Last week, the District Department of Transportation opened up its electric bike and scooter permit applications for 2019, following a pilot program for dockless vehicle companies that had been extended several times. The applications come with a bevy of requirements, including a 600-vehicle cap each for bikes and scooters (with an opportunity to increase fleet numbers by up to 25 percent each quarter), a speed limit of 10 mph for electric scooters and 20 mph for electric bikes, and some per-vehicle costs and fees.

It will loosen up some requirements for dockless companies—increasing the cap from 400 total dockless vehicles to 600 bikes and scooters each, for example—but not by nearly as much as advocates wanted.

Now, the head of government partnerships for Bird, one of D.C.’s electric scooter operators, is saying the new regulations “would render it impossible for any provider to serve the D.C. community and truly advance the shared mission of reducing short car trips.” David Estrada sent a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser on Sunday asking her to  intervene and change DDOT’s permit requirements “in order to ensure that e-scooter providers can continue to operate in the District under fair and practical conditions.”

The company’s main gripe with the proposed regulations appears to be the vehicle cap, which many scooter and bike advocates were hoping would be eliminated entirely. According to Estrada, “a capped number of scooters incentivizes e-scooter providers to put their vehicles only in popular, high-density areas—not in historically underserved areas that would most benefit from an affordable and reliable transit option such as Bird.” (Another of DDOT’s permit regulations requires all scooter and bike operators to place vehicles in every ward each day before 6 a.m., to ensure equitable access.)

Bird also takes issue with DDOT’s 10 mph speed cap on scooters (and 20 mph speed limit on bikes), arguing that these different speed requirements will actually end up making the roads more dangerous: “Vehicles traveling at significantly different speeds will create dangerous conditions, and could increase opportunity for collisions between cars, e-scooters, and bikes. There is also no data to suggest that 10 mph is safer for e-scooter riders than 15 mph,” the letter reads. The motor on Bird scooters currently propels them up to about 15 mph.

Lime, another large player on D.C.’s scooter scene, says it is also concerned by the new permit regulations. “The most common feedback we hear from our D.C. rider community is the need for more scooters, and while we want to be able to reliably and equitably serve D.C. residents throughout the entire city, we cannot do so unless the cap is significantly increased and we are able to scale,” Maggie Gendron, Lime’s director of strategic development, tells DCist via email. Gendron says the company is hoping to work with DDOT on a more flexible set of requirements, particularly with respect to the scooter cap.