It's nearly Bird season in Windsor and Tecumseh.
Bird Canada is preparing to bring back its e-scooters and e-bikes to the area for the season.
Austin Spademan, head of government partnerships with Bird says they are aiming for around March 17.
"Weather always plays a factor, and nobody has a crystal ball but things are looking like they're warming up," he said. "We're feeling pretty good about it, so barring any unforeseen snow events, that's what we're targeting for right now."
Last year Bird expanded its service to Tecumseh to allow residents to travel back and forth from the city along the waterfront, something that will be be rolled out at launch according to Spademan.
He says 2024 was another record setting year for Bird Canada as a whole, including in Windsor.
"I think we're at a level where everybody that's used the service is a regular user in the city at this point," Spademan said. "With the expansion we brought on a bunch of new people, and we had great growth because of that in terms of our total ridership."
Spademan says Bird's deployment strategy involves making scooters available to residents within walking distance.
"I think a lot of people when they think of our service, they're like 'oh that's for tourists', well in Windsor and in actually most of the areas that we operate that's certainly not the case," he said. "It's the residents of the city that need to use us multiple times a week to get to get to errands or get to and from work. That's really our bread and butter, so what we try to do is we try to basically match our service and our placements with that demand."
It's $1.15 to unlock a scooter and between 0.30 to 0.40 cents a minute to use through the Bird Canada ride app, according to Spademan.
He says depending on the weather, the scooters could be available as late as November.