Mayor: Fear can’t slow e-scooter transport era in Hamilton
Hamilton’s mayor has likened council opposition to e-scooters to 100-year-old red flag traffic laws.
Those rules in the UK and US required a person to walk in front of a motor vehicle waving a red flag as a warning to road users on horseback or on horse-drawn carriages.
‘‘Some cities were so scared of the motorcar that a man had to run in front of it with a red flag,’’ said Hamilton City Council Mayor Andrew King who rides a scooter to work.
‘‘This [e-scooter] is really exciting – we are moving into a new era of transport.’’
On Tuesday, council’s Growth and Infrastructure Committee voted 10 to 3 to recommend the development of a draft code of practice for operators looking to run bike and e-scooter businesses in the city. A final decision will be made at the next full council meeting. If given the go-ahead, the Access Hamilton Taskforce will have the draft in place this year.
Not everyone was happy with the move. Crs Rob Pascoe, Leo Tooman and Garry Mallett dissented.
Mallett said the policy doesn’t even define what a ‘‘personal use transport vehicle’’ is. Formulating a code of practice without clear definition is wasting staff time.
‘‘I think this is one of the worst uses of staff time that we could ever think of sending them off on doing,’’ Mallett said.
In 2018, e-scooter operators expressed a desire to launch in Hamilton.
The code of compliance would allow the hire of dockless e-scooters and bikes in the city with a permit to trade, council’s transportation manager Robyn Denton said.
‘‘The aim is to make this as broad as possible so we can apply this to whatever type of vehicles are coming out because it is very much a changing area,’’ Denton said.
Cr James Casson supported the work but said there should be restrictions on riding e-scooters drunk.
‘‘If you can put restrictions on for helmets, age and speed limits and everything else, you should be able to put something on for alcohol,’’ Casson said.
But Tooman said Hamilton pedestrian crashes are nine per cent higher than the national average and e-scooters will exacerbate the problem.
‘‘Out there, you’ve got all of our pedestrians wandering around looking at the phone and don’t see what the hell is coming and here we’re going to put a Lime scooter, or something like that, down there,’’ Tooman said.
‘‘I don’t think it’s our problem. Central government has to come out with some definition for these things and this is where we are lacking.’’