They arrived in early 2019 and they didn't even stay a year. The scooters, which at first generated a lot of curiosity, have already left the Faro and Portimão, but should return soon.
Contacted by Sul Informação, Sophie Matias, councilor of the Chamber of Faro, confirmed that «at the moment, there are no scooters here» and that the two companies that rented this equipment in the Algarve capital, Voi and Circ (formerly called Flash), withdrew from the municipality.
“These operations enter and leave cities. In our case, we do not have any regulations, there is nothing to prevent the entry or exit of these businesses. We only have memoranda of understanding,” he said.
The councilor of the Chamber of Faro he says he does not have "concrete information about what happened" for the companies to leave, but believes that "it could have been a financial issue".
In the case of Circ, with whom the Sul Informação he said, the company guarantees that “it has not given up on the Algarve”, although it has “suspended the operation”.
«The operation, in Faro, has been going well and we have a good dialogue with the Chamber. In Portimão, we had a pilot project that ended in October, it had a defined end date. But the feedback what we have from the Chamber is that it went well and that the project is to prolong», framed an official company source.
“What we thought was that, at this time of winter, it would be opportune to suspend the operation in order to deepen the agreements with other municipalities. In other words, there is no giving up here. The goal is to suspend to prepare for 2020», added the same source.
When installed in Faro, then Flash had «the expectation of extending the operation to other cities in the Algarve, so that the business would be viable, bearing in mind that we are talking about a large investment. For this type of service, there needs to be scale”.
«We have been, over the last few months, starting contacts with several municipalities in the Algarve. But that takes time. However, we think that, in 2020, there will be more Algarve municipalities to accept pilot projects with scooters, as has already happened in Portimão and in Faro», said the source contacted by our newspaper.
Voi, a company of Swedish origin, withdrew from Portugal, as it announced, due to the disorganization of the sector, namely in the city of Lisbon.
However, revealed the councilor Sophie Matias, there are two other companies that «are willing to enter into Faro. With one of them, we have even signed a memorandum of understanding».
These agreements stipulate that the Chamber does not oppose the entry of these operators and that "companies must provide monthly data and information on the operation" and meet regularly with the executive. It was also written that if there were serious problems associated with this equipment, the companies “would have to leave immediately”.
The experience of scooters is, moreover, seen "with good eyes" by local authorities from Faro.
«I was the one who was in contact with the companies and, at a first stage, it was realized that it was more to experiment, it was seen as a leisure instrument – a joke, come on. Later, there was a transformation in the use of scooters as transport for last mile, in other words, to do the last mile”, said Sophie Matias.
In this second phase, “you could see many scooters parked at the door of buildings, on the edge of the city, during the night”.
“For me, the advantage of scooters was that they introduced the theme of smooth mobility. There is now a new look and people have realized that there may be other means of transport alternative to the car. There was discussion and a rethinking of these issues», said the councilor of the Farense Chamber.
For the rest, he added, there were no major problems associated with this equipment. “With the police, we realized that there were no major accidents, nothing dramatic. We didn't get many complaints either, just one or two occasional things, like a scooter that ended up on the dock or that was poorly parked», he guaranteed.
Soon, it is expected that scooters will be seen again in the Algarve's capital, but there is no guarantee that they will stay for a long time. “This is a market that fluctuates a lot, which is very volatile. After all, this is not public transport”, concluded Sophie Matias.
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