Let’s do better on e-scooters
Love them or loathe them, there’s no denying that twowheeled electric scooters are finding their way onto streets, cycle paths and sidewalks all over the world.
So Ontario’s plan to regulate them is welcome, and a pilot project is a good way to find out if its rules work or a different approach is needed.
But there are significant problems with the proposal the Ford government quietly posted online last week.
The first relates to speed. That’s both the 32 km/h allowable speed for e-scooters, which is too fast to be safe for riders or the people around them, and the public consultation period.
Originally, the government thought two days would be sufficient for consultation. After an uproar that was extended until Sept. 12, which is still unnecessarily hasty.
The second concern is over the length of Ontario’s pilot project — an astonishing five years.
That’s longer than the mandate of a provincial government and it’s far too long for an e-scooter trial, especially if problems arise here as they have elsewhere. The results should be reviewed after no more than a year to decide whether it should continue, be changed or be scrapped entirely.
The current proposal would limit scooters to roads, lanes and paths where bicycles are allowed and set a minimum age of 16 to ride one.
If these rules go forward, they’ll throw open the door to rental companies that operate like bike-share programs but with dockless scooters that can be left anywhere. Tourists and locals use an app to find and unlock them.
The government’s summary of its plan breezily states that “e-scooters have been launched in more than 125 cities across the United States.”
They’re in Canadian and European cities, too. But none of that has been without considerable controversy and problems.
Chicago has fined rental companies for failing to live up to the rules it set. Nashville just ended its pilot and banned e-scooters entirely.
People in Los Angeles are vandalizing them in protest. And in Paris, a group of victims of e-scooter accidents are threatening to sue the city and demanding stricter rules to deal with the “chaos and anarchy in the streets.”
Even their credentials as a particularly green form of transport are being challenged. Are they replacing car trips or healthier walking?
While the annoyance of e-scooters cluttering sidewalks and creating tripping hazards or riders breaking laws and behaving badly gets the lion’s share of the negative attention, the people at the greatest risk are users themselves. (Most don’t wear helmets and, like cyclists, they really should.) An American study found an emergency room surge in head injuries, fractures and dislocations related to scooters.
All of this is of particular concern in Toronto, which is already struggling with its Vision Zero plan to make roads safer for everyone. There’s a lot of tension on city streets and the addition of scooter rental companies catering in part to tourists unfamiliar with the city’s traffic rules and its many potholes will only add to that.
The province’s pilot project must give municipalities the flexibility they need to manage the challenges of e-scooters and come up with local solutions. That’s the only hope of reaping the potential benefits of this new form of shared transportation.
Around the world e-scooters have grown faster than the rules to regulate them, much like ride-hailing and homesharing services. So, yes, let’s get ahead of it for once.
But let’s not pretend we’re starting from scratch. Ontario needs to design a pilot project that learns from mistakes elsewhere rather than simply repeating them.
Ontario needs to learn from mistakes that have happened elsewhere