Transport for NSW Fiddles while Paris, New York, London and 600+ cities scoot!
By Stephen Coulter and Krystyna Weston
Founders of Zipidi Micromobility Solutions and Convenors of the Asia Pacific Micromobility Alliance
Transport for NSW’s “Smart Innovation” Centre’s electric scooter advisory group has recommended against any permitted use of electric scooters in New South Wales. In the 18 months, the group has been fiddling, thousands of electric scooters, skateboards and unicycles have been bought and used in Sydney by citizens wanting sustainable, safe transport for short journeys.
Australia’s largest city will need to wait months, if not years, to have legalised electric scooters and other forms of electric mobility. While tens of thousands of electric scooters, skateboards, uniwheels, balance boards and more have been legally sold in NSW, they are illegal to use in public spaces.
TfNSW’s incomprehensible recommendations come in an atmosphere where car emissions are a significant contributor to CO2 emissions and public transport a “super-spreader” of COVID-19. Micromobility, including electric scooters, is sustainable and a COVID-Safe form of transportation with natural social distancing.
Over 2 million daily car trips in Sydney less than 2km
To block a whole category of short journey, sustainable transport vehicles is ludicrous, especially in a COVID world.
Incredibly the report is dated March 2020 and was written pre-COVID 19. Transport has fundamentally changed since COVID, and it is naive at best to release a pre-COVID report without review in July 2020. If 2020 vision means anything, it has been totally ignored by NSW’s “Smart Innovation” Centre.
In response to COVID-19, Cities and Countries around the world have rapidly made regulatory changes and exemptions to allow immediate use of shared and privately owned electric bikes, scooters, cargo bikes and other forms of emobility.
- New York approved bikes and scooters in April after rejecting them for years, most recently in January.
- The UK brought forward escooter trials by at least a year, and they commenced in July 2020 with 40+ cities in the UK likely to have trials within the first 12 months.
- After two years of “laissez-faire” trials in Paris, Mayor Hidalgo awarded two-year electric scooter contracts to Lime, Tier and Dott. Each company is permitted to deploy 5,000 scooters in Paris under sensible operating conditions.
The ironically named “Smart Innovation” Centre for Transport for NSW has documented draft escooter regulations which are anything but sensible, smart or innovative. They reflect a lack of desire to make reasonable changes which their citizens are demonstrating they want.
There were no representatives of the micromobility industry in the working group. The uninformed recommendations could easily have been avoided by engaging with industry experts. Instead, we had a group representing all members of the broader community except the industry experts! Police, Ambulance, State Insurance Regulatory Authority, the self-anointed Pedestrian Council of Australia, Guide Dogs for NSW, NRMA, Youthsafe, Bicycle NSW, Office of Local Government and Council for the Ageing. Bicycle NSW is the only group with any industry knowledge.
The group composition was analogous to a COVID-19 Task Force without any health professionals!
What has the “Smart Innovation” Working Group recommended?
The group has recommended against any trials or legalised use of shared or privately owned electric scooters anywhere in NSW.
“It is acknowledged that a controlled trial of electric scooters in NSW could support TfNSW’s understanding of the impact of ‘micro-mobility’ technologies on our network. However, considering the recommendations provided by the working group and engagement with industry, TfNSW does not support a trial at this stage.”
The report included recommendations to be considered, should a trial be considered in the future. The proposed recommendations include:
- Riders must have an NSW recognised drivers licence and be at least 17 years of age.
- Scooters musty be limited to power of 300W despite federal laws allowing PMD’s of any wattage provided they are speed limited to 25 kmh.
- Scooters will not be permitted to be used between sunset and sunrise.
- Scooters will not be permitted on “steep hills” or in adverse weather.
These recommendations make no sense:
- Around 25% of NSW people aged 17–29 have chosen not to have a drivers licence. They are a primary target market for electric mobility, and the government is requiring them to spend $2,000+ and 120 hours gaining a car drivers licence they don’t want! Also, there are people with disabilities who can ride electric mobility but not qualify for a drivers licence. They are being discriminated against by such a recommendation.
- For scooters and other forms of electric mobility to replace the use-cases of cars, they need to be able to cope with the same short journeys. This requires power to deal with hills, heavier riders and additional weight of backpacks, micro logistics, etc. Federal law recognises this with a speed limitation, not a power limitation. The State has no role in over-ruling a sensible Federal law.
- A key use-case of scooters and PMD’s is first/last mile journeys to transit and local destinations/workplaces. A sunset-sunrise curfew is beyond ridiculous — it provides no way for riders to return home for much of the year. Many cities around the world, including Adelaide and Brisbane in Australia, are finding significant night-time journeys by shift workers — when public transit is less frequent or non-existent.
- Steep hills is an equally ridiculous restriction. As a friend said to us, “isn’t hills why you have electric motors on scooters and bike”.
- “Adverse weather” is another vague term which does not apply to pedestrians or any other vehicle type on NSW roads. Why should this be a regulation — users will decide when they need scooters and if weather impacts their usage? Operators are also sensible enough to work out when weather is too severe for safe usage.
The full recommendations are available in the report, which is linked here and at the end of this article.
The report also recommends against legalising privately owned electric scooters, despite tens of thousands already being legally sold in NSW and widely used for short journeys by NSW citizens.
The rationale the “Smart Innovation” group use to oppose privately owned scooters includes:
- A greater administrative effort for bureaucrats.
- Difficulty in imposing registration and insurance.
- Difficult to implement night-time curfew.
- Lack of connectivity for users on dedicated cycling infrastructure.
- Compliance relies solely(sic) on Police and Councils.
- Greater complexity in regulatory exemptions.
- Enforcement of vehicle standards is difficult, particularly with maximum power and speed requirements.
- Registration/number plate requirements would increase complexity in the current legislative environment.
- May unintentionally permit other types of privately owned motorised devices.
- Higher chance of vehicle modification.
- At the risk of overwhelming litigation system if vehicles are not registered.
- Cannot rely on technology to apply speed limits.
Our hearts bleed for them — these seem to be precisely the requirements of the job description of public servants, police and councils. Their non-sensical recommendations cause many of the complexities about which they whinge.
Around the world owners of private scooter riders are better, more experienced and responsible riders, look after their scooters and do not leave them on the streets. To ban them makes no sense. The ACT approved privately-owned scooters first in December 2019 recognising these positive traits.
The industry has addressed every one of these issues and has a coherent, effective and efficient solution.
NSW would ban bikes if they applied the same recommendations as Scooters!
The recommendations are not designed to facilitate smart innovation or progress in transport. An ill-informed committee has framed them with little experience in the matters upon which they have made recommendations.
Viewed with a bicycle lens, they would not allow bikes to be ridden in NSW with the same requirements. To think scooters require such specific legislation, which would not apply to any other vehicle type, is stupid. It perpetuates the regressive regulatory environment NSW has created by seeking to have laws for every micro vehicle, rather than legislation which can cover existing and emerging categories of vehicles.
If the reasons for banning scooters are realistic:
- Why isn’t there a night-time curfew on bikes?
- Why don’t bikes require individual identification plates?
- Why are bikes allowed on steep hills?
- Why haven’t bikes overwhelmed the litigation system by their lack of registration?
- How have Police and Councils coped with compliance for bikes if they are solely(sic) responsible?
Why Not Treat Scooters and Bikes the Same?
Cities around the world have proven treating escooters as bikes in the first instance is a sensible way to start. The vehicles have much in common and share the same pathways and roads. Exemptions for scooters, like bikes, would enable trials to start quickly, like in the UK, and allow the industry to support Sydney and NSW with COVID-Safe transport.
Scooters are Safe
Studies around the world have found scooter accident rates are similar to bikes, and the severity of injuries is comparable or lower due to:
- Lower kinetic energy
- Ease of stepping off a scooter and avoiding injury compared to being wrapped around a bike
- Lower height when falling from a scooter compared to a bike
Many reports confirm the most dangerous vehicles on the road are cars — yet no government is considering banning cars.
In NZ, where the government accident compensation scheme tracks a wide variety of accidents and injuries:
- There is ten times the cost of injuries from bikes compared to scooters.
- Kick scooters cost more from injuries than electric scooters.
- Skateboards have far more costs from injured riders than electric scooters.
The “Smart Innovation” working group seem paranoid about the “risk” of scooter accidents. Yet they cite old out-of-date research based on operating environments different from what is proposed for NSW and Australia. Their report references the May 2019 USA Centre for Disease Control report into Austin Texas. Austin was the wild west of scooters in the USA in 2018. At the time, there were no scooter speed restrictions and little regulation. While the “Smart Innovation” group cites 20 accidents per 100,000 rides, they fail to disclose, of the 190 injured riders:
- 189 were NOT wearing a helmet! The report cites 50% of head injuries could have been avoided if helmets were worn (Helmets are compulsory in Australia)
- 33% of the injured drunk alcohol within 12 hours prior (Australian .05 laws will apply to scooters).
- 33% were injured on their first ride.
- There were no deaths.
The TfNSW report also fails to look at the scooters involved, which were first-generation shared scooters, not designed for commercial use.
All operators are now up to their generation 3 or 4 vehicles which are fundamentally different from those deployed in Austin in 2018. The current models of shared scooters have larger wheels, better brakes, better lights and more accurate “geofencing” allowing speeds and parking controls over every scooter.
NSW Needs Progressive Transport not Bureaucrats
NSW and other State Governments are proving to be speed humps for micromobility. By having outdated thinking, and bureaucrats unwilling to adapt road regulations to allow the sensible use of sustainable, safe vehicles their citizens are buying and using in daily increasing numbers.
If NSW is truly wanting progressive government, innovative forms of sustainable transport and COVID-Safe mobility, the “Smart Innovation” Group report should be withdrawn and a common sense, COVID and industry informed approach should be taken.
In 40 years of business, it is the worst report I have seen published by any government or consultant. It should not have been released. If you wish to read it in full, it is linked here.
There are credible, well researched and unbiased reports written on more recent experiences and data which Transport for NSW should reference and rely on:
- Australia’s National Transport Commission is nearing the end of a two-year project for National road laws for personal mobility devices. Their preliminary report in October 2019, Barriers to the safe use of personal mobility devices, is much better researched with better-structured recommendations.
- The Polis Network is the leading network of European cities and regions working together to develop innovative technologies and policies for local transport. They released a very credible report, Macro managing Micro mobility — Taking the long view on short trips in November 2019
- The OECD/International Transport Forum published an excellent report in Safe Micromobility in February 2020.
These three reports provider better data and recommendations than the TfNSW report and provide the basis for NSW to allow privately owned Personal Mobility Devices and allow trials for shared scooters in NSW very quickly.
Both shared, and private use should be approved. By ignoring the tens of thousands of privately owners scooter riders, the NSW Government is denying owners insurance coverage should accidents happen — insurers do not cover “illegal” activities.
