E-Scooter Trial FOR MELBOURNE AND BALLARAT’S STREETS

High-powered electric scooters are set to appear on the streets of Melbourne and Ballarat as part of a 12-month state government trial. The e-scooters for hire will be allowed on bicycle lanes, shared paths and low-speed roads (up to 50kph). They will not be permitted on footpaths. They can travel up to 20kph, which is twice the legal speed capabilities of privately owned e-scooters in Victoria.

Currently, in Victoria, electric scooters can legally travel on low-speed roads, shared off-road paths and footpaths only if they have a maximum speed of 10kph and a power output of less than 200 watts.

In Ballarat, the only regional city chosen for the trial, Mayor Daniel Moloney said the council was keen to demonstrate the city was a place “not afraid to try something a bit different”.

Cr Moloney said while he did not expect e-scooters to be used by people travelling from the suburbs into central Ballarat, he saw them as a great way for people to travel around the CBD.

“When you’re in the CBD itself, it does make a lot more sense to park the car and then … use other forms of transport such as scooters, walking and cycling,” he said. Cr Moloney said he did not have safety concerns based on the experiences of other places around the world to trial e-scooters.
But recently released data had shown hundreds of people have been injured while riding e-scooters around Brisbane. Brisbane, along with Adelaide, and Darwin have all had e-scooters zooming through their streets long before the Victorian government announced its plans for an e-scooter trial.

​Memories are still fresh from Melbourne’s oBike fiasco, which saw yellow bicycles up trees and abandoned in rivers across the city. City of Yarra, which has started its own e-bike trial, was seeing very low instances of dumping and vandalism due to the quality of both the bikes and the operator, a council spokesperson said.