Dockless electric scooters won’t return to Montreal following a pilot project in the city last summer.
The decision was announced at an executive committee meeting on Wednesday morning after a report on the situation found non-compliance with the city’s rules.
Éric Alan Caldwell, the city’s executive committee member in charge of transit and urban planning, said the city doesn’t want to have to police e-scooters.
“We weren’t ready for this,” he said, adding only 20 per cent of the vehicles were parked in their designated spaces.
Ride-sharing electric scooter services first landed in Montreal last June in a bid to add more environmentally friendly modes of transportation for residents.
Companies including Lime and Bird rolled out e-scooters on city streets throughout the summer before the pilot project came to an end in November.
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The report tabled at the executive committee on Wednesday found that Montreal police issued more than 300 tickets to e-scooter users last year over non-compliance.
The findings also point to a lack of social equity, pointing to the fact that there is a high cost to using the electric-scooter-sharing services.
READ MORE: Emergency room physician bracing for injuries following launch of e-scooters in Montreal
Caldwell went on to say that e-scooters led to safety issues and created mobility problems for other roads users, including cyclists and pedestrians.
“That’s why in 2020 there will be no e-scooters in the streets of Montreal,” he said.
While the pilot project was deemed a “failure” by Caldwell, he said the situation for electric bicycles was much better and those will still be allowed to operate.
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