Micro Mobility — An Opportunity for One Framework for 572 Australian Governments

By Stephen Coulter

Despite just reaching a population of 25 million, Australia has 572 distinct governments!

1 Federal, 8 State/Territory and 563 Local Governments.

All 572 have influence and input over transport and mobility laws — it’s no wonder universal common sense is so difficult to progress.

The release last week of the third annual mobility study by Vision Mobility, CuriosityCX and LEK Consulting demonstrates Australia has an opportunity to overcome this massive over governance with a single world-leading micro mobility framework.

The survey indicates Australian’s have around half the awareness of emerging micro-mobility options as our cousins in Europe and North America. Our laws are not contemporary and rather than every government consider them separately, with their own nuances, let’s leapfrog the world and let Australia establish some common sense principles any government can lead by ( and live with).

I think Singapore is the closest to this right now — the benefit of being a small island, single city country.

The basic principles of Singapore’s approach are summarised by the Government infographic below. The basic principles are:

• Three types of paths/roads
• Four types of active mobility vehicles
• Clear guidelines on which vehicles can use which types of paths/roads.

This ensures we have vehicle mixes appropriate to the path/road types they use.

Vehicle structure is also taken into account:

• Personal Mobility Devices (PMD’s) can be no wider than 70cm nor weigh more than 20kgs — both of these are safety measures for vehicles allowed to use footpaths.
• Variable speed limits taking into account mixed use pathways, particularly those with pedestrians — a 15 kph limit on footpaths and 25 kph on other path/road types.

Common sense, caring and courtesy is also enshrined requiring help to be offered when incidents occur.

The significant unstated law is not to have a law around the power of personal mobility devices. Speed is the limiter NOT power.

Devices are manufactured with the ability to have speed limiters — 25 kph (15 mph) being the most common. More powerful motors are required and safer than limiting PMD’s to stupidly low levels like 200W and 250W when terrain, riders and environments can differ significantly:

• Heavier riders require more power to achieve the same speed
• Hills require more power than level riding
• Additional power can allow more rapid acceleration in dangerous situations to avoid crashes

In short, power should not be regulated — speed can be limited and varied as environments allow.

If micro-mobility is to become an adopted habit driving sustained in first/last mile transport, reducing driver only vehicles, the micro mobility alternative must be able to cope with hilly environments and riders of all weights.

It’s not hard — and it is a shame governments have so much difficulty coming to a consistent framework which will allow mobility progress to occur.

Stephen Coulter is Co-Founder of Zipidi, based in Sydney

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.