Council sees red about electric ride share scheme starting on the Gold Coast

Council has put a barrier in the way of electric scooter ride share schemes just days after Lime Scooters announced plans for a Gold Coast trial.

THE council has put up a stop sign to an electric scooter ride share scheme starting up in the city.

A report to a council transport committee meeting by officers recommended the council not support any private operators rolling out electric scooters due to “public safety and amenity concerns”.

Councillors unanimously backed the recommendation, fearing a fatality could wreck the city’s international tourism reputation and acknowledging council had no way of policing and fining speedsters.

Lime Scooters this week announced it had plans to roll out up to 500 scooters in three suburbs as part of a trial starting in December, but council’s decision effectively stops the machines being used at Broadwater Parklands, Griffith University and Varsity Lakes.

Lime Organisations Manager Vinicius Campos and Public Affairs Manager Nelson Savanh at Miami Beach this week. Picture: Jerad Williams

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Transport committee chair Pauline Young told the Bulletin: “We’ve had a lot of applications made to the city from electric scooter companies to set up their product within the city. We had a report brought back on that today which at this stage the city doesn’t support the electric scooters in our public areas. It was unanimous.”

Councillor Young said the council’s “active transport strategy” was focused on walking and push bikes, with a shared bicycle scheme likely to start up in February next year.

“We need one to two years of research, especially where it comes to safety issues. We don’t have enough collective data at this stage with our safety issues to support approval of having another scooter company within this city,” Cr Young said.

“The majority of councillors have had concerns with the electric scooters currently on our pathways — the incidences of speeding pedestrians feeling they can’t walk safely on our paths due to the speed of them, the fact that we can’t enforce any sort of speed fines because they actually have to be fitted with a speedometer.

“For us to be able to support them we need at least one to two years of data to say what is the best way for the city to mitigate any risks.”

E-scooters in Broadbeach. Picture: Glenn Hampson.

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While Surfers Paradise MP John-Paul Langbroek supports a trial of electric scooters, area councillor Gary Baildon at committee today remained strongly opposed.

“These electric scooters terrorise the community and I get the calls time and time again. Families are absolutely crying on the phone and demanding these scooters are stopped due to the danger to the community,” Cr Baildon said.

The report to council said it was “highly probable” that e-scooter hire scheme operations in the city would have an impact on council’s risk exposure in terms of insurance.

“As it now stands footpaths are a constant source of claims with some 530 arising from this source alone since the commencement of council’s Captive insurance company on 1 July, 2007,” the report said.

“Of those 530 the vast majority are pedestrian related trips, slips and falls however there are occurrences of injuries arising out of wheeled devices becoming unstable due to height variances and near path vegetation related hazards.

Councillor Pauline Young — we need more safety data. Photo: Jerad Williams.

Clearly the greatest risk will be the risk of collision with pedestrians resulting in injuries to both rider and pedestrian.”

During the first two months of an e-scooter ride share scheme trial in Brisbane, 134 riders were treated at five central city hospitals for injuries ranging from head traumas to broken limbs.

In May this year a male rider on a hired e-scooter in the Southbank precinct sustained critical head and facial injuries after a crash and later died from a heart attack.