Brisbane City Council threatens to kick Lime scooters out of city

Lime faces being kicked out of Brisbane within weeks after council issued the scooter company with a safety ultimatum.

LIME faces being kicked out of Brisbane within weeks unless they can prove that their electric scooters are safe to use.

Brisbane City Council put the scooter company on notice on Wednesday night, and also called on the State Government to crackdown on users who flout the law.

Lime have been told they have two weeks to demonstrate their scooters are safe or they will have their temporary permit to operate in the city torn up.

Council public and active transport committee chairman Adrian Schrinner said the state also had to prove it would do a better job of policing the laws in order for Lime’s operation permit to remain in place.

“Council has been made aware of recent reports of an issue affecting Lime Scooters, and urgently sought assurance from Lime that the issue had been dealt with,” he said.

“Lime has assured Council the issue has been identified and resolved.

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Brisbane City Council says Lime needs to prove their scooters are safe. Picture: Picture AAP/David Clark

“Council told Lime on Wednesday they had two weeks to demonstrate the problem was indeed fixed or their permit would not be extended.”

The scooters have proven to be a runaway success, with commuters taking more than half a million trips on the devices since their launch in Brisbane in November.

It was reported in January that the city’s emergency departments only recorded about 60 scooter related injuries since the start of Lime’s trial.

Only last week, Council announced that they had extended Lime’s temporary operation permit through to June.

It is understood they have concerns about reports of the front wheel on some scooters suddenly braking.

Cr Schrinner said the State Government also needed to deliver on “their end of the bargain” and enforce scooter rules.

“Council has written to the State Government and urgently called for them to enforce safety measures around helmets and speeding and for the State to finally acknowledge their responsibility and put a stop to unsafe use,” he said.

“Unless Council is satisfied both Lime and the State have delivered on their respective responsibilities to deliver a safe eScooter service, Council will not be extending the permit beyond the current two weeks.”

Lime’s director of government strategy Mitchell Price insisted the company’s scooters were safe, and said it would give the council the information it required.

“Last week we rolled out two successful firmware updates to the scooters and we’ve performed several thousand physical quality assurance checks of these scooters,” he said.

“Over the last couple of days, I’ve instructed the team to take scooters into the warehouse, ensure we provide a full warehouse check on every scooter, checking the brakes, making sure they’re all working and getting them back out on the streets.

“This is a really popular form of transport.”

Mr Price said Lime had provided the council a copy of a third-party engineering report on its scooters only last weekend.

“There’s another report which I will be providing them later this week which will go into the full route analysis of what’s happened and what the fix is,” he said.

The State Government has been contacted for comment.