City of Whitewater Public Works Director Brad Marquardt announced at the Common Council meeting on May 6 that he learned on April 28 that Bird Scooters will be discontinuing their service in the city. The company stated that all the scooters will be removed by May 14. The representative stated that the decision was driven by the impact of tariffs on company-wide vehicle shipments and allocations.

Whitewater’s usage, driven largely by UW-Whitewater students, has been considerably larger than that of nearby communities whose service was lost: Beloit had 8,004 trips in 2022 and was then discontinued. Janesville had 9,971 trips in 2023 and then was discontinued. Nonetheless, Whitewater’s usage declined last year, as shown in the table below that was provided by Marquardt.

The Daily Jefferson County Union reported that Bird’s Director of Partnerships and Policy Jimmy Gilman, stated that overall ridership declined by 21% from 2022 to 2024, which was a “contributing factor” to the decision. Gilman told the Daily Union that there were 35,819 trips made in 2022 and 28,361 in 2024. The Union also quoted Gilman as saying “As is the case for many businesses, tariffs are impacting the total number of scooters and spare parts that we are able to receive as part of our company-wide inventory at the moment. Based on this, our revised fleet allocations contributed to making the difficult decision to cease operations in a limited number of small Bird programs, including Whitewater.”