The council has decided to keep e-scooters. Photo / George Novak
The council has decided to keep e-scooters. Photo / George Novak
Shared e-scooters are here to stay in Tauranga, with the council approving their continued use in the city.
People have travelled 710,000km on Lime scooters since the trial began in November 2020, which is nearly 18 trips around Earth.
At a Tauranga City Council meeting yesterday the commissioners agreed to continue shared e-scooter use in the city, enabling the council to find a permanent operator.
Data gathered by the council during the trial shows 104,000 people have taken at least one ride and there were 429,000 trips taken on a Lime scooter.
There was an 11 per cent growth in the number of trips taken from 2021 to 2022.
Scooter use was the highest at the main Mount Maunganui beach and business area followed by Tauranga CBD. Saturday was the most popular day for rides with close to 100,000 trips taken on Saturdays between November 1, 2020 and February 25, 2023.
Injuries from e-scooters were also considered low with fewer than 10 reported to the council since the trial began.
It hasn’t been a completely smooth run for the trial though, with complaints coming in thick and fast for the first two months. There were 10 to 20 complaints per week during the first two months of the trial.
By six months complaints were down to one or two a week and it has stayed at this level.
The council ran a survey about the e-scooters in October 2021 that showed the biggest issue people had with the scooters was them being parked inappropriately or blocking footpaths. Fifty per cent of the 779 respondents were moderately or very concerned about the way the scooters were parked.
Findings showed 55 per cent of respondents agreed a shared e-scooter scheme should continue to operate in Tauranga while 42 per cent disagreed. TCC cycle plan implementation programme manager Andy Vuong told the meeting there were some unsurprising findings from the survey.
”As you got older, you typically were against e-scooters and as you got younger, you typically were very much in favour of e-scooters,” he said.
The survey showed 76 per cent of respondents aged 16 to 24 had ridden a scooter and 33 per cent of those aged 85 or older had done so too.
Commission chairwoman Anne Tolley said the “biggest surprise” was the number of those aged 85 plus that were in support of the scooters and had ridden one.
E-scooters parked inappropriately was the biggest source of complaints to council. Photo / Sun Media
Vuong said this was because they had only had a “few responses” from that age bracket.
Commissioner Stephen Selwood wanted to know what proportion of the trips represented a mode shift out of cars. Vuong replied around 25 to 29 per cent of rides replaced car trips. This data was based only on the shared scooters and private e-scooter trips were hard to track, he said. Director of transport Brendan Bisley said people who used Lime scooters a lot for commuting purposes end up buying their own e-scooter.
”After a while it doesn’t make sense to keep hiring and that’s what the data doesn’t track,” Bisley said.
“We’re only picking up the ones that Lime use, so there will be a skew towards more recreational use.”
Commissioner Shadrach Rolleston said although the 29 per cent “seemed small it was still useful to try and get people thinking about transport differently”.
”It’s a worthwhile opportunity for us to promote and continue to support.
”The e-scooters also brought in around $28,750 in revenue which would continue under the permanent scheme if rides remained at the existing level.”
Vuong had some recommendations to the council to improve the issues around parking which included allocating designated parking spaces for e-scooters, as well as creating a fee structure that enabled operators to incentivise riders to park in allocated zones or provide more staff to quickly resolve any issues.
The recommendations would go back to the council once a permanent operator was secured.
- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air
