Call for CBD e-scooter ban and independent review of Adelaide City Council’s tender process

A high profile company told to scoot out of the CBD has called for Adelaide to hit the brakes on the tech and an independent review of the city council’s “incompetent” tender process.

• Beam e-scooters kicked out of Adelaide’s CBD
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E-scooters should be banned from city streets until a full review by Adelaide City Council into its controversial tender process is completed, a high-profile provider has claimed.

Lime and Beam scooters, which both failed to secure contracts, have slammed the council, saying it had “serious concerns” about its due diligence.

Lime said the council’s process bordered on “incompetent”.

Council chief executive Mark Goldstone this week announced an internal inquiry into the “expression-of-interest” process that saw the council appoint RIDE and Neuron to operate scooters in the city until February 2022.

Mitchell Price from Lime, which operates in 130 cities and 30 countries, said he called for an independent review into the council’s tender process in April last year.

Lime missed out on a council contract extension, despite pioneering the technology in South Australia during a three-month trial.

Mitchell Price from Lime. Picture: Glenn Hampson

“The ratepayers deserve a full independent expert review and no scooters should be on the streets of Adelaide until the review is completed,” Mr Price said.

“This process has been the most bureaucratic, confusing, convoluted and disappointing in our history.

“The word ‘incompetent’ would not be far off the mark.”

Mr Price said the council had failed to communicate during the tender process.

“Our award-winning Generation 3 scooter is in Adelaide waiting to be demonstrated but they wouldn’t meet with us,” he said.

“The council has decided we haven’t met their threshold but they couldn’t tell me what their threshold is.”

The Advertiser understands council staff told Beam and Lime on Wednesday about their failure to secure contracts. Brad Kitschke from Beam said the feedback had given his firm more “serious concerns” about the tender process.

“We’ve presented those concerns to the council and now we wait for the review to conclude,” he said.

Mr Kitschke said the council had given no negative feedback to Beam during its nine months in the city. He said he was disappointed that communication between Beam’s chief executive Alan Jiang and council had become public.

“It wasn’t our intention that the letter to the council CEO should become public and we certainly didn’t release it to the media,” he said.

Mr Goldstone confirmed that a review of the expression-of-interest process had been started after a “complaint” and would inform parties if any further action was required.