The City of Fredericton has passed its bylaw for the regulation of e-scooters and bikes. The process was long but it arrived at a set of rules to govern the use of them on the trail system.
It outlined the speed limits and safe requirements, plus hired two bylaw officers to oversee in fractions of the new rules. During the process, the city did a jurisdictional scan to see how other municipalities and provinces had moved to create operating rules around these new popular modes of transportation.
“There is no one-size-fits-all bylaw to this,” said Fredericton mayor Kate Rogers. “There are different communities that are doing it differently, that have set different speed limits.”
Enforcing the rules
The speed limit for e-scooters in Fredericton is 20 km/h, but will be lower in higher-traffic areas on the trail network. Now, the conversation turns to enforcement. The city hired a few bylaw officers to help oversee the new rules.
But enforcement will be tricky, Rogers explained.
“It’s our bylaw and we will continue to monitor it and we’ll change it as necessary,” she said. “What’s going to be most important here is education and I think ultimately it’s just etiquette and respect and really regardless of what speed people are travelling at you, you just need to be mindful that it is a shared space.”
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The plan is to have even lower speed limits in areas like the Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge, but the city believes the trail system is a shared space.
“But to think that these officers could be everywhere at once — I mean we have 115 km of trails — so it’s impossible that they are going to be everywhere, but we will have signage that will be posted.”
And while bylaw officers might not be out with radar guns, Rogers hopes their mere presence is enough to deter any rule breaks from cranking up the speed.
Other provinces moving to regulate
In April 2022, Nova Scotia moved to amend its motor vehicle act to regulate e-scooters and bikes, having had some requests from both those who rent and sell the scooters and bikes and municipalities also looking to regulate.
“We got a lot of information from those communities,” said Kevin Mitchell, Nova Scotia’s registrar of motor vehicles. “We were looking at how does this fit in our motor vehicle act.”
Eventually, it set a minimum age limit of 14 years old, and operators have to wear a helmet and a maximum speed of 32 km/h.
Some e-scooters can go up to 80 km/h.
“They can go quite fast but we wanted to make sure they were limited in the speed that can travel,” he said. “This is emerging technology. How it’s used, we look at things from a road safety perspective. Not just for the riders, but all road users.”
New Brunswick’s Department of Justice and Public Safety did not provide anyone for an interview on Thursday, and was unable to respond to questions about its intentions on the regulation by publication time.
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