Toronto is taking e-scooter regulations very seriously as the trendy transportation method starts to sweep the nation and might even look into banning them from sidewalks altogether.
The Toronto municipal infrastructure and environment committee is looking to ban e-scooters from sidewalks as the city works on creating a better method for implementing scooter sharing.
This goes against the grain for popular scooter-sharing companies like Bird and Lime whose users locate scooters via an app and can pick and drop them anywhere within a specific area.
Toronto Mayor John Tory is on the side of the committee and has doubts about scooters in Toronto, reports the Toronto Star. Tory has been reaching out to other cites, where the scooters are operational, and has been getting a wide range of responses ranging from good to bad.
One of the mayor’s most significant worries is that since Toronto has a lot of narrow sidewalks, people using and parking scooters will lead to more sidewalk congestion and clutter.
Currently, Bird is running a pilot project in the privately-owned Distillery District in Toronto. In Canada, e-scooters are available to use in Calgary, Edmonton and they’re coming to Montreal.
Ontario is taking a measured approach to scooter sharing and it’s actually illegal to use e-scooters on the roads in the province. The province is looking to change this with a pilot test which will allow the relatively new form of transportation on roads. It’s planing to test scooter regulations over the next five years, but it has yet to establish a start date.
Source: Toronto Star
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
