The dramatic ban on share hire e-scooters in Melbourne's CBD has been described as a "big kick in the teeth" for the rollout of scooter networks in other Australian cities.
On Tuesday night, Melbourne joined cities like Paris, Montréal, Rome, Toronto and Utrecht in winding back or banning the rollout of e-scooter networks.
"We heard from shop traders in the city. We heard from residents. We heard from the head of the emergency department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital," Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said.
"We heard from a blind lady. They told us that the city's footpaths have not been safe."
The decision has disappointed Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan.
"I really hope the city of Melbourne can have a change of heart on this decision," Ms Allan said.
"There is a role for e-scooters in our public transport network, particularly for those last mile journeys, for getting cars off local roads."
Professor Stephen Greaves, from the University of Sydney's Institute of Transport and Logistic Studies, said other Australian cities would be watching the Melbourne decision closely.
"I think this is a step backwards, but like anything, you've got to take a few hits before you get to the to the end game," he said.
"I'm very disappointed — for those of us that really see e-scooters playing a really important role in the whole sustainable, active travel debate, I think it's a big kick in the teeth."
Safety concerns cast heavy shadow over e-scooter ban
The push to ban e-scooters in Melbourne's CBD has been brewing for some time, with concerns about dangerous behaviour and the growing injury toll for both riders and pedestrians.
"There are just too many people breaking the rules — people not wearing helmets, double dinking, riding on footpaths, creating a hazard for people around the city," said Cr Reece, who led the charge to scrap the city's e-scooter trial six months early.
Victoria Police issued 1,964 e-scooter infringements across the state between December 1, 2021 and July 31 this year, for both hire scooters and privately owned ones.
The majority of the infringements were issued for offences such as failure to wear a helmet (714), riding e-scooters on a footpath (585) and carrying more than one person on an e-scooter (342).
In the same period, there were also 860 collisions involving e-scooters, with a total of seven fatalities.
Three of those fatalities have occurred since April this year.
Milad Haghani, a lecturer in urban mobility at the University of NSW, said international evidence showed the injury risk and death risk of e-scooter riders was no higher than for bike riders.
"The thing is that we are used to bikes, and the accidents around bikes do not make as big headlines," he said.
Professor Greaves said e-scooter riders were no worse than bad car drivers when it came to breaking the rules.
"There's always 10 to 15 per cent who choose to [break the rules], and yet we don't go on and on and on about them like we do with these scooters," he said.
E-scooters around the country
Australian capital cities have been rolling out e-scooters, each with their own regulations and at their own pace.
New South Wales bans private scooters completely, but has allowed local councils to run e-scooter trials since 2022.
The trials limit the speeds of e-scooters to 20 kilometres per hour, and are currently being run in Kogarah, Albury, Forster-Tuncurry, Wollongong and Armidale.
Hired e-scooters have been allowed on Adelaide footpaths and shared paths since 2019.
However South Australia currently bans private scooters, but is set to allow them under new laws that will set a speed limit of 25 kilometres per hour.
Since April 15, Hobart residents have had access to e-scooter provider Beam, with the city earmarking a trial of stricter parking regulations in the CBD and Battery Point this year.
In Brisbane, the council estimates around 3,200 e-scooters and e-bikes are available to hire through two companies, with a speed limit of 25 kilometres per hour on shared and bicycle paths.
Safety has also posed a concern in the state, with some in Queensland calling for random breath testing to be introduced to combat drunk e-scooter driving.
The City of Perth is conducting its own two-year trial of hire e-scooters, limiting the speed of private scooters to 25 kilometres per hour, while the ACT has run a shared e-scooter hire scheme since September 2020.
Professor Greaves said Melbourne's decision was sending "shock waves" to other states.
"Being in Sydney, where we essentially outlaw the use of these scooters, we've been watching Melbourne and Brisbane closely," Professor Greaves said.
"I was feeling quietly confident that some regulation would be forthcoming in New South Wales, probably towards the end of this year. Now I'm not so sure."
Is there a solution to the safety issue?
Even though major cities like Paris and Madrid have banned e-scooters, many more haven't.
An analysis by insurance broker Compare The Market last year found the top four bike and e-scooter friendly cities in the world were Vienna, Seoul, Berlin, and Bordeaux.
Seoul alone has 20 share hire scooter providers, while Berlin has 12.
"European cities that have a good bicycle infrastructure have managed to control their e-scooter injuries to a great degree," Milad Haghani said.
"They have not seen the level of surge in injuries that we've seen in many other cities after adopting e-scooters."
Professor Greaves said apart from better infrastructure, technology would help iron out the problems in the adoption of e-scooters, such as a lack of helmet wearing, riding in the wrong places, and riding while intoxicated.
"Some of the things that have happened in Melbourne should not have happened. But there are a lot of technological fixes to those things, and perhaps that's a learning out of this," he said.
"It's the e-scooter providers who are at the forefront of adopting these technologies. It might give them an extra push."
Just last month, share hire company Neuron announced a plan to roll out AI-powered safety cameras on its Melbourne fleet, in what would have been a world-first deployment of the technology at scale.
But with Melbourne now poised to remove scooters from its CBD, the task may now fall on a different city to lead the charge on e-scooter safety.
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