Submitted photo Bird scooters are shown in promotional photos from the company, provided by the city of Dunkirk Planning Department. The city and Bird have agreed to set up a ride-sharing scooter program.

The city of Dunkirk will be getting ride-share scooters.

Bird, an electric vehicle company that does similar programs in many other cities, is providing the scooters. The Dunkirk Common Council approved a memorandum of understanding with the company last week.

The scooters will be placed in various places around the city, and users will get on an app to access them, according to Vince DeJoy, city director of planning and development.

“They can’t move them, they can’t carry them, without going through the app,” he said. “There’s a charge of $1 per ride plus an additional charge per mile. The city does get a small part of that.” Operators must have driver’s licenses and be at least 21 years old.

When a rider is finished, the person must take pictures of the scooter and download it to the app to prove it has been returned. “The company comes and picks them up and puts them in strategic locations,” DeJoy said.

“We can set up geofences, so to speak, so if there’s areas that the police feel it’s not safe or that would be in violation of vehicle and traffic laws for these types of scooters, they would not be available to ride.”

City officials are not going to allow the scooters on Lake Shore Drive but they can go on the bike paths. DeJoy said they will mostly be located around the waterfront.

“These Bird scooters are predominately seen in a lot of tourism areas, along oceanfronts and lakefronts,” DeJoy said. He said the cities of Olean and Oswego have them, and their officials gave the program high marks.

Police Chief David Ortolano said his main concern was how the scooters would be returned and retrieved. “As Vince said, we can limit the area through GPS where they can be operated, we can limit the time of operation… they’ll automatically lock up when they’re done and they’re very heavy so they shouldn’t be very easy to take anywhere for anyone to steal them, hopefully.”

Ortolano said the scooters would be very good for waterfront use but could also be useful on Central Avenue.

“It’s a good idea to try, we can always change it if we want… we have total control over the entire operation and we can make it what we want from it. So I think we give it a try this summer and see what happens,” Ortolano said.