Melbourne bans e-scooters as city cracks down on misuse – UPDATE

UPDATE, 15 August 2024: Melbourne City Council has officially banned hire e-scooters from the CBD.

Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece launched a motion to cancel the City's two trial contracts with e-scooter companies Lime and Neuron at Tuesday's meeting, with the vote falling in favour of the ban 6-4.

The companies have at least 30 days notice, with the e-scooters set to be removed from the CBD before the next council elections in October. 

"The current contracts have six months to go, but we cannot wait six months," Reece said, reports 9 News.

"We need a fundamental reset."

Both Lime and Neuron appeared at the meeting to object to the ban.

"They offer an affordable, convenient, and sustainable transport option that people rely on. Last week, Melbourne had higher vehicle utilisation than Paris, during the Olympics," the spokesperson said.

"If hire schemes aren't around, riders will turn to unregulated privately owned scooters that can be modified to travel at the same speeds as cars, and without the ability to implement geofencing, slow zones and helmets."

The move comes just weeks before new laws, introduced by the Victorian Government, come into effect in October legalising the use of private e-scooters – with the authority said to have been caught off-guard by the City Council's decision.

Our original story continues on below unchanged.

13 August 2024: Hired e-scooters are set to be banned from Melbourne’s CBD under proposals going before Town Hall tonight.

Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece and Councillor Davydd Griffith is going to move a motion at the city’s council meeting proposing to end its contracts with the two firms which operate in the area – Lime and Neuron, according to The Age.

Lime and Neuron will be given 30 days’ notice before their combined roughly 1500 e-scooters will need to be removed from the city.

The scooters had been available for hire as part of a two-year trial in the Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip council areas, with the technology presenting an opportunity in practical ‘last mile’ mobility, while also reducing transport emissions.

But in recent months e-scooters have come under fire, not just in Melbourne but across Australia, for being used dangerously – resulting in increasing numbers of injuries – blocking footpaths and also for presenting a fire risk.

With just hours to go before the meeting, however, the two e-scooter hire firms aren’t laying down about the proposed ban.

A spokesperson for Lime said the company “is committed to safe e-scooter usage in the City of Melbourne”, adding: “What we can appreciate is that the councillors are hearing from a very vocal minority of local residents.”

Neuron too sent out an alert using its app on Tuesday morning asking users to ‘help save e-scooters’, encouraging them to email the Lord Mayor to keep the technology on Melbourne’s streets.

Despite the furore surrounding their use, the State Government is making permanent e-scooter hire schemes legal in October outside of the Melbourne, Yarra and Port Phillip council areas.

“The shared e-scooter scheme has been popular in Melbourne, but there has also been serious issues,” the Lord Mayor told the newspaper last week. “Riders continue to break the law, endangering others and themselves, creating a nuisance on our streets.”

It’s also understood that there have been a sharp spike in the number of people presenting to hospitals, such as the Royal Melbourne, as a result of being injured using e-scooters.

“As a clinician involved in caring for people who come off e-scooters, I have seen an alarming rise in the number of people who come through our emergency department,” plastic and reconstructive surgeon Anand Ramakrishnan told The Age.

“About four per cent of facial fractures over the last two years have been due to e-scooters. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, some of these injuries have been really life-changing for these individuals.”

Dr Ramakrishnan’s evidence is supported elsewhere in the country too, with the number of people ending up in Queensland hospital emergency rooms after e-scooter accidents doubling in just two years.

Recent figures compiled by the Jamieson Trauma Institute revealed there were 1273 e-scooter-related accidents reported within the state's emergency departments last year compared to 1018 in 2022 and 691 in 2021.

That means in 2023 the number of injuries jumped by 25 per cent, while between 2021 and 2022 the amount rose by 84 per cent.

Even when users aren’t injured, many are still falling on the wrong side of the law, with almost 300 riders fined in just one day in May, according to Victoria Police, during a two-day enforcement blitz in Melbourne’s CBD – including 73 who were riding on footpaths. Police have issued 1964 fines since December 2021.

Police said they had recorded 860 collisions involving e-scooters since December 2021, including seven fatal crashes. The data includes both hire scooters and privately owned scooters, which the state has also legalised.

According to police, most of the tickets were issued for riders failing to wear an approved bicycle helmet, which attracts an automatic fine of $240, while others were slapped with penalties for riding on footpaths costing them $192 a pop.

Dangers posed by the type of batteries used in e-scooters and e-bikes will be also be a top priority for Australia’s safety watchdog this year as the number of fires caused by them rockets.

Risks associated with the use of emerging technology such as lithium-ion batteries will be a key focus for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) during 2024-25, the organisation has revealed.