2024 Olympic city Paris has banned e-scooters. Brisbane should not be next

Paris has banned e-scooters but Brisbane, also a future Olympics city, should not follow its lead.

November 2023 marks five years since e-scooters arrived in Brisbane. They materialised on streets, literally overnight, as a result of a clever lobbying and PR campaign while authorities scrambled to update rules.

Hireable e-scooters will have been on Brisbane’s streets for five years in November.Credit: Felicity Caldwell

Despite some people loathing e-scooters and despite thousands of injuries and even deaths, they are loved by others, including tourists. Some Brisbane office workers in suits even buy private e-scooters for the daily commute.

Brisbane was the first Australian city to introduce rideshare e-scooters in November 2018.

But the initial trial by San Francisco-based start-up Lime of scooters was almost scuppered at the 11th hour when Transport and Main Roads wrote to the company to warn that participants would be breaking the law and could be fined up to $10,444, as road rules stated they could not travel faster than 10km/h.

But the next morning, Transport Minister Mark Bailey intervened, and issued a temporary exemption, so the trial went ahead, with hundreds of e-scooters appearing in the CBD, South Bank, West End and Fortitude Valley on a Friday morning.

At first, people were not allowed to ride e-scooters on roads, but rules have changed.

Operators changed too, with Brisbane City Council choosing Beam and Neuron in 2021.

As e-scooter use rose, CityCycle’s demise hastened, with the non-electric shared bicycle scheme axed in favour of e-bikes.

E-scooter trips dropped during COVID-19, before returning to pre-pandemic levels, and continuing to grow.

A man rides an e-scooter across Adelaide Street in Brisbane’s CBD in September 2023.

E-scooters are a key micromobility option in Brisbane as society reduces its reliance on cars and people now prefer alternates to public transport.

Data from Ride Report shows average daily trips increased 204 per cent over the past four years, to 8944 in April-June 2023.

The average trip last quarter was two kilometres long and lasted 12 minutes.

Council data has shown that 30 to 50 per cent of e-scooter and e-bike trips replace car trips in Brisbane.

But others loathe e-scooters, and are frustrated by blocked pathways and dangerous behaviour.

About 1.5 patients arrived at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital every day with e-scooter injuries, including head injuries and broken bones, from January to March 2021, with at least 25 per cent involving alcohol and 10 per cent not wearing a helmet.

Almost two in five accidents occurred between 9pm and 5am, and 71 per cent involved male riders.

An October 2019 study of Brisbane users found two-thirds of shared e-scooter riders and 94 per cent of private riders wore helmets.

Paris – a tourist mecca and next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games host – banned rental e-scooters, amid concerns about injuries and deaths, while also removing on-street car parks and building hundreds of kilometres of bike lanes.

It remains illegal to ride private e-scooters outside private property in New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory, while the Gold Coast has shared e-bikes but not scooters.

But when the Olympics come to Brisbane in 2032, we want to make it easy for tourists for traverse our sprawling subtropical city, without hopping in a car and clogging roads, or getting worked into a sweaty lather.

A University of Queensland study found more than 80 per cent of visitors who used e-scooters agreed they enhanced their experience, increasing the number of places they could see, places that would be missed if they caught a taxi or Uber.

The answer lies in well-connected networks of off-road paths so e-scooter users and cyclists do not tangle with cars on roads or pedestrians on footpaths.

And rather than imposing heavy-handed bans, there should be more education and enforcement of safety measures, including the use of helmets, and not allowing drink-riding or doubling-up.