By Cara Waters
Hire e-scooters are set to be banned from the CBD, with the City of Melbourne likely to rip up its contract with operators Lime and Neuron.
Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece and Councillor Davydd Griffith will move a motion at Tuesday night’s council meeting to cancel the city’s contracts with the companies.
Riders with e-scooters in Melbourne’s CBD on Monday evening.Credit: Simon Schluter
Lime and Neuron will be given 30 days’ notice of the contracts’ cancellation, which will result in the removal of their e-scooters from the city.
The move might result in a legal stoush with the companies, which have spent millions of dollars on their operations in Melbourne.
About 1500 e-scooters were available for hire in Melbourne as part of a two-year trial, but they have been the subject of a flood of complaints about them blocking footpaths and endangering pedestrians.
The state government is making permanent e-scooter hire schemes legal in October, despite the controversial two-year trial with Lime and Neuron in the Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip council areas.
City of Melbourne officers initially recommended e-scooters should be permitted to remain operating with a range of measures to rein in bad behaviour, but The Age has been told by multiple sources, who do not want to speak on the record ahead of the council meeting, that a motion will be proposed to ban the scooters.
Reece declined to comment ahead of the motion. But last week, he said that while he had been a supporter of e-scooters when they launched, he was fed up with users breaking the rules, and seeing scooters strewn all over the city like rubbish.
“The shared e-scooter scheme has been popular in Melbourne, but there has also been serious issues,” he said last week. “Riders continue to break the law, endangering others and themselves, creating a nuisance on our streets.”
Arron Wood, who is running for lord mayor in October’s local government elections, announced plans to ban scooters from the Hoddle Grid as part of his election campaign last week.
“Nick Reece was very happy to take a photo op with scooters and very slow to tackle serious safety issues resulting in hundreds of people ending up in emergency room departments, some with lifelong injuries,” Wood said.
“Just last weekend, the lord mayor was talking about tough new measures while talking up scooters as a valuable part of Melbourne’s transport mix.”
Wood said that less than 48 hours after Reece’s comments, the lord mayor might move a motion to tear up e-scooter contracts without any due process.
“This is a Town Hall leadership that is in chaos, and sadly, it’s our local residents and local business owners who have paid the price,” Wood said.
Royal Melbourne Hospital plastic and reconstructive surgeon Anand Ramakrishnan said there had been a marked spike in presentation to hospitals as a result of e-scooter use.
“As a clinician involved in caring for people who come off e-scooters, I have seen an alarming rise in the number of people who come through our emergency department,” he said.
“About 4 per cent of facial fractures over the last two years have been due to e-scooters. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, some of these injuries have been really life-changing for these individuals.”
Ramakrishnan said the nature of e-scooter use was often opportunistic and unplanned, and there was a lack of careful enforcement.
A rider on an e-scooter in Melbourne’s CBD on Monday night.Credit: Simon Schluter
“Obviously, if they are banned from the CBD, we will see a reduction in that form of injury,” he said.
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. Police have issued 1964 fines since December 2021.
Police said they 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 Lime spokesperson said: “Lime is committed to safe e-scooter usage in the City of Melbourne. As the global leader in e-scooter technology, Lime is committed to delivering the technology required to provide the safest possible outcome for all road users.
“What we can appreciate is that the councillors are hearing from a very vocal minority of local residents.”
Neuron was contacted for comment.
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