Oakland’s mopeds are here — and boy are they being...

If you live, work or play in Oakland, the black mopeds with blue accents have been impossible to miss.

That’s because last month, Revel, an electric moped-sharing company, parked 1,000 mopeds on curbs throughout Oakland. It’s the newest, rentable way to get around the city. It costs $1 to unlock and then 29 cents per minute for the ride — and the mopeds are equipped with helmets.

While it’s unclear whether this is a money-maker for Revel, someone is racking in some dough: the city of Oakland.

In its first three weeks of service, Revel racked up almost $13,000 in parking fines.

Oakland parking enforcement officers issued 178 citations to illegally parked mopeds between their Jan. 10 launch date and Feb. 4, according to Sean Maher, Oakland’s Department of Transportation public information officer. That’s cost Revel about $12,700 in fines.

This is a company that announced that it raised, from investors, $27.6 million in funding in October. So the fines look like small potatoes.

But the fact that the mopeds are taking up street parking — and sometimes illegally — has captured the attention of Oakland residents, many of whom are complaining to the Oakland Department of Transportation.

A majority of the fines — 123 — were for street-cleaning violations. There were 32 mopeds ticketed for parking in a red zone and 17 for parking on sidewalks.

Maher told me that all 1,000 moped license plates are in the city’s parking enforcement system, enabling the city to hold the company accountable for parking compliance.

Revel and city officials see the mopeds as an affordable alternative to cars. Others simply see a nuisance taking up precious street parking in already crammed urban areas. Some people have complained that the mopeds were “abandoned” for days.

I haven’t seen many people riding the mopeds. Revel declined to provide ridership numbers.

“We’re not going to get into the exact numbers, but I can tell you that the past few weeks have gone very well in Oakland and the feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive,” Frank Reig, Revel’s CEO, said.

Bikes and scooters have become legitimate commuter vehicles, but Oakland has a reputation for not welcoming bike and scooter share companies.

In July 2017, bike docks began sprouting in Bay Area neighborhoods. Some saw the bikes, and the scooters that soon followed, as a symbol of gentrification. Cities set aside space for the rentable bikes while longtime residents of historically low-income neighborhoods fought displacement. Who could afford a joyride?

Bikes and scooters were tossed into Lake Merritt. Someone cut the brakes at one station at Cavour Street and Shafter Avenue. In another incident, someone slashed the tires of bikes docked on Telegraph Avenue. In San Francisco, vandals gashed tires and hung a bike in a tree.

And almost three years later, there still isn’t a bike dock east of High Street in East Oakland.

But almost all of Oakland has access to mopeds. The service area extends east to 105th Avenue. Looking at Revel’s app, there are dozens of mopeds in the Eastmont, Elmhurst, Arcadia Park and Brookfield Village neighborhoods.

“That’s where we have folks who need transportation options,” said Ryan Russo, director of Oakland’s Department of Transportation. “We’ve heard of demand for these kinds of options in the engagement that we’ve done.”

Oakland was the fifth city to have Revel mopeds, joining New York, Washington, Miami and Austin, Texas. Reig told me he got the idea for the company from traveling in South America, Europe and Asia, where mopeds are one of the dominant forms of transportation.

Revel’s already talking expansion to Berkeley, Alameda and Emeryville.

“Let’s be honest: How many BART stations are throughout those neighborhoods?” Reig asked.

He said the company picked Oakland first because “the need was clear.”

“It reminded us a lot of sort of like Brooklyn and Queens,” Reig said. “You have this large population that just needs more options. It just seemed like the perfect fit.”

The city gave Revel an operating permit for the mopeds — which runs through June, so we’re in the midst of a six-month test.

“If everybody hates it and nobody uses it, it’s not going to continue,” Russo said. “But if it’s popular and people use it and it can ultimately become sustainable, it’ll end up staying.”

Revel opened a warehouse in West Oakland and hired 30 employees who live in Oakland. The employees aren’t contractors or on-demand gig workers. Each position, from field mechanic to customer support, is an employee with health care and vacation.

Now that’s something I can ride with.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr