E-scooter numbers in the city to be cut to rein in footpath ‘circus’

The number of hire e-scooters in the CBD could be reduced and users forced to park in dedicated on-street bays, following a flood of complaints about them blocking footpaths and endangering pedestrians.

Permanent e-scooter hire schemes will become legal in October, following a controversial two-year trial with operators Lime and Neuron in the Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip council areas.

E-scooters outside Flinders Street Station. Credit: Scott McNaughton

Other local councils will be able to sign contracts for e-scooter hire companies to operate in their areas provided they meet a set of minimum standards the Department of Transport and Planning is developing.

The City of Melbourne intends to continue to permit Lime and Neuron to operate within the city, but councillors will consider a range of measures to rein in bad behaviour at a meeting on Tuesday night.

“Most riders do the right thing – but some continue to break the law,” Lord Mayor Nick Reece said.

“They endanger themselves and others by riding on footpaths, riding without helmets, double-dinking and leaving e-scooters thrown across the city like rubbish.”

A council report to the Future Melbourne Committee recommends reducing the number of hire scooters in the municipality from 1500 to 1200, with a cap of 800 within the central Hoddle Grid, by October 31.

Other measures include forcing Lime and Neuron to increase “foot patrols” to tidy up hazardously parked scooters and review all end-of-trip parking photos submitted by their customers.

The council will develop on-road designated parking zones in busy areas – something used extensively in other cities – while the operators will have to establish “exclusion zones” along streets where footpath riding is common.

First-time riders would only be able to hire a scooter during the day for their first three trips, to limit drunken joyriding. Fees paid by Lime and Neuron to the council would increase from $1 to $1.50 per scooter per day.

E-scooters parked on a CBD footpath.Credit: Scott McNaughton

Mayoral candidate Arron Wood said he will ban scooters in the Hoddle Grid entirely and reduce their maximum speed from 20km/h to 12km/h if he wins the council election in October.

“We need to take immediate and decisive action to ensure that e-scooters are used safely and responsibly,” the former deputy lord mayor said.

The council report says hire scooters had proven to be a valuable and environmentally friendly new transport option, but had also caused several “safety and amenity issues”, particularly for CBD pedestrians.

The state government has said it will increase fines for illegal e-scooter use and legislate minimum standards for hire operators, including having technology on scooters to detect if they are being used on a footpath.

However, the council report says it will “not be understood for some time” if those measures work, and recommends the City of Melbourne delays entering into any long-term contracts with scooter companies until they are proven to be effective.

Rafael Camillo, president of community group Residents 3000, said he was overwhelmed with complaints about hire e-scooters, which was the top issue of concern for people living in the CBD.

“For older people and visually impaired people, they block the footpath. They keep riding on the footpath – it’s a circus,” Camillo said. “We’re not against the private e-scooters. But the commercial ones are causing more harm than good.”

Camillo said the hire companies had failed to show during the two-year trial that they could address concerns with footpath riding and parking, and the City of Melbourne should ban them if they could not solve those issues.

Victoria Walks executive officer Ben Rossiter said there should be compulsory on-street parking areas so trips did not start and end on footpaths.

Rossiter said footpath detection technology was untested, and increasing fines for riders would not impact behaviour either.

“Police already do that [fine riders] and we know that it’s not working. The solution is fining the operators for the unsafe and illegal use of their products,” he said.

“We do think e-scooters have a place but that place is not on footpaths, and they haven’t resolved that issue.”

Victoria Police fined almost 300 riders during a two-day enforcement blitz in Melbourne’s CBD in May, including 73 who were riding on footpaths, and have issued 1964 fines since December 2021.

A police spokesperson said police had recorded 860 collisions involving e-scooters since December 2021 including seven fatal crashes. The data includes both hire scooters and privately owned scooters, which the state has also legalised.

A state government spokesman said a list of prequalified scooter hire operators councils can work with, which meet its new minimum standards, would be developed.

Fines for footpath riding will increase from $198 to $296, and riding without a helmet will jump from $247 to $395.

“We know there have been safety concerns, and that’s why we have thoroughly assessed their use and are introducing some of the toughest new laws in the country to make e-scooters safer,” the government spokesman said.

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