Melbourne City Council has voted to ban hired e-scooters.
Melbourne Mayor Nicholas Reece said the council would end its contracts with e-scooter companies Lime and Neuron six months early.
The decision announced at Tuesday night’s meeting comes in response to poor rider behaviour and concerns from residents.
The companies will now have 30 days to remove their scooters from Melbourne’s CBD.
Here’s what you need to know.
E-scooter trial
In February 2022, three Melbourne councils began a trial of hired e-scooters.
The trial was extended several times. The State Government will legalise e-scooters across Victoria from October.
Concerns were raised about dangerous behaviour by riders throughout the trial. In May, police handed out hundreds of fines to riders for failing to wear helmets and running red lights.
A Royal Melbourne Hospital study reported over 100 e-scooter-related head injuries in the trial’s first year.
Council decision
Melbourne Mayor Nicholas Reece launched a motion to end the council’s contracts with Lime and Neuron At a meeting on Tuesday night.
Reece said he was initially a fan of the trial but has “run out of patience” for law-breaking riders causing “an unacceptable safety risk.”
“There are more people disobeying the law on e-scooters than there are actually following rules… as a custodian of our city, I feel the current situation cannot continue,” Reece said.
Reece said he’d heard from city residents who said they didn’t “feel safe” on the streets, including a visually impaired person who was hit by an e-scooter.
Reece’s motion passed, meaning the council will end its contracts with the e-scooter companies.
Melbournians will be able to ride private e-scooters in the CBD once the transport is legalised in October.
Lime
In a statement, Lime said it appreciates that “councillors are hearing from a very vocal minority.”
It said removing the service in Melbourne may lead to more dangerous outcomes.
“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.”
