If you’re riding a scooter to the ball game, you’ll have to walk a little at the end.
The Colorado Rockies have banned people from riding scooters, bicycles and skateboards along Blake Street near Coors Field during games.
The Rockies typically close sections of Blake Street and 21st Street to automobiles on game days. This season, riders are being asked to dismount and walk near the stadium starting about two hours before home games.
Team officials declined to comment on the record about the new policy, but it comes amid heavier scooter traffic and a recent scooter crash near the stadium.
The crash happened just before 9 p.m. on June 28, during a Rockies game against the L.A. Dodgers. The scooter rider was attempting to pass another scooter near Blake and 20th streets when her “handlebars got caught in the iron fence rail,” according to a police report.
The woman fell from the scooter at an unknown speed and landed face-first on the sidewalk. She was knocked unconscious and taken to Denver Health by ambulance, the report states. Her identity wasn’t disclosed by police.
It’s unclear whether the crash happened inside the closed portion of Blake; it was near the Monfort Companies office on 20th Street, the police report states.
After “recent conflicts and near-misses involving pedestrians, the Rockies and DPD came together to step up education efforts around the need for people on bikes, scooters and skateboards to dismount,” wrote Nancy Kuhn, a spokesperson for Denver Public Works, in an email. Police are not currently ticketing people who break the rule, she added.
Mobility advocate Jonathan Fertig said on Twitter this week that a police officer asked him to dismount his bicycle near the stadium, and that the officer blamed the change on a scooter crash. Denver police directed a reporter to the Rockies for comment on the policy.
Fertig said it was troubling to see cyclists lose access to an area because of scooters, and said the city should instead close streets when cars kill people. A total of 59 people died in traffic crashes in Denver in 2018, according to city data, including five bicyclists and 19 pedestrians.
It’s unclear whether the injured woman had rented the scooter from one of the “dockless” services.
Legislators in Nashville, Tenn., are considering a ban on electric scooters after a man’s death in May; the rider was allegedly intoxicated and swerved in front of an SUV, The Tennessean reported.
Aspen and Boulder also have temporarily banned commercial dockless-vehicle businesses within their boundaries.
In Denver, rental companies have put 2,850 scooters and e-bikes on the streets. The city also has passed rules to get scooters off sidewalks. There have been no reported scooter-related deaths in Denver.
This article was updated with a comment from Denver Public Works.
