Council recommended to endorse permits for competing e-scooter trial periods for Albany

City of Albany council looks likely to endorse a 12-month commercial trial period for two separate e-scooter hire companies at its ordinary meeting next week. The City’s development and infrastructure services committee last week recommended the council authorise the chief executive to issue trial permits for Beam Mobility and Bird Rides. The recommendation, carried unanimously by the committee, includes 31 conditions aiming to address potential concerns, including safety issues and the need to ensure the scooters are not discarded in unauthorised places. No more than 200 e-scooters will be allowed to be distributed throughout the City by each permit holder at any one time. Beam Mobility and Bird Rides, which separately approached the City about potential trials, had each requested a capacity of about 250 battery-operated scooters on the basis they would be the sole operators. They have confirmed the cap of 200 e-scooters will still allow them to be commercially viable. Each company will be required to develop an “e-scooter program”, as well as a complaints handling procedure, that will require approval from the City prior to the deployment of the e-scooters. The programs will need to include details about operating areas, slow zones, parking and no-parking zones and no ride zones. Community feedback, provided during co-design and education sessions, will also need to be addressed in the program. Other requirements will include the need for geofencing to limit the movement of the scooters and the ability for the companies to monitor their location at all times. The companies will also be asked to ensure any scooters left in no-parking areas are collected for redistribution within an hour and they will need to put in place a system to incentivise good parking behaviour and penalise non-compliance. Shared e-scooters are growing in popularity across metropolitan and regional WA, with trials under way in the local government areas of Stirling, Rockingham, Esperance and Greater Geraldton. After a successful trial period, Beam Mobility recently expanded its geofence in Bunbury after data showed e-scooters carried riders more than 118,000km between December and July. Beam is a Singapore-based company operating in 18 Australian locations, while Bird is a US-based company with e-scooters in three Australian locations. A surge in e-scooter popularity, particularly in Perth, has coincided with a spate of serious incidents, including at least two deaths, sparking calls for tougher rules. Between January and June, St John WA paramedics responded to 148 call-outs to e-scooter-related crashes. Speaking to the Advertiser last month, Albany Mayor Dennis Wellington said he believed e-scooters could be a “terrific asset” if they were managed properly.