Originally published Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 12:00 AM

Scooter-moving fine passed by City Council

The Seattle City Council voted Monday to impose a $38 fine on anyone caught moving someone else's scooter on the street.

By Noelene Clark

Seattle Times staff reporter

The Seattle City Council voted Monday to impose a $38 fine on anyone caught moving someone else's scooter on the street.

The measure passed 7-0. Council members Tom Rasmussen and Richard McIver were absent.

"We cannot tolerate this behavior in Seattle at a time when we want to make it easier for people to use alternative transportation," said Councilmember Jan Drago, whose Transportation Committee recommended the measure.

Enforcement of the hands-off rule will be difficult because police must catch the scooter-mover in the act.

The measure follows scooter owners' complaints that motorists were moving scooters from parking spots on the street to make room for cars, making the two-wheeled vehicles vulnerable to damage and undeserved parking tickets.

Motorcycle and scooter owners are required by law to follow the same street-parking rules as motorists and can be ticketed for parking on sidewalks or between marked spots.

The $38 fine, which covers all motor vehicles but is mainly intended to protect scooter owners, is largely a housekeeping measure.

Seattle already has a law against moving someone else's vehicle to a spot where parking is prohibited, but the new ordinance penalizes people who move a vehicle even within or to another legal parking spot. The law protects any vehicle legally parked on city property, including the street or in city lots.

The law is the first in an ongoing effort to improve parking for Seattle's growing scooter population.

More than 55,000 motorcycles and motor scooters are registered in King County, according to the state Department of Licensing. And with gas prices soaring, the number of scooters — which get 60 to 100 miles per gallon — is on the rise.

At a March forum organized by Councilmember Sally Clark, scooter owners complained there weren't enough two-wheel-only parking spots, and that people were moving their scooters and stealing their parking stickers.

The council's Transportation Committee is talking to the city's transportation department about designating parking spots as two-wheel only, discounting parking rates for scooters and motorcycles and creating a quarterly parking pass for the two-wheeled vehicles to replace the stealable stickers.