Australian City Bans Rented Electric Scooters
When the mayor of the Australian city of Melbourne said he wanted to make the city safe again, he wasn't talking about crime.
Nicholas Reece was talking about electric scooters.
In August, the city council voted to ban rental e-scooters from Melbourne.
The council gave the city's two rental scooter companies 30 days to take them off the streets.
Reece said that residents and visitors had been asking the council to ban the scooters for some time, with some saying that e-scooters were causing problems and accidents on the city's sidewalks.
According to a doctor from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, injuries caused by e-scooters cost the hospital more than $1.25 million in 2022.
That was the year Melbourne began its two-year e-scooter trial.
The city has only banned the rental companies from having their scooters on the streets, but people are still able to use their own scooters.
While some people were happy with the news, others have said it's a mistake.
Rental e-scooters have become popular with many residents. On average, there have been almost 7,000 journeys taken per day in Melbourne.
And this may have helped to make the city's air cleaner, according to council data.
Others say rental scooters are a great way for people to travel without spending a lot of money, and that they're actually safer than other types of transport.
Writing in The Conversation, academics Mark Stevenson and Ferdinand Balfoort said rental scooters may be safer than private ones because they are regulated and can't go faster than about 25 kilometers per hour.
They said that private scooters are not regulated in the same way.
Lime, one of the rental companies, said that the council's upcoming elections in October may have influenced the decision to ban scooters.
