After a five-month hiatus, e-scooters—those oft-debated, much-studied transportation devices—will return to Portland in April.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) announced Monday morning that its year-long "Shared Electric Scooter Pilot Program" will kick off April 26. This pilot follows a 120-day trial run conducted by PBOT last year, during which e-scooter companies Bird, Lime, and Skip dropped a total of 2,043 pay-per-minute e-scooters accross the city.

PBOT expects up to 15,000 e-scooters to be on Portland streets by January 2020. We don't know which brand of e-scooters those will be yet—the city's still taking applications from companies interested in participating.

“E-scooters are unquestionably fun to ride,” said Transportation Commissioner Chloe Eudaly in a press release issued Monday. “The challenge of this second pilot will be to see if it’s possible to mitigate problems while demonstrating that e-scooters can benefit Portlanders left out of the economic mainstream and advance our city’s climate goals.”

During the first pilot, 34 percent of riders said they used e-scooters instead of a taxi, Uber, or Lyft, and two-thirds of people using e-scooters said they used them to get from one specific location to another, rather than just for fun.

PBOT used data collected during that first pilot to determine rules and parameters for the upcoming second run. For example, the bureau will allow e-scooter companies who satisfy certain requirements to put more scooters on the road.

Those incentivized requests include serving East Portland—a low-income area that often lags behind the rest of the city in transportation access—and providing e-scooter options for differently abled people.

PBOT also intends to crack down on people disobeying e-scooter rules during the upcoming pilot. People who ride their e-scooters on public sidewalks can be hit with a $50 fine, and there will be a $15 fine for illegal parking. During the initial pilot, PBOT found that about 13 percent of e-scooter users parked their scooters so that they blocked pedestrian traffic, rather than using the designated parking areas.

Data from the first pilot showed that when e-scooter riders felt safe riding in the street, sidewalk riding reduced significantly. PBOT plans to add a 25 cent surcharge to each e-scooter ride, and use that money to fund protected bike lanes and other street safety improvements. Portland city code allows e-scooter riders to use both main roads and bike lanes.

PBOT lists other incentives for prospective companies in its application form. It asks that companies not require riders have driver’s licenses to use an e-scooter, and that they have an app available in 10 different languages so that there isn’t a barrier to entry.

As the Oregonian reported, PBOT doesn’t expect companies to meet all of its ambitious incentives—meaning the peak number of e-scooters in Portland during this pilot will probably be around 9,000, rather than the possible 15,000.