Council calls for state govt to scoot on rules
Adelaide City Council wants to see the state government’s e-scooter regulation hurried along as it enters the sixth year of an e-scooter trial.
The council will seek to extend its e-scooter trial for four more months, hoping to push the state government to have its regulations in place by then.
Councillor Janet Giles told the council’s Infrastructure and Public Works Committee on Tuesday it’s a “bizarre” situation that the council has been dealing with since before she was elected in 2022.
“It’s a bizarre situation where we have to ask the state government for an extension to a trial that is required to be a trial because they haven’t worked on getting legislation straight for us to be able to move beyond the trial framework,” she said.
Currently, councils that have e-scooters must request approval from the Transport Minister to continue operating on a trial basis.
Once state government regulations are in place, the council won’t need approval from the Minister for e-scooter ‘trials’, it will be up to the council if they wish to continue.
This will be the sixth time the council has extended the length of the trial, despite calls that a 2023 extension should have been the last due to safety and insurance concerns.
The state government passed legislation in November last year to allow e-scooters to be used on public roads and paths and said then e-scooters and other personal mobility devices could hit the road from early 2025 after the regulations were finalised.
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As of April 1, DIT advised the council that the new regulations will be in place mid-year, with an “education period” so riders understand the new rules to be conducted prior to that.
“I’ve got no problem with e-scooters, the companies have told us over and over that they can make things safer and more regulated and better for everybody, if the legislation is secure in South Australia,” Giles said.
“And yet we’ve been waiting for the government to get the legislation done.
“I don’t see why they can’t move quickly to get it in place. If we give them more time, they will take more than that time.”
Until the regulations are in place, the use of privately owned e-scooters or personal mobility devices on public roads and paths in South Australia is still prohibited, and public e-scooters have to be on a ‘trial’ basis.
Transport Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the legislation “will govern private ownership and operation of e-scooters”.
“The public rental of e-scooters is a matter for councils, once the regulations are completed councils will need to decide how they want to administer their rental and storage,” he said.
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Councillor Mary Couros said that extending the trial for four months “is not going to achieve anything”.
“If it’s the will of the council that you want to really send a message to the government, you need to actually stop the trial right now,” she said.
Councillor Henry Davis said once the regulations are in place, it would be good to open up a tender for a more competitive e-scooter market, and raised concerns about the ACT cancelling its contract with Beam in 2024.
The ACT government chose not to renew Beam Mobility’s permit to operate e-scooters after an investigation found the firm had manipulated data about its fleet.
City Infrastructure Director Tom McCready said the council undertook a review into Beam’s practices in SA and there are “no concerns are present” about Beam’s alleged interstate actions.
Safety concerns
Parked and fallen e-scooters on a city footpath. Photo: Thomas Kelsall/InDaily
In 2024, there were over 543,000 e-scooter trips that started in the City of Adelaide and a total of 73 incidents reported between both fleet operators, Beam and Neuron.
Councillor Mark Siebentritt said they “routinely get complaints around how e-scooters are being managed across the city”.
E-scooters being abandoned and strewn around city streets rather than properly parked is a frequent complaint.
Councillor Phillip Martin told the committee that most recently, a visitor from Port Macquarie, New South Wales contacted all councillors about his wife, who suffered a serious injury falling over an abandoned e-scooter at a bus stop.
The complaint, seen by InDaily, said the couple, both in their seventies, had their 10-day visit to Adelaide “destroyed” after the incident.
It said they received an email from Beam support, which “I found more insulting than helpful, asking us to go to more trouble and report this to the police”.
The complainant is a radio presenter and said he would tell his listeners to “avoid Adelaide if you are a senior citizen as it is not a safe city”.
