Launch of electric scooters comes with some concerns

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — There’s now a new way to zip around Calgary.

Lime has officially launched electric scooters in the city, existing alongside its pedal-assisted bikes which started hitting the pathways and bike lanes last year.

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The scooters can be accessed after downloading an app on your phone, and then you can cruise at speeds up to 20 km/h.

For now, there are a few hundred, but Lime will be boosting that number to 1,000 in the coming week.

While it seems like a fun and easy way to get around town, it does also bring some concerns.

“User behaviour is always our biggest challenge and headache sometimes, as you’ve got a couple of bad apples who spoil it for everybody,” said Nate Currey, Lime’s Senior Operations Manager for Western Canada.

The scooters were available during the final weekend of Calgary Stampede, and on Saturday they were so popular that Lime saw the fastest adoption rate in their history.

“We actually had more trips per vehicle per day than any other city that Lime operates in globally. So, we beat out about 120 other places right here in Calgary,” said Currey.

But with that extensive use, especially during Stampede, also raises some possible issues.

First off, speed has always been something to be worried about.

“It’s sidewalk riding only and dedicated bike lanes and on trails that are around the city. That inherently brings scooters into close proximity sometimes with pedestrians, and so we just ask people to be super mindful of that,” Currey added. “They’re at 20 kilometres an hour, which is actually a nice cruising speed on a trail. We feel comfortable and really good that that speed is appropriate for Calgary.”

Secondly, there’s a high potential somebody will hop on while intoxicated.

“It is illegal to ride these things drunk or high,” said Currey. “We actually do have some features coming out, that if you try to rent them after midnight, the app will actually prompt you and say are you sober? And it’ll give you one more prompt, you have to type Y-E-S into it, and if you can’t type Y-E-S into it, we lock you out for the night.”

Finally, as has been seen with the Lime bicycles, there’s a chance some people will leave the scooters behind in the middle of a sidewalk, possibly blocking other people’s path.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMYOBBRtM8

The company is working on ways to mitigate that.

“We’d rather educate people up front about safety and what the rules are. We can create geo-fenced zones where if they go into an area and try to end their trip, they won’t be able to. They’ll have to bring it back out to a certain spot,” said Currey.

There will also be a provision to take a picture of the scooter once you’ve parked it, so they are sure it’s not left in a bad place.

This is a pilot project, in place until October 2020.

Lime is in close contact with the City of Calgary throughout the process, and once the pilot wraps up, the whole experiment will be evaluated.

“So we’ve been working really closely with Lime, and our number one priority as the City of Calgary is safety, so we’ve learned from other jurisdictions worldwide on how to safely deploy these,” said Andrew Sedor, Business Development Coordinator with Transportation Strategy at the City of Calgary.

But the mood right now, with Lime and the city, is optimistic.

“The scale of this city was designed for scooters, they just didn’t know it back then,” said Currey.