Scoot-den

Alleviating Transportation Issues in Rural Indigenous Communities With Electric Scooters

With its Ponderosa pine and desert vegetation, the 27,000 square mile area that the Navajo Nation calls home is deeply rooted in custom, traditions and the history of the Diné people. However, there comes transportation challenges in this vastness. Factors such as rurality, vehicle-dependency and financial difficulties often leave residents to trek miles by foot, putting themselves at risk of injury and in some cases death.  

Today, the Navajo Nation consists of 18,000 miles of roads, 80% of them unpaved for the use of over 300,000 people. Due to its size, families’ livelihoods are vehicle-dependent for daily survival and stand as the single largest investment for Navajo families. This has opened a marketplace for exploitation by border town dealerships where aggressive sale tactics are used to sell unreliable vehicles, leaving more community members financially compromised and isolated, having to face large distances by foot.

According to the US Department of Transportation, rates of pedestrian injury were calculated as a measure of risk disparity for Native Americans as well as having the highest rates of pedestrian injury and death per capita of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. As some are left with no alternative but to walk to get simple items or complete simple tasks, residents risk becoming a part of this tragic statistic every day.

Our solution to alleviate these issues is what we call Scoot-den; an electric scooter project. Since the scooter’s urban debut in 2018, this form of transportation has provided insight into quick, affordable and accessible means of getting from point A to point B, but it has yet to be applied in a rural setting. Though Scoot-den would be reflective of its urban counterpart with a user friendly app and provide payment to residents who charge the scooters, we would be equipped with a product created to overcome various terrains with additional features such as a reflectors for visibility and a basket to transport small groceries. Scoot-den would service a radius around Navajo Nation cities and townships to create a network of easy accessibility and maintain an organized approach to recovering scooters. Furthermore, during periods of high traffic such as the Navajo Fair, visitors and residents can benefit from this inexpensive technology.

A future goal of Scoot-den’s is to also generate jobs for the Navajo Nation in maintaining the scooters through a unique revenue model. Our model’s main focus is to assess community based transportation issues while creating a means for Diné people and the Navajo Nation to make profits off of the project’s revenue.

However, with any project there are challenges to overcome. One of our challenges in reaching more people would be to ensure scooters are correctly organized and are conveniently accessible throughout different cities and townships, but through open communication and partnership, we can best tailor our project to the community’s specific needs together.

We hope in the future Scoot-den will provide a positive impact to traveling more safely and financially securely through the Navajo Nation.

Scoot-den, much like its urban counterpart, would have a user friendly app to access and track scooters as well as provide payment to residents charging the scooters. However, we would be equipped with a products created to overcome all forms of rough terrain that comes with lives ing in rural settings. With the use of existing technologies in the scooter and tracking businesses Scoot-den would tailor them to meet transportation needs that come with geographical remoteness.

In Urban settings, the scooter has thrived and become popular among peoples of all ages, however, its potential could also transcend to rural communities where vehicles are less available, and pedestrians are exposed to safety issues having less access to sidewalks. This project provides a new insight to how electric scooters could provide community members a means to travel safely and more quickly on the reservation all the while leaving a smaller carbon footprint than a vehicle would.

Just as in urban settings, the electric scooters would have a $1 access fee and be rated 20 cents per minute of usage. Those who take the scooters to charge overnight would receive compensation of $5 per scooter, creating a self-sustaining cycle of having charged scooters for the next riders. Diné people would make money by becoming a "charger"  while the Navajo Nation would receive money from usage fees. With the collaboration of the community and proper organizations, accessible scooter stations would be mapped out to meet the needs of the nation.

Scoot-den would potentially service thousands of individuals residing on the Navajo Nation. By providing affordable and self-sustaining means of transportation, we are able to solve multiple problems that come with geographical remoteness of many indigenous communities. In time, this project could generate jobs for the Navajo Nation to upkeep and maintain scooters.

Our main goal for the next year would be to partner with different indigenous nations, scooter and tracking businesses to implement the project on the Navajo Nation. In the future, we would be able to expand our project and its services to other remote indigenous communities such as the Hopi Reservation, who also face similar challenges with transportation.

As a member of the Tsuut’ina Nation, I came to accept that if I needed to get anywhere I had to walk. Walking long distances just to get to a neighbor’s or store struck me as a child and has since been a concern for me. Through my experience, searching for new applications to current technologies has become a focal point in integrating solutions for the largest reservation in North America. Though we have yet to launch Scoot-den, we are forming an indigenous led team to work on different strategies to best execute the project.

MIT Solve has stood to be an accessible source to many self sustaining and cutting edge projects in technology for the benefit of indigenous peoples. With Scoot-den, our core goal is to provide accessible and affordable transportation through different technological pathways with the desire to also create self-sustaining projects for indigenous communities. In the future, Scoot-den could generate employment for native youth in support of their growth in tech and scooter businesses, giving back to their home communities. Together, we can create a positive change for our indigenous communities through technology and innovation.

Currently, we are are developing strategic plans to partner with organizations across Indian country and with mainstream industries to ensure this project’s success. We plan to reach out to various Navajo Nation residing cities and partner to create plans that best suits their needs. With our partnerships we can work out reasonable fees and costs that serve the Navajo Nation’s residents as well as creating service routes and locations for easy accessibility to the scooters.  

Partnerships will be detrimental to the future and success of Scoot-den. Our main goal with partnerships is to create one with the Navajo Nation and its residents that encourages open communication and collectively guide the project to be geared towards the community’s exact needs. Other partnerships, such as with scooter companies like Pro Dirt Scooters, Rover and Razor would allow us to provide riders with a product that is safe, durable and built to tackle tough terrains.