Tech workers in San Francisco are pining for the return of electric scooters, after first putting them on blast for hogging the sidewalks

Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Plenty of people in San Francisco miss the electric scooters that once blanketed streets and sidewalks.

• The electric scooter armageddon in San Francisco was over almost as quickly as it began.
• When the scooters arrived seemingly overnight in San Francisco, tech workers took to social media to express their outrage. That's no longer the case.
• After the city passed a temporary ban on scooters, tech workers in San Francisco have been on Twitter declaring how much they miss scooters.

After taking to social media to gripe about the avalanche of electric scooters, tech workers in San Francisco are now begging the city to allow their return.

"Seriously though, when are we getting these scooters back in SF?" Parsa Saljoughian, an investor at venture firm IVP, which recently backed Lime, posted on Twitter.

Sarah Guo, a general partner at Greylock, said in a tweet, "Come back to SF, scooters."

"Yes please!" said Dennis Yang, founder of bot analytics company Dashbot.io, in a response to Guo's tweet. "So many short trips here in SF that they are perfect for."

Yang added that he has 70 credits left for Lime scooters, some of which expire in 13 days. But the chances he will be able to use them in San Francisco in time are slim.

After scooters hit the streets of San Francisco in March, many residents - including some tech workers - raged against the electric vehicles for routinely blocking sidewalks and building entrances, causing people to trip, and making sidewalks less accessible for people with mobility issues. The city attorney's office heard their complaints, and it eventually slapped three, high-profile scooter startups with cease and desist orders.

A dozen companies, including Lime, Bird, Uber (via its acquisition of bike-sharing startup Jump), and Lyft, are now vying for a limited number of permits. The city said in a blog post last week that scooters probably won't return to San Francisco until August.

While some tech workers cheered the demise of scooters, others are pining for their return in San Francisco. We've noticed entrepreneurs and venture capitalists sharing how much they miss scooters on Twitter in recent weeks.

On Monday, Lime - the scooter startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz - released a report looking back at its first year. More than six million rides have been taken on the company's vehicles, which include pedal bikes, electric bikes, and electric scooters.

The report showed that San Franciscans cannot get enough of the company's scooters. In a survey sent to over 7,000 users living in the area, 93% of riders said they thought the city needed more scooters to satisfy demand. Lime booked about 300,000 rides on its electric scooters in San Francisco before the city temporarily banned all scooters.

Michel Euler/AP

Arthur-Louis Jacquier, general general of Lime France, (right) rides a scooter after the California-based company launched a fleet of scooters in Paris, France, earlier this year.

In June, Lime told Business Insider it's already working on a solution for the complaint that largely led to the scooter crackdown in the first place: The fact that because there's no dedicated scooter parking, they tend to get dumped anywhere and everywhere.

The company is in talks with SpotHero, an app that lets drivers find, reserve, and pay for parking spots on their phones, to dock some scooters in parking garages. The idea is that dedicated parking will help riders find scooters more easily, and it gives scooters a home inside of SpotHero's garages and lots so they take up less space on streets and sidewalks.

According to SpotHero, it's in conversation with several scooter companies. SpotHero CEO and cofounder Mark Lawrence said the talks are still early, but he's optimistic that his startup will partner with others to improve the scooter situation for everybody.

"The way we do it isn't so much important as the why, which is, so we can make mobility better, so we can reduce congestion, so we can get people to move in and out of cities," Lawrence told Business Insider.

See also:

• Uber just hinted it could be in serious trouble if it doesn't conquer the market for electric bikes and scooters
• Uber, Alphabet, and top VCs just poured $335 million into scooter startup Lime - here's why one investor thinks it's the future of commuting
• Top Silicon Valley investors explain why an electric scooter startup raising $400 million in 4 months is 'genius' and worth every penny
• This CEO says his hot startup is working on a fix for the most annoying thing about the San Francisco scooter craze