• E-scooter riders are being left in limbo in Australia as state governments remain divided on the vehicles.
• New South Wales has refused to allow trials to go forward, despite some Australian cities boasting of their success.
• Neuron Mobility’s Australian head of operations Richard Hannah told Business Insider Australia the scooters have helped cut pollution, congestion, and create jobs where they have been permitted.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

State and territory governments are still figuring out how or if they will legalise electric scooters, as Australians anxiously look to ride.

The personal vehicles have fallen into a legal grey space in Australia, with jurisdictions taking very different approaches to the form of transport.

In Queensland, you can ride them up to 25 kilometres per hour – their average speed – and ride on footpaths as long as you give way to pedestrians and wear a helmet.

On the other hand, in Victoria you can’t ride above walking pace, while in New South Wales you can’t ride them at all, after Transport Minister Andrew Constance declared he was “not in the mood” to allow trials to proceed. That’s despite a 73-page report last year by the National Transport Commission giving them the green light with speed restrictions.

“People getting killed, e-scooters being left up trees, e-scooters littering parks and footpaths, people falling over them,” Constance told budget estimates. “The point is that I am not entertaining this.”

But despite their opaque legal status, there’s clearly a market for them as an alternative mode of transport. Cities that are experimenting with them, including in inner Canberra, the Darwin waterfront and Townsville’s CBD, are receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback, according to shared e-scooter provider Neuron Mobility.

Data provided to Business Insider Australia shows almost nine out of ten participants said the scooters are making a positive impact on their city, with nearly half of all rides replacing a car trip, tackling congestion and pollution.

“I discovered how convenient the e-scooters were when I had a meeting in the CBD which was unexpectedly moved to another location,” Brisbane resident Angus James said. “I needed to get to the meeting as quickly as possible and realised that jumping on an e-scooter would be much faster than ordering an Uber and sitting in traffic.”

During the pandemic, the vehicles positioned themselves as a socially-distanced form of transport for those too nervous to catch ride shares or public transport. But outside of it, the scooters are finding traction, especially as a last-mile option and among younger riders, with half of all users aged under 34 years.

Darwin recently extended its trial into a second year, Tasmania and Victoria announced last month they would consider one, while companies like Neuron continue to lobby governments to give it a go, although negotiations remain sensitive.

“We have seen that CBDs work really well but trials do require operators and local councils to work quite closely in designing the service. For example, in Brisbane we have slow speed zones apply where there are plenty of pedestrians and no parking zones in narrow streets to prevent disruption,” Neuron ANZ head of operations Richard Hannah told Business Insider Australia.

By using geofencing technology, scooter functionality can be automatically restricted within predetermined areas, helping to integrate them into flow of a city.

The average trip after all runs up to around three kilometres, largely linking people from inner suburbs to a CBD. Users download an app and scan a scooter to get started, simply ‘parking’ it later to end a trip.

Tight geotracking of the scooters is clearly intended to prevent the kind of mishaps that occurred with share-bikes, many of which were dumped in rivers and hurled up trees during similar trials. Other safety features are aimed at improving confidence of users at night, with some scooters equipped with triple-zero emergency call buttons and location-sharing.

The other major selling point from a city perspective is an economic one, with Hannah claiming a local job is created for every ten scooters a city adopts.

“What’s been really interesting is seeing the scooters link people to small businesses within a city, with more than 60% of rides resulting in a purchase,” he said.

Despite some cities like Sydney shutting the vehicles out, Hannah is hopeful the prevailing winds are strong enough to sweep them through more cities soon.

“There’s a real shift happening right now. There isn’t enough space in cities and Governments are realising cars aren’t efficient and aren’t the answer,” he said.

“Fewer and fewer people are going to own cars and across Australia we expect e-scooters and bikes to become an important part of how cities are moving.”

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