E-scooter riders who flout Melbourne’s road rules will trigger an audio warning as part of a crackdown on illegal footpath and tandem riding.
The City of Melbourne on Friday unveiled a fleet of 25 Lime e-scooters with new camera and GPS technology to be rolled out across the city streets. The council says it expects the new technology will be rolled out to the city’s entire fleet of e-scooters.
The deputy lord mayor, Nicholas Reece, said there had been a huge uptake in the e-scooters but the council had also received numerous complaints about rule breaking.
Scooter riders in Victoria must be aged 16 or over and must ride only on shared paths or on roads with a speed limit up to 60 km/h. They must wear a helmet and must not exceed 20 km/h.
“There’s a bit of a hoon element that’s gotten in there so we’ve developed some technological solutions with the providers that we think will lead to better behaviour to allow the scooters to continue in Melbourne,” he said.
“I love the e-scooters. I want to see them continue in Melbourne but I’ll be the first to say we need to crack down on hoon behaviour like people riding on footpaths, double dinking and people parking the scooters everywhere,” he said.
Reece said the 25 e-scooters were fitted with “geo-fencing” and GPS technology that detected if riders were on the footpath.
“We can designate footpaths in busy parts of the city as off-limit areas,” he said. “We also have go-slow zones, programmed into the app, that will slow scooters down in high-traffic areas and demobilise scooters in locations they are not supposed to be and sound a driver alert.”
He told 3AW the new e-scooters would “shout at the user” when ridden in those off-limits areas.
The City of Melbourne is also investigating on-street parking stations and physical line markings on footpaths to create marked zones to hire and return e-scooters. Councillors will consider a range of measures to improve the safety of the trial at a meeting on Tuesday.
Other technology in development includes using artificial intelligence to prevent riders from ending their trip without parking correctly, alcohol detection to crack down on intoxicated riding and rider identification systems to prevent underage riding.
The council said trial providers – Lime and Neuron Mobility – were also exploring technology to create designated e-scooter parking areas and guide riders here. A trial using app communication to direct riders to designated parking zones is under way on Swanston and Elizabeth streets and in Jolimont, which the council said had reduced complaints by 55%.
The council has also been discussing an expansion of the e-scooter scheme with other inner-Melbourne areas.
The Andrews government in April announced a six-month extension of the e-scooter trial. But it is unclear if it will be permanent. Critics of the trial have pointed to scooters being ridden dangerously on the footpaths – a hazard for elderly people and people with a disability – and left strewn on the footpath.
More than five million e-scooter rides have been taken since February last year – an average of almost 6,000 trips a day, one of the highest rates in the world.
The council said the trial has cut the city’s carbon emissions by more than 400 tonnes, and encouraged more people to use public transport – with up to 40% of riders using e-scooters to connect with trains, trams and buses.
