It’s time for Brisbane to neuter the scooters

Quite a few years ago now, a new South Park Halloween episode – The Scoots – went to air.

It was a hilariously terrifying tale of a small Colorado town being overrun by an invasion of rental electric scooters.

Everywhere the residents of South Park looked, more would mysteriously appear until, eventually, they overran the town (note: the video below comes with a language warning).

Coincidentally, that 2018 episode aired the very week Lime scooters started appearing around inner-Brisbane. As in South Park, the damn things just kept multiplying.

Our council went along with it. The Gold Coast, to its eternal credit, did not.

Here in the capital, my anxiety levels on the walk to and from work were raised courtesy of that now-familiar gust of wind as the e-scooterist whizzes past from behind, just a few centimetres from my shoulder.

Is it time to rethink rental e-scooters in Brisbane?Credit: Jamie Brown

After six years of near-misses, it’s a miracle none have made contact. Others, including a colleague, have not been so lucky.

Just this weekend, Brisbane Times revealed more than 1000 people attended Queensland hospitals with e-scooter injuries last financial year.

That led to pleas from former health minister Yvette D’Ath, who said she had seen first-hand the dangers of e-scooters, as she urged riders to take more personal responsibility.

“We’ve seen kids losing their lives on e-scooters,” she said at the weekend.

While there was no differentiation between personal and rental e-scooters in those figures, you can bet they included plenty of spontaneous trips, possibly after a few drinks (an activity for which you can be charged, by the way). The number of late-night/pre-dawn e-scooter accidents reported by the Queensland Ambulance Service on weekends suggests this to be the case.

It’s not just the physical danger. If I had 50¢ for every time I’ve had to move one out of the way to keep a thoroughfare clear, I’d have enough for a coffee.

And it’s not just the scooters littering our streets. Since helmets are mandatory in Queensland, they are provided by e-scooter companies, along with the vehicles themselves.

Go to any inner-city park and you’ll find them scattered around, bereft of a host e-scooter, doing nothing but providing shelter to our city’s smaller critters.

I should note, this complaint clearly does not apply to privately owned e-scooters. After all, riders are hardly going to leave their personal property in the middle of the footpath.

An e-scooter helmet abandoned in Centenary Park this week.Credit: Cameron Atfield

And they’re not going to stumble out of a bar at 2.34am to find their scooter on the footpath waiting conveniently like a chariot to take them home, either.

Rental e-scooters have been a scourge on this city, and others. A fortnight ago, Melbourne decided it had had enough and banned them outright.

“After two years, I have run out of patience at what I’m seeing on the streets and footpaths of our city,” Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece told a City of Melbourne council meeting this month.

“If you stand at the front of this Town Hall on any night of the week and you look at what is happening there out in front of our own Town Hall, it’s shameful.”

Now, lest this be considered an old-man-yells-at-cloud missive, I concede there are many benefits to “micromobility” modes of transport, such as e-scooters and e-bikes. They can be a missing link between your front door and the bus stop.

A Brisbane City Council-commissioned University of Queensland study, which found overwhelming support for rental e-scooters among visitors to the city, suggests mine may well be a minority view.

But it’s a debate that has never really happened at a political level and, frankly, needs to. After all, there’s still pedestrian safety to consider.

Until there is adequate infrastructure to protect pedestrians from scooters, such as more dedicated bike/scooter lanes in the CBD, they are going to continue to be a danger to people just going about their day.

Melbourne has taken the lead. Brisbane should follow suit.