,000 trips a day in January, according to the agency. Scooters are capped at 400 in downtown areas, so the latest expansion means neighborhoods farther from the city’s core will get more. Since the start of the program in October, scooters have nearly doubled in the Mission District and quadrupled in the southeastern and southwestern parts of the city, as well as the Western Addition neighborhood.

Some data suggest that scooter companies are fulfilling their vision of replacing car trips with cleaner and greener transit. Surveys by Lime and Scoot say that 1 in 3 riders rented a scooter instead of hailing a car.

The Chronicle also obtained compliance reports and complaint data submitted by scooter companies to the cities. Here is what it reveals:

Safety: Despite rampant concerns about scooters being ridden on sidewalks and blocking sidewalks, including disabled access ramps, transit agency data show bad behavior accounts for a minuscule fraction of total rides.

In monthly reports from October to December by the four companies to the Municipal Transportation Agency, 39 collisions were reported out of 515,739 rides. Most involved just a scooter, although some involved cars too. Twenty riders sustained injuries; three were reported as serious, with one ambulance called.

Companies also tracked the number of safety trainings for riders and members of the public, although that didn’t translate to avoiding crashes: Scoot had the highest number of trainings (15) and the most collisions (20). Lime, which held only two trainings, had a perfect safety record until one of its scooters was involved in a crash into a cement mixer on the Embarcadero that hospitalized a 69-year-old woman with serious injuries.

The scooter companies’ reports didn’t give many details on accidents, but an agency complaint database compiled from company reports and 311 calls did. Although the data is imperfect (not every incident was confirmed in San Francisco and some companies defined categories differently), it paints a more colorful picture of what still isn’t working as the city adjusts to a new transportation method.

Inside the newsroom The Chronicle reported this story by obtaining a database that tracks complaints and monthly reports submitted to the Municipal Transportation Agency from October to December by the four scooter companies allowed to operate in San Francisco. The Chronicle also obtained reports submitted to the city by each company that tracked compliance from October to January.

Read More

Among the issues: Dogs peeing on scooters left unlocked. Device alarms going on incessantly. A scooter abandoned in Sausalito.

A rider hit by a passenger opening a door of a double-parked ride-hail car. A video showing a scooter rider going the wrong way down a South of Market street during rush hour. Business managers and parks employees demanding the removal of improperly parked scooters.

Parking — whether obstructing public access, private property or overwhelming bike racks — was the biggest complaint, although riding on sidewalks might be harder to report as a scooter whizzes by. Nonetheless, companies’ reports to the Municipal Transportation Agency suggested they had near-perfect parking records — more than 99% — compared with total rides.

Enforcing sidewalk riding laws is still an intractable issue. Companies reported 127 violations in the first three months of the program. Lime had the most (59).

The San Francisco Police Department issues moving violations for sidewalk riding, but the city’s traffic court couldn’t provide data on the number of offenses because vehicle violations aren’t scooter-specific. The Municipal Transportation Agency is responsible for making sure companies follow all the other rules and fining companies who break them.

Kato said the agency’s enforcement team is out on the streets every day monitoring for compliance and issuing citations to riders of both permitted and nonpermitted scooters for improper parking. The agency issued a cease-and-desist order to unlicensed scooter operator Go X, which announced last week that it is back in business. The city said it’s still illegal.

The city also puts the onus on companies to educate riders and hold them accountable with fines and suspension of privileges. Companies are tackling law-breaking with 24-hour hotlines, in-app messaging, incentives for wearing helmets and safety classes.

“Some of the problem comes from people not knowing how to operate the scooters, so we’re trying to combat that through community events and education,” Spin spokeswoman Maria Buczkowski said. “Some riders don’t take the time to do it themselves, so it’s important to make sure we’re doing our part to educate them.”

Spin has issued more than 1,200 corrections and warnings based on photos of parked scooters taken by users at the end of their ride. Spin workers patrol neighborhoods and help riders unlock scooters at key commuter locations. To cut down on bad parking, the company plans to introduce four preferred parking spots in SoMa and the Embarcadero; riders can get 25 cents off their next ride if they park there.

Making space for scooters is part of a city conversation about traffic that led to the recent car-free redesign of part of Market Street. Companies stressed that infrastructure protecting riders is vital: A Lime survey found that half of riders ranked a protected bike lane as their No. 1 choice for riding. In one complaint about illegal sidewalk riding in the database, the rider apologized for riding on the sidewalk when confronted and told of feeling unsafe in Van Ness Avenue traffic.

Lime, which introduced a sidewalk riding detection technology in San Jose and hopes to bring it to San Francisco, said it hopes to gather data about where riders are using the sidewalk to help cities know where more bike lanes are needed. Kato said the transit agency will “welcome and will consider all tools to enforce proper/responsible scooter operation.”

Accessibility: The city required companies to design a modified scooter by Jan. 15 to ensure that disabled San Franciscans aren’t shut out from the new transportation form. Although the four companies met the deadline, only Spin and Lime have received requests from riders for their modified scooters a month into the pilot program.

Spin recently got one request from a woman who uses the adapted model to deliver groceries. Lime, which unlike other companies offers to deliver its adapted scooter to a rider’s location on request, had 72 calls from San Francisco, Oakland, Hayward, and Alameda (two requests weren’t fulfilled because scooters can’t be delivered outside the service areas in San Francisco and Oakland).

Equity: The city requires companies to offer discounted rides to low-income riders, as defined by the Municipal Transportation Agency. The idea is to ensure that scooters are a true form of public transportation, used by everyone.

For the first three months of the program, companies signed up 3,566 low-income riders. Scoot had the highest number (2,588), followed by Lime (635), Jump (213) and Spin (130).

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench